Night settles heavy over the capital.
The healers have long since gone, leaving poultices and tinctures and warnings behind. Mira chased everyone out after the last check, fussing with blankets and pillows until even Seraphine obeyed and went to wash the blood from her hands.
Now it's quiet.
For once, they've all stayed out.
Elira is on roof patrol, "to stab anything that looks at the palace funny." Lyriel retreated to her workroom, muttering about "recalculating tolerances." Mira collapsed into her own bed for the first time in days after swaying on her feet one time too many.
And Seraphine…
Seraphine said she'd be in her office, finishing whatever crisis the council decided couldn't wait for "the crown princess' private life-threatening moment."
They'd all promised to take turns watching.
They all needed to rest.
So I'm alone.
The room smells faintly of dried blood and herbs, of cotton and candle wax and the sweet phantom of stew from earlier. There's a clean bowl on the table now, empty. The stained cloth is gone. Mira said she'd burn it.
I stare at the place where it sat.
The ache in my chest has faded to a steady soreness, the edges smoothed by potions and a shared lattice of pain. My lungs whistle a little when I breathe too deep. But I'm not drowning. Not yet.
The candle by the bed has burned low, puddling wax over the saucer. Shadows stretch long and soft across the ceiling. Outside, a wind drags its fingers over the roof tiles, making them creak like an old ship.
I should sleep.
Instead, I lie on my side, fingers tangled in Sir Fluffsalot's worn fur, and listen to my own breathing.
In.
Out.
Still here.
The door clicks.
My whole body goes taut for a heartbeat.
Then relaxes.
I'd know that careful, measured step even in the dark.
Seraphine closes the door behind her with the same deliberation she brings to battle plans. She's changed: no armor, no boots, just a loose white shirt open at the throat and dark trousers. Her hair is down, a rare spill of gold over her shoulders instead of braided and pinned.
In this light, without the trappings of rank, she looks…young.
Not the future queen.
Just a woman who's had a very long, very bad week.
"Couldn't sleep?" I ask softly.
She starts, just a little, then huffs a quiet laugh.
"Caught," she says, crossing the room. "I should be asking you that."
"You're the one creeping around in the dark," I point out. "I'm just lying here aggressively existing."
She reaches the bed and stops, looking down at me.
For a moment she doesn't say anything.
Her eyes track the line of my throat, the hollow at the base, the faint bruising along my collarbone where Mira pressed too hard during the worst of it. They flick to my lips, as if checking for red.
Nothing.
I lick them anyway, just to be sure.
"Do you want me to call Mira?" I ask. "If you're here for a midnight exam—"
"No." Her voice is too quick, too sharp. She softens it. "No. This isn't…official."
I raise a brow. "Unofficial princess business?"
She sits on the edge of the mattress, careful not to jostle me.
"Unofficial fiancée business," she corrects quietly.
Heat prickles at my ears.
She rarely says it out loud like that.
"Should I be worried?" I ask. "You sound like you're about to bring up taxes."
"Gods, no." She makes a face. "I get enough of that during the day."
Her hand finds the blanket near my shoulder, fingers curling in the fabric.
"I came," she says slowly, "because earlier, when you bled, I wanted to hold you and I didn't. I stood at the foot of the bed and watched like a statue while you gasped and spat red into Mira's hands."
Her jaw flexes.
"That felt…wrong," she says.
"You were being practical," I say. "Someone had to stay calm."
"That's the problem," she says quietly. "I'm always being practical. And you just…nearly die. Again. And I stand there at the end of the bed thinking about battle plans instead of…" Her voice trails off.
"Instead of what?" I ask.
She looks at me.
"Instead of climbing into the damn bed and holding you until the shaking stops," she says. "That's what I wanted to do. What I want to do now. So I'm here. Before I talk myself out of it again."
My heart trips.
"That's…allowed, you know," I say. "Queen or not. You're permitted to have a breakdown on my sheets."
Her fingers tighten in the blanket.
"May I?" she asks.
It's such a simple question. Formal, almost. Ridiculous, given that we've stood together ankle-deep in blood and fire and worse.
But something about the way she says it makes my chest hurt in a completely different way.
She could have just done it. Pulled rank. Decided.
Instead she's asking.
Because my ribs are cracked and my lungs are treacherous and the wrong pressure could hurt.
Because she's treating this like the most dangerous maneuver she's attempted yet.
"Yes," I say, before my own fear can catch up. "Please."
The mattress dips as she moves.
She doesn't throw herself down; she eases in slowly, testing every inch, one knee on the bed, then the other, careful hands braced on either side of me so she doesn't put weight where she shouldn't.
I scoot over as much as my tangled blankets allow.
She slides in behind me, on top of the covers at first, then—when I reach back and tug—a little under them, body a careful line of warmth pressed to my spine.
Her arm hovers before settling around my waist, hand flattening against my stomach, fingers splayed wide as if she's anchoring herself as much as me.
Her breath touches the nape of my neck, hot against skin gone cool from the earlier chill.
For a few heartbeats, we just breathe.
In.
Out.
My lungs hitch once on the inhale.
Her arm tightens.
"Sorry," I whisper.
"For what?" she murmurs.
"For existing," I say. Old habit. Old joke.
"Don't," she says softly, and there's an edge there that makes me go still. "Don't turn this into something you have to apologize for. You're allowed to hurt."
Her hand slides, very carefully, up my sternum.
She stops just below my collarbone, palm resting flat over my heart.
The beat is there. Slower than it was when I was panicking in the corridor, steadier than it has any right to be after everything I've done to it.
Her thumb moves in a slow, absent circle, rubbing heat into bone and thin skin.
"I can feel it," she says quietly. "Every time. When it stutters. When it races. When it…goes quiet for a second."
"That's creepy," I say.
"That's my job," she says. "To know the rhythm of my kingdom's heartbeat. Unfortunately, the kingdom is currently holding itself together with stubbornness and a stuffed bear, so the data is…messy."
Sir Fluffsalot is wedged against my chest like a third presence between us. One of his button eyes digs into my sternum.
"You're just jealous of his security clearance," I mutter.
She laughs, breath warm in my hair.
For a while, that's all it is.
Her body, solid against my back. Her arm around me. The steady rise and fall of her chest pressed to my ribs. The faint creak of the bed frame when we shift. No HUD. No hovering notifications. No genre score quietly updating.
Just…us.
"How's your head?" she asks eventually.
"Sore," I admit. "Like it tried to burst earlier and is now sulking about being denied the drama."
"And your pride?" she asks softly.
"That took more damage," I say. "Bleeding down the corridor in front of half the palace isn't exactly the glamorous image I was going for."
"There were no courtiers," she says. "Just soldiers. And us."
"And guards," I say. "And a maid who will absolutely tell her sisters in the laundry room that the Final Calamity hacked up a lung on the blue runner."
"Then the blue runner has a story," she says. "Better that than a ghost."
I go quiet.
She must feel it, because her hand presses a little more firmly over my heart.
"Fia," she says. "Look at me."
I roll gingerly onto my back.
She props herself on one elbow, leaning over me.
Up close, her face is exhausted. There are fine lines at the corners of her eyes I don't remember from before the war. A faint scar near her mouth from a battle that never made it into the official reports. Her hair falls around us like a curtain, turning the candlelight soft and gold.
In this frame, everything else disappears.
It's just her.
And me.
And the ache of being alive.
"You asked me earlier if I resent this," she says. "If I resent that loving you means learning to live with the knife at your throat."
I hold her gaze. "You said you do," I say.
She doesn't look away.
"I do," she says. "I resent your illness. I resent every god and system and cosmic bureaucrat that decided this was fair. I resent the courtiers who will one day call whatever kills you 'fate.' I resent myself for not being able to fix it, for every moment I have to stand there and watch you suffer instead of ripping it out of you with my bare hands."
Her fingers curl slightly against my chest, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me she's there.
"But," she says, quieter, "that resentment isn't…aimed at you. It's not a weight you have to carry. It's mine. My anger at a world that refuses to cooperate with the life I want with you."
"The life you want?" I echo.
Her mouth quirks, but her eyes are serious.
"I want," she says slowly, like she's testing each word for cracks, "to wake up next to you on mornings that aren't preceded by healers hovering and Mira crying. I want to walk into council meetings knowing that when I drag myself back out again, you'll be there to make fun of me for nearly falling asleep during tax debates."
"Tax debates are very sexy," I say. "All those numbers."
She huffs.
"I want," she goes on, undeterred, "to have evenings where the most dramatic thing that happens is you stealing my tea. I want to be able to hold you like this and not flinch every time you take a deeper breath."
Her thumb strokes my sternum, very gently.
"I want—" she hesitates, then continues, voice dropping a fraction— "I want to kiss you without worrying I'll tip some invisible scale inside you. I want to learn how to love you…fully, not just around the edges the illness leaves us."
Heat crawls up my neck.
"That's…a lot of wanting," I manage.
"It's been a long year," she says dryly.
We're not teenagers fumbling over the first flutter of attraction. We've bled together, killed together, negotiated with gods and councils and my own body for scraps of time.
Our romance is stitched in between crises.
That doesn't make it less real.
If anything, it makes it more…dangerous.
More necessary.
"I'm afraid of that too," I say quietly. "Of…wanting more than I can give. Of you waking up one day and realizing this is all you get, this half-broken body and its unpredictable…performance issues."
Her expression softens.
"Performance issues," she repeats. "That's what you're calling nearly dying on me twice in a month?"
"I have to cope somehow," I say. "If I don't joke, I'll scream."
"Then joke," she says. "But don't twist it into shame."
Her fingers drift upward, brushing the hollow at the base of my throat.
She hesitates there, eyes flicking to mine for permission.
I nod.
Her hand slides higher, cupping the side of my neck, thumb resting just under my jaw. Her palm is warm, her calluses familiar.
"Fia," she says, "I am not with you until you're better. I'm with you. In this. In all of it. Your scars, your cough, your temper, your terrible puns."
"You love my terrible puns," I mutter.
"Unfortunately," she says. "I'm not…waiting for some future version of you that doesn't bleed or hurt or scare me. I'm here already. Choosing you as you are now. And yes, I want more with you. Romantic. Physical. All of it. But that's not a debt I'm collecting. It's…a direction. A wish we walk toward together."
"Slowly," I say.
"Carefully," she says.
"Probably with a healer on standby in another room," I add.
Her mouth twitches.
"Probably," she agrees.
We're both quiet a moment.
The room seems smaller now, the air thicker.
I can feel every place our bodies touch: the heat of her thigh against mine through the blankets, the press of her hip near my hip, the steady weight of her hand at my neck, the faint brush of her hair against my cheek.
"How's your head?" she asks again, but this time I know she isn't asking about the mana.
"Crowded," I say. "But in a…better way."
"Too much?" she asks.
"Not yet," I say. "Ask me again if you start reciting tax codes in bed."
She smiles, slow and tired and real.
"Noted," she says.
She leans closer.
Our noses bump.
I snort softly. "Smooth, Your Highness."
"Hush," she murmurs.
She kisses me.
We've kissed before.
Desperate, battlefield kisses. Quick, stolen ones in shadowed corridors between briefings. Clumsy, half-drunk ones after celebrations when we lived through something we shouldn't have.
This one is none of those.
It's slow.
Careful.
Her lips are warm, soft, pressing against mine with a control that makes my chest ache more than any earlier spasm. She doesn't deepen it, doesn't chase. She just…rests there, a steady, unhurried weight, giving me all the room in the world to pull back.
I don't.
I lean in instead.
My hand finds her wrist, fingers curling around the bone. Her pulse beats there, strong and steady under my thumb.
I open my mouth just enough to breathe, just enough to ask.
She answers with the slightest increase in pressure, a quiet exhale against my lower lip.
It's not chaste.
It's not eager.
It's…full.
A kiss you give someone you've seen cry and bleed and lie unconscious for hours. A kiss weighted with all the things we don't have language for: fear, gratitude, anger, longing, stubbornness.
When we part, my head feels light, but not from lack of air.
She rests her forehead against mine.
"Too much?" she asks, breath warm on my face.
"Not enough," I whisper. Then, quickly: "But also enough. For now. You know what I mean."
She laughs quietly.
"Yes," she says. "I do."
Her thumb rubs small circles at the base of my skull.
For the first time since the system died, I'm grateful for its absence.
If it were still here, this would be a neatly tagged event: Affection +20. Romance Flag: Mature. Future route unlocked: Domestic Tragedy.
Now it's just us.
Two idiots in love, in a world that won't make this easy.
A thought surfaces, unbidden.
"Can I be selfish?" I ask.
She pulls back just enough to see my face.
"You've already bled on my carpets," she says. "You get a free selfish wish."
"If—" I begin, then stop. Try again. "When this war is over. When your coronation is done. When the world isn't on fire for five minutes. If I'm still…here. Breathing. Walking hallways and ruining rugs."
I swallow.
"I want a night with you that's…just ours," I say. "No healers. No guards hovering behind doors. No death flags. Just…you and me in a room that doesn't smell like medicine."
Her eyes soften to something that almost hurts to look at.
"Where?" she asks.
"Anywhere," I say. "Your bed, mine, a cottage in the woods, a room at the top of some ridiculous tower. I don't care. I want to know what it feels like to be with you without the ghost of my own mortality sitting in the corner taking notes."
"That ghost isn't leaving," she says gently. "Not entirely."
"I know," I say. "But maybe we can get it drunk and make it sleep on the floor."
She huffs a laugh.
"All right," she says. "Then here's my selfish wish in return."
She adjusts, lying down fully beside me, tugging the blankets up over us both.
Her fingers twine with mine on the sheet.
"When that night comes," she says, "I want you to be there because you chose to keep walking this knife's edge, not because you felt obligated. I want you to have had chances to turn back, to rest, to say 'this is too much,' and to be there anyway. For you, not for me. Not for the capital."
Her grip tightens.
"And I want to take my time with you," she says softly. "To learn every scar like a map, to go as far as your body allows and no further, to let desire be something we explore, not something that demands proof of anything."
Heat flares under my skin at the way she says it.
Not hungry.
Not demanding.
Reverent.
Mature.
"Deal," I say, voice a little rough.
She brings our joined hands to her lips, presses a kiss to my knuckles.
"Until then," she says, "we have…this."
She settles, one arm under my shoulders, the other draped lightly over my waist. I tuck myself carefully against her, mindful of my ribs, of the way my lungs complain if I curl too tight.
Her breath brushes my hair.
Her heart beats, steady and strong, under my ear.
We don't talk about marriage papers or succession or how many years we might get before my illness cashes in whatever chips it still holds.
We don't need to.
Those conversations will come.
They will be ugly and honest and necessary.
Tonight is for something else.
For choosing, in the quiet aftermath of spilled blood and hard truths, to move closer instead of pulling away.
For a crown princess with callused hands and a tired mouth to hold a sick girl like she's something other than a tragedy waiting to happen.
For that sick girl to let herself be held without apology.
I feel my body start to unwind, inch by inch.
The ache doesn't vanish.
The fear doesn't either.
But they become part of the background, like the creak of the rafters and the distant murmur of the city.
"Seraphine?" I murmur, somewhere between waking and sleep.
"Yes?" she whispers.
"If I start coughing again," I say, "and it gets bad…will you…still do this? Climb into bed. Hold me. Even if it's messy. Even if it scares you."
She doesn't hesitate.
"Especially then," she says.
"Okay," I breathe.
No system records the promise.
No divine auditor stamps it with approval.
It just hangs there, between us, as real and fragile as my next breath.
I drift.
Not into the cold white void of the system's maintenance room.
Into the ordinary, heavy sleep of a human body wrung out by the day.
The last thing I feel is her thumb moving in slow circles over my ribs, tracing the place where my heart hides.
The last thing I hear is her voice, so soft I might be dreaming it.
"I love you," she says. "On good days. On bad ones. On the ones where you bleed on the rugs and the ones where you laugh so hard you wheeze. I love all of it. All of you."
My mouth shapes the words back without sound.
The knife's edge is still there.
The dark is still thick.
But tonight, at least, we lie on it together.
And that, more than any interface prompt or destiny tag, feels like the most mature, most romantic choice I've ever made.