“I didn’t choose to be born a princess,” she said, barely above the wind. “Just like you didn’t choose to be a weapon.”
It stopped me. Only for a heartbeat, but it did.
“My family,” I said, because if I didn’t say it first, it would rot inside the sentence we were pretending to have. “Your father killed them.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked open on the second word and the sound did something violent to my ribs. “I know what he did. I hate it. I hate him for it.” She took one small step closer, the kind of brave you do without asking your legs if they agree. “But I am not him.”
The bond pulsed, dragging me toward her while rage dug in its heels and made promises about fire. I have lived a long time obeying the wrong one.
“I’ve spent years trying to forget,” I said. “Trying to survive. And then you—” I swallowed the rest, because I am still learning which truths deserve air. “You lit something in me I thought was bone-dead. I let myself hope.”
Her eyes— those ember eyes—shined wet and furious. Love is an ugly word in a mouth like mine; it looked good on her anyway.
“Then don’t let it go,” she whispered. “Don’t throw us away because of him.”
“I don’t know how to forgive this.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive him.” Another step; the frost caught her hem and refused to slow her. “I’m asking you to remember us. Whatever this… is. Remember what it feels like when you stop lying about it. You feel it too.”
The mark beat a stubborn rhythm under my skin, a second heart that didn’t care how old my wounds were. I could taste her magic on the air—wild, aching, the smell before a storm. My hand rose without permission and hovered, then settled against her cheek, thumb catching the damp there like I could thumb away a life’s worth of politics.
“You should’ve told me,” I said again, softer now, because rage has a volume and I was sick of speaking in it.
She leaned into my palm like it was a place to put her weight.
“I was afraid.” The confession was small and clean. “Afraid you’d look at me the way you are now.”
“And how is that?”
“Like I’m the enemy.”
I let out a breath long enough to feel winter leave with it. Up close, she was ridiculous: hair dark as wet ink braided low and heavy, moonstones blinking like kept stars; skin chilled enough that my hand warmed it; eyes ember-bright and steady. The mouth that ruins me softened around my name even when she didn’t say it.
“You’re not the enemy,” I said, thumb finding her lower lip, slow, reverent, as if gentleness were a language I could still learn. “You are the storm. And the harbor. You are the ache I pick and the light I hate wanting.”
Her mouth trembled under my touch; she didn’t step back.
“Blood doesn’t make me him,” she said. “My choices do. I will not invite him into any room you’re in. I won’t ask you to sit at his table or swallow his history to make mine easier. I will stand between you if I have to.” A breath. A bruise of truth. “But I will not cut myself into a shape that makes you less angry at the past.”
It landed where things stick. Not a demand. Not an apology. A boundary laid gentle and iron. She was offering herself and refusing to be offered as balm for a wound I had to name if I meant to heal it.
“Betrayal,” I tried the word and let it sit where it stung least. “It’s not what you are. It’s when you let me see it.” I swallowed again. “It felt like you put the crown on in front of me and asked me to clap.”
Her mouth tilted, hurt and rue inside the smallest curve. “I asked you to see me whole. I should have asked you in private.”
Silence folded around us; the wardlights crackled. Somewhere far off, a herald practiced sayingparleyin three languages in exactly the right cadence to soothe liars. In the courtyard, it was just us and the old, living hum of a realm that knows how to survive storms.
“I will never forgive him,” I said, and the words steadied me. “I will never share a roof with him or let him breathe the same air as you and call it family. If he reaches for you, I breakthe hand.” I lifted my other hand and laid it over the one I held her face with, caging nothing, promising everything. “And still I want you. Crown and all. Truth and all. I am not proud of what that says about me. I am proud of what it asks of me.”
“What does it ask?” she whispered.
“To stay,” I said, surprising myself with how easy it was to speak it when my mouth stopped pretending it was a weapon. “To learn how to hold without hurting. To be a man who can stand in a courtyard with your blood’s sins and not become one more.”
Wind lifted the loose strand of her hair; I tucked it behind her ear and felt the tiny shiver she tried not to let me feel. The bond swelled—no command, no promise. Justthere.
“I am afraid,” she said, eyes on mine, unblinking. “Of losing you to a history I didn’t write. Of asking you to choose and hating the question for existing. Of what I’ll become if I bury myself to make you comfortable.”
“Don’t,” I said, and it surprised us both with how quickly it came. “Don’t become small. I have loved too many small things that learned smallness to survive. Be the blaze. I’ll learn where to stand.”
