JASPER 𓆨

Being queen comes with many things, all encompassing what she ought to be and do before she takes a backseat to mothering and all the delightful, compounding rules it comes baring. Every day you wake up beside her, you wonder just how the senate saw the fire in her eyes and thought they could extinguish it with words.

And every day, she burns brighter at your company across the room. Raverne acts as a physical anchor; cold hands against her knee as the two of them loiter conspiratorially in a shrouded corner of the ballroom. Her partners are just so talented, she can't imagine the world where she herself had taken to the art of negotiation, but that doesn't mean she has to like your engagement in it.

If your princess had her way, the three of you would shack up in a humble castle (yk.. In comparison to the capital, nothing to sneeze at) and spend forever playing in endless forest. She feels akin to a bird, at this point—she is not-quite-queen, and everyone this half of wonderland believes they can send orders above her head and they will be filled without her meddling to delay,,

She thinks of you, two of her greatest treasures, their maturity and the forced responsibility it guarantees as soft shapes are drawn by flexed claws against her thigh, and her broiling turns to a simmer.

You will have more time with them if you leave them to their business, urges inner Lilia, the ever-amicable—which does not rob her of taking eyefuls from across the room, and certainly not of fantasizing about all the parked carriages in reach exploding into flames, leaving your conversation partners to walk home. Just be patient, he urges, and her first instinct is to calm—