Val-Theris stilled, his wings tightening faintly behind him. The silence between them stretched taut, filled only by the racing thoughts in his mind. For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Val-Theris drew a quiet, steadying breath.
“Marry me.”
Jesenia froze, the words hanging in the air like struck glass. “What?”
“I’ll make it official,” Val-Theris said, his voice calm but threaded with an urgency he couldn’t disguise; an urgency to fix what neither of them could see was broken beyond repair.“If you become my queen, your people will be granted full citizenship—protections, provisions, freedom to move and trade without restriction. No more camps. No more slurs spat in the streets. No more riots.”
She stared at him, the sunlight painting sharp edges across his face, her pulse loud in her ears.
“You want to marry me for politics,” she clarified, hurt on her tongue.
“No,” he said quickly, leaning forward slightly, his gaze locked on hers. “I want to marry you because I care about you and don’t want to see any more suffering in my walls. It will give me the power to protect you and your people.”
Jesenia’s breath caught, but instead of relief, something sharp cracked in her chest.
“Do you?” she whispered, barely audible.
Val-Theris stilled. “Do I what?”
“Do you care about me?” she said, louder this time, her voice shaking. “Or do you just value the ease I bring to your conscience?” She stood slowly, clutching her shawl more securely around her, stepping back from him as the words spilled. “I was foolish,” she whispered. “I thought you…I thoughtwewere real, Val-Theris. That what we had could have been more someday. But now…” Her voice faltered as she shook her head, staring down at her scraped palms. “Now I wonder if you only ever wanted me because I was useful.”
“That’s not true,” Val-Theris said sharply, rising to follow her, his wings flaring faintly behind him as if they reflected the strain in his voice. “Jesenia, I would bleed for you?—”
“You would turn my name into a shield,” she cut back, her voice trembling. “A weapon I never wanted to be. Something to wield when the council corners you. An excuse to undermine them. And I would spend the rest of my life wondering if I was your wife or your banner of triumph."
The silence that followed struck harder than the shouting in the streets.
“I want to marry for love,” she whispered, her voice breaking softly around the edges. “Not to fix your ongoing war with your own people.”
Val-Theris’s throat worked, but no words came. He looked at her as if reaching for something already lost, his breath uneven as his wings slowly folded close behind him.
“Jesenia,” he tried softly, but she shook her head once, stepping away.
“No,” she said, her voice trembling but firm. “Not like this.”
She left him standing in her room as the sun climbed higher, his shadow stretched long across the pale marble floors. The seconds ticked away, the vision of his own death burning beneath his ribs, knowing time was a luxury he could not afford to lose, and somehow lost it anyway.
From that day forward, something in the city shifted. Anytime Val-Theris came searching, Jesenia always found some reason to disappear before he arrived. She was avoiding him, and that hollowed him out in ways he never expected.
The council noticed her absence in the halls of the palace, and Varin was the first to use it like a poison. Softly. Skillfully. Like slipping a few drops into his wine just to see how much it would take to kill a god.
At first, Val-Theris ignored his remarks. But the whispers grew louder, spreading beyond the marble halls and into the streets until even soldiers murmured questions in the guardrooms, until traders passed gossip across stalls as if trading currency.
And Jesenia, hearing the same words echoed in shadows, pulled further away.
He tried to reach her.
He tried until exhaustion carved hollows beneath his eyes, until the parchment stacks on his desk blurred beneath sleepless nights. He tried to speak to her. To explain. To hold her without words and let her feel what he couldn’t seem to say out loud.
To let her hear the words that were too dangerous to leave his throat.
The high councilchamber glimmered with cold light, the dawn spilling warm gold through its high arched windows. Val-Theris stood at the head of the marble table, his wings folded tight against his back, the weight of a dozen eyes fixed on him. They had called him for an emergency session which he had denied—thrice—before answering the summons.
Councilor Gena’s voice was the first to break the silence. “You shame us, Your Majesty.”
The words echoed sharply across the marble floor. Val-Theris’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing as Gena leaned forward, her thin fingers tapping against the table.
“You bring that Lunarethian girl into our sacred halls, and now the entire city whispers of it. Do you think your people kneel to you because of sentiment?” Her smile was faint, cold. “No. They kneel because they believe you are more than a man. And yet for nearly a week’s time, you mope about like a heartbroken boy.”
