perhaps this is another fairytale, she thinks. edwina has always believed that happiness is something one may choose, if one is earnest enough about it. that joy, like love, can be gathered quickly and carried away if one only dares. it is a belief she learned young, raised on lessons of grace and sacrifice, on the certainty that goodness is rewarded and that endings, if waited for patiently, will arrive neatly tied. so when sophie speaks (quietly, without drama, without accusation) the words do not strike edwina like a rebuke, but like a door closing somewhere she had not realized was open. a whispered some of us cannot by @ladiesilver catches her completely off guard.
edwina stills. she does not interrupt. she has learned, in these last years, the value of letting words finish their work before trying to soften them. sophie’s voice holds no bitterness, only truth — worn thin, practiced, the kind that has been carried too long to be spoken loudly. and suddenly edwina sees it: the difference between wishing and leaving, between dreaming of escape and surviving where one stands. she has been allowed to believe in flight because the world has always offered her a landing. how long has it been since she assumed that love was a matter of courage alone? how long since she believed that happiness could simply be taken, if one reached for it bravely enough? she thinks of benedict, kind, earnest, burning with the conviction that love is reason enough, and she thinks of sophie, who knows better than to mistake longing for safety.
edwina’s heart tightens, not with judgment, but with recognition. she has been learning this lesson herself, slowly, gently, in the careful way prince friedrich teaches her everything. that love is not proven by grand gestures, but by patience. that choosing is a privilege, never a guarantee. that some lives are bound by rules written long before affection ever enters the room. she looks at sophie then, truly, and there is no condescension in her gaze, only a quiet humility, newly earned. ❝ i forget, sometimes, ❞ edwina admits softly, the words tentative but sincere in her sadness. ❝ that not all doors are held open simply because someone wishes to pass through them. ❞ she does not suggest hope as remedy. she has learned the cost of offering that too easily. instead, she offers something steadier. ❝ i think… ❞ she continues, voice gentler now, stripped of its earlier certainty, ❝ i think it is braver to stay when leaving would destroy you. ❞
