Private I give you my love before preaching or law;

What a sweet change, to love like this: not in a way that burns and scars, or leaves brands across her chest, but like children, who owe nothing more to each other but the whole of their hearts and a few brilliant smiles. Like the brother Marisol was never brave enough to ask for. When Asterion reaches out to touch her, she does not flinch. His touch has never been anything but soft (sometimes she wonders how he ever gets anything done) and now they need it more than ever. Terrastella is falling apart, all of Novus is falling apart - the both of them are falling apart, too, and for the moment it feels like there is nothing to be done but this.

To breathe, and to touch, and to hold back her smile when he says keep each other young like Marisol wasn’t born to worry. Her eyes flicker to the cadet that passes in the hallway behind him. He dips his head as if in reference, and though he cannot possibly know its newly acquired double meaning, something in her stomach shifts at the slight act of deference—part pride, part fear. Her lips press into a dark line. Though she tries, there is a part of her (a painfully large part) that has never quite gotten over the idea that she might be a loser, and imposter, unworthy of her title.

It stalks her at night. It hides in dark corners. When she thinks unbidden of any line of poetry, it bares its terrible teeth. She cannot imagine that this title will do anything to sate it, hungry thing that it is; in fact, she can already sense that it will laugh at the word regent.

But above all things (above her fear, above her panic, above her broken hearts) Marisol is dutiful, and what her country asks of her she must do.

“No more grief tonight,” she says suddenly, and rises to her feet. “Nor talk of business. Tomorrow we can strategize; tonight let’s be young, then, as you asked.” Her heart races (refreshingly not in fear). The wind comes whistling through. When Marisol smiles it is bright, but not sharp; there is warmth in her eyes, and she shakes out her short, ruffled hair as she pushes past him and through the door. She beckons with one curled wing and a grin. The world is waiting, and they are living yet—