Page 219 of The Crown's Awakening
"And instead," I say, my voice even, "you disappeared."
"I was here," he says.
"You were not with me."
The distinction holds between us. He does not argue it.
"I thought you were safe," he says.
"I was," I reply. "That was not the problem."
The silence that follows is heavier than the ones before it, but clearer somehow, the shape of everything finally visible now that the reasons have been said out loud.
"I did not understand what it would feel like from your side," he says.
"No," I answer. "You did not."
I look at him for a long moment, at the man who had held a kingdom together and trapped men out of a mountain pass and burned a court to ash, and had still not known how to simply stay in a room with me and let me carry some of it with him.
"I am not asking you to choose between me and the kingdom," I say. "I am asking you to stop deciding what I can hold."
He says nothing for a moment.
Then, "I hear you."
NotI understandorIwill try. Just that. Simple and direct and without the polish of something rehearsed.
"I will not pretend to be a victim of circumstance," he says after a moment, his voice lower now, stripped of the force he carried into the room. "But the truth is I have no idea what I am doing."
I hold his eyes.
"I never saw this done well," he continues. "There was no model for it." His hand shifts slightly at his side, as though he is resisting the instinct to reach for something he cannot quite name. "That is not an excuse. I know that."
I say nothing.
"I want to do it right," he adds, quieter now. "All of it. You. Them. This." His breath catches slightly before he continues. "And I do not know how to do that without getting parts of it wrong."
The honesty of it sits between us, unguarded in a way I have not seen from him before.
"And?" I ask.
He looks at me then, fully, whatever he had been holding finally giving way to something more exposed.
"I want you to love me anyway," he says, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. "I am trying. And I know I am doing parts of it badly."
My chest tightens but I do not move.
"I am asking you to stand in it with me," he continues. His eyes do not leave mine. "Help me fix it."
The room holds.
I look at him for a long moment, at everything he has just put down in front of me, raw in the way that only comes from someone who has run out of other options.
I have loved him through worse than this. I step forward and take his face in my hands, and I feel him go completely still beneath the touch, as though the contact itself is something he had stopped allowing himself to expect.
"Then we fix it," I say quietly. "Together. But you have to let me in, Colsar. All the way in. Not the parts you think I can handle. All of it."
He pulls me into him and holds on, and I let him, my arms coming around him, and we stay there in the quiet of the map room while the palace moves on without us, and for the first time in a very long time it feels like we are standing in exactly the same place.
