Weeks bled into one another, marked by a silence I crafted with meticulous care.
I ignored Xane—in hallways, at state functions, with a coldness that felt both like armor and a wound. I had no clear reason, only a roiling storm of emotions: anger that he no longer sought me out for their petty reconciliations, a bitter suspicion that his rivalry for the throne had finally eclipsed any fraternal feeling.
Fine, I resolved, my heart hardening into a diamond of pure ambition. If he chooses distance, I will become untouchable. I will bury myself in knowledge and power until I rival him, surpass him.
When the summons came for a special lesson in his study, I did not flinch. Knowledge was my objective. I would not be the one to bring personal triviality into a room of learning. Emperors did not. Empresses did not. I would not.
---
He was already there, a study in focused solitude, when I entered. The air smelled of old parchment, ink, and the faint, clean scent that was uniquely his. He gestured silently to the chair beside him—a familiar offering from a time before the chill. I ignored it, taking the seat directly opposite, turning the wide, polished desk into a battlefield.
The silence stretched, taut and waiting. The Grand Tutor was late. I fixed my gaze on my notes, the dry court rules blurring before my eyes.
"Cia."His voice was a soft fracture in the quiet, so uncharacteristically gentle it felt like a trap. "Have I wronged you?"
I did not look up. I focused on a line of text until the letters swam.
Then, his hand closed over mine on the desk. Not a grab, but a clench of sudden, desperate contact. I yanked my hand back as if scalded, my head snapping up.
And I saw it. A crack in the imperial façade. His expression was not the controlled mask of the Crown Prince, but one of raw, unguarded shock—tinged with something that looked like genuine, panicked guilt. The sight sent a shocking, illicit thrill through me.
I liked it.
A slow, deliberate smirk curved my lips. "You look at me as if I am the villain here, Brother," I said, tilting my head. "Do you truly not know your transgression?"
He rose from his chair so abruptly it scraped against the floor. "Then tell me," he urged, his voice low, intense. "What would you have me do? Name it. Anything for your forgiveness."
The power in that moment was intoxicating, a heady wine. My mind, sharp and cruel with hurt, whispered the most outrageous demand. I gave it voice, my smile widening as I closed my eyes, savoring the coming refusal.
"Beg me. On your knees. Would you do that? Would you lick my feet if I wished it?" I waited for the scoff, the cold reminder of my place.
"Please. Forgive me, Cia."
My eyes flew open.
Horror, cold and stunning, lanced through me. He was already there. On his knees beside my chair, his proud head bowed, his brow almost touching the floor. A prince in supplication.
"Can you forgive me this time?" His voice was muffled, desperate. "I swear, I will never err again."
Before I could even process the scene, he moved—his hands going to my slipper.
"Are you out of your mind?!" I cried, my hand shooting down to stop him.
It was too late. The warm, wet touch of his tongue grazed the arch of my foot.
A violent shudder wracked me. I bent down, my hands flying to cup his face, forcing his gaze up to mine.
"Xane!" My voice trembled, all venom gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated alarm. "What... are you doing? You... Are you alright?"
He looked shattered.
"I am sorry… please, don't hate me." His eyes, full of a torment I had never imagined, dropped from my concerned stare. "I couldn't bear it."
This was not the brother I knew. This was someone else—a creature of terrifying vulnerability and stubborn, abject need. More child than me in this moment.
A strange, aching tenderness smothered my anger. I let out a shuddering sigh and pulled him into an embrace, his head coming to rest against my neck. His arms encircled me, gentle yet clinging.
"You stupid, stupid boy," I whispered, patting his back. "I never meant for you to actually do it. What were you thinking?"
He only pulled back slightly, his gaze searching mine with an unsettling intensity.
"Do you... forgive me, Cia?"
A disbelieving chuckle escaped me. He was pitiable. Frighteningly so. If the court saw this, they would devour him.
"Yes," I said, softening. I patted his head as if soothing a wild creature. "I forgive you. You're… strangely cute like this."
The Grand Tutor chose that moment to bustle in, clapping his hands.
"Excellent! I see my two most troublesome students have reconciled. Good. Now, from today, you learn together. Politics. Strategy. The great game. Prepare yourselves."
We took our seats, the strange electricity of the previous moment humming beneath the surface.
From that day, the axis of my world tilted, subtly but irrevocably. The Grand Tutor's lessons provided the skeleton of knowledge, but it was Xane who clothed it in flesh and blood, in nerve and sinew. He did not merely teach; he initiated.
When the labyrinthine logic of royal succession laws tangled my thoughts, it was his voice, low and patient, that guided me through. He wouldn't just give me the answer.
He would lay out the precedents like playing cards—this duke who schemed, that treaty which backfired—showing me the advantage with one hand and the bloody disadvantage with the other. "Power is a double-edged blade, Cia," he would say, his finger tapping a century-old edict.
"To wield it, you must know how it can cut you."
My education ceased to be a series of lessons and became a private language spoken between us.
In the training yard, his corrections were not shouts but murmurs against my hair as he adjusted my grip on a sword, his own body a firm, unyielding wall at my back. "Pivot here," he'd say, his hand on my waist, a touch so clinical it burned. "Your enemy will not telegraph his strike. Neither should you."
Slowly, insidiously, a pattern etched itself into my life.
A difficult text? I took it to Xane's study. A frustrating dead-end in my strategy? I found him in the library. He was no longer just my brother, nor merely my rival for the throne. He became my archive, my compass, my sharpest critic, and my most clandestine ally.
By the time I turned thirteen, the transformation was complete. My intellect, my political acumen, the very steel in my spine—it was all forged in the crucible of his attention. He had dismantled every barrier I'd tried to build with a relentless, meticulous care, only to rebuild me himself, piece by piece, into a creature capable of standing at his side.
He helped me stand with my chin up, my gaze steady. But the unspoken truth, the dark, symbiotic root of it all, was this: I was learning to stand only because he was the one showing me how. My strength was becoming a reflection of his will. My knowledge, a map he had drawn.
The throne we were both destined to want felt less like a prize to be won and more like a sacred, cursed space that existed only in the tension between us.
I was his creation. And the most terrifying part was the creeping, undeniable realization that I had never felt more powerful, nor more completely owned.