prince!james x president's daughter!reader
mention ; angst, slow burn, yearning yearning yearning, true love, royalty, marriage
EVERY SPRING - Chapter one
EVERY SUMMER - Chapter two
EVERY AUTUMN - Chapter three
EVERY WINTER - Chapter four
EVERY SEASON - Chapter five
Donny Hathaway · Donny Hathaway · Song · 1971
Love does not always win because it is easy. Sometimes it wins because it survives long enough to become impossible to deny.
For three weeks after Taipei, nothing happened.
No letter except the one you had sent.
For years, silence had been the cruelest thing between you and James. This time, it felt different. Not peaceful. Never peaceful.
As though somewhere, far away, a door had been unlocked and neither of you yet knew who would walk through it first.
You returned to your life because there was nothing else to do. You attended a charity lunch with your mother. You visited a hospital with your father. You smiled for newspapers. You answered questions. You slept badly.
You dreamed of James often. Sometimes he was standing at the end of a corridor, waiting. Sometimes he was walking away. Sometimes he was reaching for you, but the distance between you kept growing no matter how fast you moved.
On the twenty-second day, your mother entered your bedroom with a cream-colored envelope in her hand. She said nothing. She did not need to. You knew the handwriting immediately.
Your heart started beating so hard it almost hurt. Your mother placed the envelope on your desk.
“Do you know what it says?”
“Do you think I should open it?”
“I think if you don’t, you will spend the rest of your life wondering.”
You stood alone for nearly five minutes before touching it.
The paper was thick. Formal. But the seal had been broken already. Not by someone else.
As though he had opened it once before sending it, perhaps to make sure the words still felt true. You unfolded the letter.
I have written this letter sixteen times.
In the first version, I apologized until the words became useless.
In the second, I explained everything until I sounded like a man asking to be understood more than forgiven.
In the third, I wrote only your name.
That was the most honest one.
I do not know what this letter should be. A beginning would be presumptuous. An ending would be a lie. A confession would be too late, and yet somehow still necessary.
So I will tell you the truth.
I have not stopped loving you. Not in silence. Not in duty. Not in grief. Not when I tried to become the man they wanted. Not when you asked me to let you survive. Not even then. Especially not then.
But I have learned something I should have known sooner.
Loving you cannot mean asking you to stand in the fire while I decide whether I am brave enough to burn with you.
I have asked my father for one final conversation.
Whatever happens, I will not let them use you as a reason to doubt me. You were never my weakness.
You were the first person who made me want to be honest.
You read the letter once.
By the fourth time, your hands were shaking. You sat on the edge of your bed and pressed the paper to your chest.
You did not cry. That surprised you. Perhaps you had no tears left. Or perhaps something inside you had grown tired of collapsing every time James reached across the distance.
Perhaps love, after enough pain, did not always feel like breaking. Sometimes it felt like standing up.
Two weeks later, your father called you into his office. He was standing by the window when you entered, hands clasped behind his back.
Your mother was there too, that frightened you more.
“What happened?” you asked.
“The King of Taiwan has requested a private visit.”
The room went very still. You looked from him to your mother.
Your father looked at your mother, then back at you.
“Because James asked to come.”
For one suspended second, you were not the President’s daughter. Not a woman who had learned to survive cameras, duty and loss. You were only someone who had loved a boy for too long.
“Is he coming as a prince?” you asked.
Your father’s expression softened.
“I think he is coming as himself.”
The meeting took place at a secluded presidential residence near the coast. Not the main palace. Not the place where cameras gathered. A smaller house, white stone and blue shutters, surrounded by pine trees and wind-bent grass.
Your father said it was for privacy. Your mother said nothing ; You understood both meanings.
The Zhao family arrived shortly before sunset.
Only two cars, a handful of security officers, and a silence so heavy it seemed to arrive before them. You stood inside the drawing room beside your mother. Your father waited near the fireplace.
You had chosen a simple ivory dress. No emerald. No silk meant for chandeliers. No armor.
Your hands were cold. Then the door opened.
King Zhao entered first. Queen Zhao beside him. And behind them, James.
For one moment, the world forgot itself.
He looked different. Not because he had aged, though he had. Not because grief had left him, because it had not. But because the tension that had always lived in his shoulders seemed quieter now.
He wore a dark suit with no medals, no sash, no royal ornament except the ring on his hand. His hair was slightly windblown and his face was pale.
His eyes found yours immediately. This time, he did not hide what it did to him. He looked at you as if every year, every letter, every silence had led him here.
No one spoke for half a second too long. Then duty remembered itself. Greetings were exchanged. Hands shaken. Formal words offered.
You curtsied to King Zhao.
“My dear,” he said quietly.
Not the President’s daughter.
You did not know what to do with that. Queen Zhao took both your hands in hers. Her eyes were damp.
That almost broke you. Then James stood before you. No one moved. No one interrupted.
His eyes closed briefly at the sound of his name. As if he had been carrying it all this way only so you could give it back to him.
Dinner was strange. Too polite to be intimate and too intimate to be political.
King Zhao and your father spoke at first of trade, education, regional stability, all the safe subjects men used when their children’s hearts were sitting at the same table. Queen Zhao asked your mother about her charitable foundation. Your mother answered beautifully.
You barely tasted the food.
James sat across from you.
Not beside Princess Amara. Not beside a minister.
Every time your eyes met, the years between you seemed to fold inward. At dessert, your father set down his glass.
“I believe the two of you may want to speak privately.”
Your head turned sharply toward him. James did the same to his father. King Zhao did not look pleased but he did not object.
Queen Zhao smiled faintly. Your mother stood.
“There is a garden path behind the house.”
James looked at you. Not asking aloud. Still asking.
The evening air smelled of salt and roses.
The garden path led toward the sea, though the water itself was hidden beyond the trees. The sky was purple with the last of the light, clouds stretched thin above the horizon.
You walked side by side. Not touching.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Too many versions of yourselves lying between you like ghosts.
Finally, James stopped. You took two more steps before turning back. He stood beneath a tree, watching you with an expression so open it hurt to look at him.
You laughed softly, but your eyes burned.
“Because it is always true.”
The wind moved through the leaves. You wrapped your arms around yourself.
“What are we doing, James?”
It was not the answer you expected. It was not the answer you wanted.
“I thought you came with a plan.”
Your heart twisted. He took a slow breath.
“I had speeches prepared. Explanations. Promises. I thought I knew exactly what I would say.”
“Don’t make me romantic again. I’m trying very hard not to be.”
A sad smile touched his mouth.
But this time, it did not sound like helplessness. It sounded like understanding.
“I am not here to ask you to return to what we were ” he said.
He accepted it without flinching.
“I have replayed Paris a thousand times.”
“I should have told you everything.”
“I should have trusted you with the truth instead of trying to return only when I had solved the problem.”
“I thought love meant protecting you from the ugliness.”
You looked at him through tears.
“And all it did was leave me alone inside it.”
This time, you did not tell him to stop saying it. Because he did.
“I am sorry,” he whispered. “Not in the way men apologize when they want forgiveness. In the way someone says it because the harm exists and cannot be undone.”
Your tears fell silently.
James did not move toward you. He only stood there. Letting you cry without claiming the right to comfort you.
That was what undid you most. The old James would have reached, this James waited.
“I loved you so much,” you said, voice shaking. “I loved you so much that I started to hate myself for it.”
“I hated waiting for you.”
“I hated seeing her beside you.”
“There was never anything between us.”
“I know that now. But then…” You wiped your cheek angrily. “Then it felt like the whole world was telling me I had imagined you.”
“The only lie I’ve ever told you was that I liked you, when I already knew I loved you.”
Your breath caught. The words entered you quietly.
Like something returning to its rightful place. You looked at him. He looked terrified. Not of kings, not of councils.
“I was nineteen,” he continued. “And stupid. And I thought if I called it liking you, it would be manageable.”
A broken laugh escaped you.
“It ruined me almost immediately.”
You laughed through your tears.
Then the laugh became a sob. James took one step forward.
Such a small question. Such a devastating one.
He crossed the remaining distance slowly and held you.
Your forehead pressed against his chest. His hand rested carefully at the back of your head. For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Home, some terrible part of you whispered. You closed your eyes harder.
“I don’t know how to forgive you” you said against him.
“You do not have to know tonight.”
“I don’t know if I can trust this.”
“You do not have to trust it tonight.”
“I don’t know if I can survive losing you again.”
“Then I will spend my life making sure you don’t have to.”
You pulled back slightly.
“Don’t promise things because they sound beautiful.”
The honesty cut through you.
James looked down at you.
“We might lose. My father may not convince the Council. The Council may fight this for years. The press may be cruel. Your country may question it. Mine may resent it.”
“I thought you were supposed to reassure me.”
“I am done lying beautifully.”
“I cannot promise it will be easy. I cannot promise it will not cost us. I cannot promise there will never be another room where duty tries to take me from you.”
His hand rose slowly to your face, giving you time to move away.
“But I can promise this: you will never again be the last person to know what is happening in my life.”
Your tears spilled again.
“You should have promised that first.”
“And you should stop saying I know.”
A real laugh escaped him. Soft, almost disbelieving.
You hit his chest lightly. He caught your hand. For the first time in almost two years, his fingers intertwined with yours.
You looked at your hands. Then at him.
“What did your father say?”
James’ expression shifted. Carefully.
“He has not accepted everything.”
That mattered, you knew it did. James looked toward the house.
“My mother asked him whether the Crown had ever made our family happier by separating people who loved each other.”
“Your mother is terrifying.”
“That is not acceptance.”
“No.” James looked back at you. “But it was the first time he had no argument.”
The wind moved between you. You squeezed his hand.
“Several believe I should marry someone royal.”
You laughed without humor.
“I told them there is already someone.”
You remembered Copenhagen, the hallway, the beginning of the war.
“You already told them that.”
“And it nearly destroyed us.”
“This time,” he said, “I told them in writing.”
“I submitted a formal declaration.”
“To my father. To the Council. To the Royal Household.”
His thumb moved over your knuckles.
“That I would not enter any marriage arranged for diplomatic convenience. That if the Crown requires honesty from its people, it cannot be built on a lie from its king. That my choice of wife must be approved, yes, but not manufactured.”
“You might lose everything.”
“No.” His voice was calm. “I might lose the version of everything they designed without me.”
You froze. He stepped closer.
“I am not abandoning my country. I am refusing to abandon myself for it.”
Those words changed something. Not solved. Not healed.
You saw, for the first time, that James was no longer asking you to be worth the sacrifice. He was no longer placing the weight of his rebellion in your hands.
And because of that, choosing you no longer felt like destruction.
When you returned to the house, both families were waiting. You and James were still holding hands. No one pretended not to notice.
Your father’s eyes dropped to your joined fingers.
You looked at James. Then at your father.
A flicker of pain crossed his face.
“But I think I want to be.”
Your mother covered her mouth briefly. Queen Zhao looked away, blinking too fast. King Zhao remained still. A king to the end.
Then James stepped forward.
The room went silent. James did not look at you when he said it. He looked at his father.
Not asking you to carry the words. Carrying them himself.
“I have loved her for years. Badly, at times. Secretly, foolishly, and with too much fear. But never lightly.”
“I know what is expected of me. I know what my marriage represents. I know the consequences.”
“But I will not marry someone else to make other people comfortable with my unhappiness.”
King Zhao’s expression was unreadable.
“You speak as though kings are free men.”
“No. I speak because I know they are not.”
For the first time, something like sadness crossed his father’s face.
“If I become king, I will belong to our people. I accept that. But if belonging to them requires that I betray the woman I love, then what exactly am I asking them to trust?”
Your father looked at James with something like respect. Queen Zhao’s eyes were full of tears. King Zhao looked older than he had when he entered.
Finally, he said, “The Council will not make this easy.”
“They may demand years of preparation.”
“They may insist on terms.”
“They may never love her.”
James looked at you then. Only briefly.
“Then they will have to learn respect first.”
King Zhao looked at you. You straightened instinctively. He studied you for a long moment.
“You understand this will not be a fairy tale.”
“Your Majesty, with respect, it has never felt like one.”
Something in his expression shifted. A shadow of amusement.
You looked at James. Then back at the king.
“Enough to follow him into a life that will often be unkind?”
James’ hand tightened around yours. You thought of every letter.
Every room where you had smiled while breaking.
Every year you had spent trying not to love him.
“I love him just as he is. Wherever he’ll go I’ll follow.”
James turned toward you. The words struck him visibly. His eyes filled.
You had said them for him. But also for yourself.
You were no longer the girl on the balcony. No longer waiting for him to choose first. You were choosing too.
King Zhao sat back slowly. Queen Zhao reached for his hand. Your father looked down perhaps to hide his own emotion.
Finally, King Zhao said, “Then we begin carefully.”
And sometimes, after years of no, begin was enough.
The months that followed were not easy. They were not meant to be.
There were meetings. Statements drafted and destroyed. Royal advisers arguing over precedent.
Political commentators debating your suitability as though you were furniture being considered for an old palace.
Newspapers called you elegant.
You learned not to read every headline. James learned to tell you before the worst ones reached you.
When the Council delayed approval, he told you.
When his father grew doubtful, he told you.
When Queen Zhao defended you so fiercely one minister resigned, he told you that too.
You wrote letters still. Not because you had to. Because letters belonged to you. But now they were not the only thing.
There were calls through official phone lines, brief and expensive.
There were visits with doors left open.
There were walks with security several paces behind.
There were arguments. Real ones.
Healing did not make either of you perfect.
Sometimes you were frightened and cruel.
Sometimes James was tired and defensive.
Sometimes the past returned suddenly, like a bruise pressed too hard.
Once, during a visit to Taipei, you saw Princess Amara at a dinner. She greeted you kindly. You hated her for being kind, then hated yourself. That evening, James found you in the palace library.
You looked at him sharply.He raised his hands slightly.
“I have learned better than to believe that word.”
James understood immediately.
“That is deeply inconvenient.”
He almost smiled. Then wisely did not.
“There was never anything between us.”
“But knowing does not always stop pain” he said gently.
You looked at him. That was new. The old James might have defended, this James stayed.
You whispered, “It made me feel replaceable.”
His face fell. He crossed the room slowly.
“You were never replaceable.”
“You don’t get to decide how it felt.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
You hated how much that helped. He stopped before you.
You almost cried from the simplicity of it.
“To not be reasonable for five minutes.”
A year after the private meeting, the Royal Household released a statement. Not an engagement.
Approved for consideration. A phrase so cold it nearly made you laugh.
The world went mad anyway.
Photographers waited outside every event. Journalists dissected every dress you wore. Royal historians appeared on television.
Some people adored the romance. Others despised the disruption.
James stood beside you through all of it. Always close, never possessive. Whenever cameras flashed too brightly, he lowered his voice and said something only you could hear.
“You are doing better than all of them.”
“The cat would hate this.”
You almost laughed during a state reception.
Your mother saw, she smiled for the first time in weeks.
The official engagement came in spring. Of course it did.
Every spring, you met again.
Every spring, something changed.
This time, James did not propose in front of cameras. He refused.
“Absolutely not,” he told three horrified advisers.
“But Your Highness, the optics—”
That sentence reached you through Queen Zhao, who repeated it with visible pride.
James proposed in the east garden of the palace in Taipei. The same garden where he had first kissed you. Lanterns hung from the trees again. The air smelled of rain and jasmine.
You stood beneath the same tree, older now, steadier, though your hands still shook. James looked nervous, that made you smile.
“You have addressed parliaments,” you said. “Surely this is easier.”
“You already know my answer.”
“I have learned not to assume where you are concerned.”
He took your hands. For a moment, he only looked at you.
Then he lowered himself to one knee.Your breath caught anyway, even though you knew. Even though you had survived too much to be surprised by happiness.
The ring was not enormous, not royal in the vulgar sense. A diamond set between two small emerald stones.
You looked at him. He smiled softly.
Of course he did. James held your gaze.
“I loved you before I understood what love would ask of me.”
His voice trembled slightly.
“I loved you badly before I learned to love you honestly.”
“I loved you in every room where I could not say your name. In every letter I sent and every one I did not. In every spring that brought you back and every winter that took you away.”
“I cannot promise a simple life.”
“I cannot promise the world will always be kind.”
“I cannot promise I will never fail you.”
You swallowed. He looked at you with all the humility pain had taught him.
“But I promise I will never again let silence stand between us and call it protection.”
The tears fell then. James took a shaking breath.
“Y/N Y/L/N, will you marry me?”
For a second, you could not speak. The girl from the emerald dress stood somewhere inside you, watching and the boy who kissed her hand waited on one knee.
You knelt in front of him instead of letting him stay below you. His eyes widened. You held his face in your hands.
His face broke into something so beautiful it hurt.
You laughed through tears.
He kissed you before either of you stood. Not careful this time.
A kiss full of years, grief, forgiveness and the terrifying tenderness of being chosen in daylight. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
“I love you” he whispered.
He laughed. Then you kissed him again.
The wedding took place the following year.
It was not small. It never could have been.
There were heads of state, royal families, ministers, cameras, choirs, flowers from both countries, and commentators speaking over footage as though they understood what the day meant.
The future king waiting at the altar.
He stood beneath arches of white stone and gold light, dressed in ceremonial uniform, hands folded, face pale with emotion. When the doors opened and you appeared, he cried.
The cameras caught it. The world adored him for it. You adored him more because you knew he had stopped hiding.
Your father walked you down the aisle. Halfway there, he whispered, “Still time to run.”
“Good,” he said, voice thick. “He looks terrified.”
Your father kissed your cheek before giving you away. James took your hand. His fingers trembled.
“You came back” he whispered.
But when James kissed you, none of them mattered. His hands framed your face. Your fingers curled around his jacket.
For once, no one could call it improper.
Your mother cried. Queen Zhao cried. Your father pretended not to. King Zhao stood very still, then finally bowed his head. Not to a president’s daughter.
Later, during the reception, after dances and speeches and too many congratulations, James found you on a balcony.
It had begun on a balcony.
Perhaps all true things returned to their first shape.
You stood looking out at the palace gardens, your wedding dress spilling around you, the night warm against your skin. James came up behind you.
“I was looking for my wife.”
You turned. The word still startled you.
Impossible words. Real words.
“You married me several hours ago.”
“Good. I would be wounded otherwise.”
You laughed. He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around your waist. For a moment, you simply stood together.
Then James rested his chin lightly on your shoulder.
“I have something important to discuss.”
“If this is about the cat…”
“It is absolutely about the cat.”
“We are married now. It is time.”
“We are not getting a cat.”
“I am a responsible future king.”
“You will sneeze during state meetings.”
“I shall do so with dignity.”
You turned in his arms, laughing. He looked delighted. Too delighted.
“You have been waiting years for this conversation.”
“You broke my biggest nightmare of us having a family together and arguing about getting a cat or not.”
The nightmare that had become a dream. The dream that had somehow become a life. You touched his face.
“We can talk about one cat.”
When he pulled away, his eyes searched yours.
You thought about it. Not because you did not know. Because after so many years of wanting, happiness felt like something that deserved to be named carefully.
James looked out over the garden. Then back at you.
Your heart ached. You took his hand.
Behind you, the music continued. Inside, a kingdom celebrated. Outside, the night held you gently.
And for the first time since the gala, since the emerald dress, since the hand kiss that had ruined everything and begun everything, there was no need to wait for the next spring.
James was here, you were here.
The story was not behind you.
It was finally allowed to begin.
This was the last chapter of EVERY SEASON. I hope you will enjoy the end as much as I do. Thanks for every comments that I have recieved that motivates me a lot to write more stories.
thank you for taking your time to read this story 🤍 lalouijotte
