The envelope was thick, creamy parchment, sealed with the swirling, interconnected crests of Lysterin and Aquilla. It was addressed to Their Royal Highnesses, Prince Hadrian and Princess Seraphina Valentoire, and delivered by a solemn-faced page to their shared breakfast table.
Seraphina broke the seal with a butter knife. Inside was an invitation, but not to a state function.
Their Majesties, King Maris of Aquilla and Queen Mother Liora of Lysterin, request the pleasure of your company for a Private Family Weekend at the Lodge at Silverwood Lake. Three days hence. No retinue. No state business. Family only.
They read it in silence. A 'private family weekend' was unprecedented. The Lodge at Silverwood was a rustic, remote property used for hunting, not diplomacy.
"This is my father's doing," Seraphina said, setting the card down. "The Queen Mother would never suggest something so… informal."
"It's an inspection,"Hadrian surmised, stirring his tea. "The coastal progress was for the ministers. The logs were for Berrick. This is for the patriarch. He's heard the rumors, seen the commission battles, and now he wants to see the 'reconciliation' up close, without the court's makeup."
She looked apprehensive. "Three days. Trapped in a wooden lodge. With my father's booming and your mother's silent scrutiny."
"And the children,"he added. "Which is the point, I think. To see us as a unit. Or not."
The prospect was daunting. Their hard-won, fragile dynamic had been built in the extremes of sea and crisis, in the structured conflict of the commission. It existed in stolen moments in studios and on balconies. It had not been tested in the relentless, casual intimacy of a family holiday, under the direct gaze of the two people whose approval had once been the bedrock of their public performance.
"We could decline," she said, without conviction.
"We can't,"he replied. "It's a command disguised as an invitation. And…" he met her eyes, "…maybe it's time. To be a family. Not perform one. To see if it holds together without an audience or an enemy."
The challenge hung between them, more intimate than any they'd faced. The romantic void had been a space of two. The family weekend would be a space of generations, of expectations, of legacy. It was the final, and perhaps most terrifying, testing ground for whatever they had rebuilt.
Seraphina took a deep breath, then nodded, a soldier accepting a mission. "All right. Then we go. We argue about mud in front of my father. We let the children be loud. We… we try."
Hadrian reached across the table and covered her hand with his. "We don't have to try to be perfect. We just have to be… us. Whatever that is now."
She turned her hand over to grip his.Her palm was cool, her grip firm. "I'm not sure I know who that is yet."
"Neither do I,"he admitted. "But we're about to find out."
The invitation lay between them, a silent summons to the most important audience of all: themselves, as they truly were, reflected in the eyes of their family. The performance was well and truly over. The curtain was rising on the messy, unscripted, real thing.