Jan 7, 2025
Rivals to lovers or whatever ...
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Rivals to lovers or whatever ...
She stared at him, visibly shaken, meeting his eyes so he saw hope there, and desperation, and hurt, and bewilderment, and under and through all the fluttering emotions, like the bedrock underlying the Palace, pride. “It is not my place to intrude where he has not invited.”
“You are his only sister!” Cliopher caught his temper before it quite flew away. “Your Grace, every year his Radiancy has written to you in his own hand to invite you to the Silverheart festival. Do you need more invitation than that?”
She drew back, visibly affronted. “He has never indicated any true desire for me to come.”
“And if he had expressed his desire?”
“I would have come. It would be my duty. When he desires me to attend other things, as the Council of Princes, he states so, and I come.” And there it was.
“And what if he desired you to come not as his vassal but as his sister?”
She frowned at him. She was his Radiancy’s sister: perhaps she was as brilliant and as trapped in courtly convention as he. (Perhaps?)“He is the head of my family and my house.”
“Your Grace, Silverheart is the festival of the family. It is a time to celebrate bonds that are not only formal and political, but those of ... love. His Radiancy is not a man to confuse obedience with love. He knows you are his loyal and devoted subject. The only way he can give you the space to show if you wish to be his sister is to withdraw as your lord. He has no way to show his love to you that is not also used by the forms of imperial benevolence.”
She compressed her lips together very tightly, a gesture heartbreakingly familiar to Cliopher. After a moment, voice under control, she said: “You cannot understand.”
She was not as opaque as his Radiancy: she had not spent her life in full public view. Cliopher could read her expressions, could see the layers of complex emotion and complicated history. He spoke gently and carefully to that inner woman.
“I would be greatly honoured if you would explain, your Grace.”