Chapter 310: Pragmatic
The formalities, ceremonial exchange, gifts presented and received with appropriate appreciation, genealogies recited for the record, toasts offered to health and prosperity and the enduring friendship between nations went past.
As usual, beneath each courtesy ran the current of calculation, the constant assessment of leverage and liability that defined all interactions between houses of power.
Then, finally, it ended with the excuse of the Princess’s need for air and the Crown Prince’s volunteered escort. The permission granted with the Emperor’s eyes watching nothing and seeing everything.
The garden was older than the palace, a remnant of some pre-imperial estate that had survived the construction of walls and the imposition of order. Its paths winding with the illogic of organic growth rather than the geometry of court design.
Damon led Ivy through an archway of yew that opened suddenly onto a vista of late-blooming roses, their color saturated in the slanted light of an afternoon that had not yet committed to evening.
"It’s good that they’re watching us," Ivy said.
"Worried we’ll get carried away?" Damon teased, making her roll her eyes.
"From the eastern windows. My father’s spymaster has excellent posture. You can see his silhouette against the glass." Damon did not look up. "Also from the south tower, where my aunt keeps her birds. And possibly from that hedge, though that might just be a very suspicious topiary."
Ivy laughed. "You live in a surveillance state, Damon. I had forgotten how exhausting that is."
"Thankfully, you live in a utopia. Kidnap me," he said.
"Not really. Different shapes. Same substance." She paused beside a stone bench, her fingers trailing through the petals of a rose that was the particular red of arterial blood. "Your Saintess. The prophecy. You believe it?"
Damon stopped walking. "My father bought it..." He shrugged. "Ruby Vaiva has been wrong before. Arkai Dawnoro was supposed to—" He stopped.
"Convenient," Ivy observed, "how prophecy accommodates itself to survival."
"Or inconvenient. Depending on your investment in the outcome." He turned to face her fully, abandoning the pretense of a stroll. "You came here with more than business, Ivy. The south and north are moving, yes. But you could have sent Qinryc with dispatches. You came yourself. Why?"
The rose released her finger, reluctantly, a thorn having caught at her skin without drawing blood. She examined the mark, a pale indentation against her knuckle.
"Because Magnus asked me to." She looked up, her eyes meeting his violet ones. "I think he wants us to talk."
Damon hummed. "That’s scary."
"Yeah?"
"Is he jealous? Insecure?"
"Not insecure. Just jealous," Ivy confirmed. "Perhaps he wanted us to meet and have some closure, you know?"
"You’re going to tell him about everything we’re going to talk about?"
"Yup," Ivy nodded.
"Mm," Damon mirrored her nod.
"Cute, right?"
"Adorable indeed."
Ivy slapped his arm hard.
"Ouch—" Damon laughed, immediately rubbing his arm. "Seriously, did I ever have a chance?"
"Never."
"Nooooooooooooooooooo!"
Ivy giggled, the sound carrying that particular Cassian lilt that had always made him feel simultaneously mocked and included.
"With my sister, though, you had a tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny chance," she said.
"WHAT? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa—"
The two laughed, their hands finding each other again, entangling. The yew archway framed them, the roses witnessed.
"Seriously, though, why did I never have a chance? Please doth be real with me, Princess," Damon asked.
"Because you don’t consider love," Ivy shrugged.
Damon subtly froze.
Love?
"Seriously, it’s love?" Damon suddenly turned serious. His eyes found Ivy’s and his pupils contracted, the violet darkening to something almost black in the slanted afternoon light. "It’s love?"
Ivy met his eyes straight. No deflection. Then she gently nodded. "I’m not like my sister, Damon. I’m actually quite romantic."
Damon felt something being wrenched from his chest. Something he didn’t know he had, some organ he had long ago dismissed as vestigial, as decorative and useless as he aspired to be.
This... this magnificent woman who had refused his empire because it would compromise her ideals, was actually doing it all for love?
"I gave up my throne," Ivy said, "despite my sister begging me to be queen instead... because I found love."
Ah.
First, it was Angela. Now, it’s Ivy?
Why was everyone he placed high regard in fell for the same trap—
"Is that why you came here?" Damon asked. "Because you know I will not fall in love with you?"
"Exactly," Ivy nodded. "And I clocked that the first time we talked."
"You know I don’t consider love the moment we spoke?" Damon smiled, but it was a bit... hollow.
"And that’s why I immediately decided you will be a good friend," she answered.
It was true that his motivation years ago when they tried to pursue each other, including Ivy’s sister, was purely political. There were truly no feelings involved.
Even now, he only wanted marriage with her to liberate him from the bullshit that was the Iondora Imperial Family.
His feelings for her were strictly admiration, appreciation, knowing that marrying her would solve so many problems because of her talent, her power, and how easy it was for him to bet on her.
That was why he was surprised that she was actually—
"Love," he nodded. "Then, I understand why you’d only wanted to be good friends."
To corrupt and be corrupted. She didn’t want that. She wanted... love.
She was never a fire.
’Or she would’ve, if she was mine. And she wanted to be anything but mine.’
Ivy smiled and rubbed his arm. The last woman he thought would want love over a strict political career... was rubbing his arm.
Angela was right.
He was stupi—
The thought severed itself, amputated by sound.
Something wrong.
Running footsteps on gravel. Multiple. Heavy boots and lighter ones, the rhythm of guards in panic and servants in terror.
Shouting from the palace, distant but approaching, the pitch rising like water brought to boil. Then a scream, cut short.
Damon turned, his body moving before his mind had finished processing, the old training reasserting itself. He grasped Ivy’s hand, pulling her close to him, behind his back.
Meanwhile, her face shifted, the softness of moments before evaporating into alert.
"Damon—"
A younger aide, pale, his eyes showing too much white stumbled through the yew archway, fell to his knees on the gravel path, and looked up at Damon.
"My Prince—" The boy’s voice cracked. "The Emperor. His chambers. They found him—"
Damon immediately moved. Ivy was beside him, keeping pace, her hand on his elbow, knowing that princes who ran became targets, that the first moments of catastrophe defined everything that followed.
"Say it," Damon commanded, not slowing, not looking at the boy who scrambled to follow.
"Assassinated, my Prince. In his chambers. The Saintess’s prophecy—" The boy choked, swallowed, "—it came true. It came true! The guards have sealed the palace, and they are looking for you, my Prince, they are saying you must be secured, you must be—"
Damon stopped.
He turned to Ivy and grasped her hand tight. "Stay with me," he said. "Stay with me close."
"Don’t you get out of my sight, Ivy."