Complications seemed simplistic compared to this relationship, it wasn't that he wasn't somewhat glad she was back. After all he'd long gotten over the youthful infatuation that he'd had, his mother had aided in opening his eyes to the folly of affections. Love was more than mere weakness, it was pointless. Power was the ultimate goal, with power came safety -- and wayward affections merely undermined the goals he'd been trained to seek. Aislin had seen him as he once had been, youthful and believing in the fantasy of true love and a happy ending.
A part of him had even believed that the happy ending might be with her, for he could not deny - even now in his state - that once they had been good together. Her calm mediating his temper, her unfailing loyalty balancing his fears of abandonment. Yet now those days of comfortable companionship were past, she had long left his court, and he made no special efforts to seek her out.
Since his mother's death the duties of court had further weighed him down, giving him adequate excuse and reason, but perhaps the real truth would be that the darkness within him had grown until he knew he was not fit for the purity of Winter. For in WInter's crystalline world -- where did the ichor of shadows belong?
Yet there she stood -- just across the room, radiant in her beauty, icy in her demeanor. Just as he had always loved her, love however must be pushed from his mind as he sought to end the useless conversations that held him. With quick steps he was at her side, bowing low as lips brushed the offered hand. Ever the gentleman in her presence he offered his arm.
" --- May I have this dance Your Grace? "
Ever charming, ever elegant -- arms swept her towards the relative peace of the floor. On the edges one might be overheard, on the edges one might be interrupted. Yet once he held her again - there was an unfamiliar ache on the edges of his soulless heart. Long blackened by unrepentant deeds, long dormant without the chill of her gaze -- there are somethings that flourish in the winter. Things that can not grow until they feel the ice of winter, perhaps a heart could not know it ached until it again saw the glory of the thing it once cherished.
He cherished little now, save himself and the power he angled at every turn to gain. Over and over he forced himself to remember, power is safety, safety is peace, peace is solitude. It seemed he had almost convinced himself, yet for her.
Perhaps he realized as he now held her that this had been a mistake, distance did not make the heart grow fonder, it made the heart duller. The way she moved with him, the way her lips parted as she spoke -- even the way her chest rose and fell with each breath was mesmerizing, magic beyond any he might steal or demand. A power he could never have. Beauty incarnate -- enough to wake even the longest dead soul.
Even now though it was tainted by the corruption of his mother's words, the visions she'd shared with him. Aislin secreted away with other men even as he had contemplated a marriage to her, had dared to dream of children and a life. She could not love him less than she had shown in those visions, even a heartless mother knew how her son longed for the Winter Queen, yet never once had those hallowed eyes acknowledged that love. And so he remained silent and formal as etiquette demanded.