Sophia Elise covers her mouth with her hands, suppressing whatever gasp that was about to escape from her diaphragm. Eyes wide, stunned to her core at this, at the perhaps hundred and more pages of handwriting that stretched on and on into the rest of these unread pages.

Don't read this. Some small angelic form perches on her left shoulder, its soft and kind voice taken from some distant star above. You know who this journal belongs to. Would she have wanted you, this daughter of the Imperium, the nation who had forced her son's betrothal to a stranger, to read her words? Would she have wanted an outsider to know so much about herself… and him?

It's completely right in that implication.

These words were not spoken aloud, never meant to be given to any living soul. Stashed away here decades prior, left to be forgotten until someday when she perhaps could come and retrieve them.

But she never came back.

She never could.

Sophia calmly shuts her eyes, taking a long breath to steady herself. This Princess is the paragon of morality, a creature of the Silver Throne balancing personal desire with the cold necessities of governance. Good sense and privacy was her perfect curated personality, and prying into the affairs of some stranger was completely beneath her.

But you want to know her. Says the second voice upon her right, scheming and conniving in its harsh accusation. You know about his father, about the murderer and killer; Lord of the Dominion. But do you know her? That woman whose name couldn't be dug out even by the Silver Hand from the depths of Dominion censorship, whose ancient lineage traced through the hills of Sanji, snaking rivers of Hwangju?

Don't you want to know what she was like?

What would you give to sit across from her over tea and donuts, to hear her sing lullabies older than the very world you stand upon?

Because you have a chance to know her better than anyone else, you have her life in your very hands.

Sophia Elise the Eighth bites her lip, grounding herself in this mess of desire and understanding. No, I can't. She softly declares to herself, running her fingers across the soft pages. This was never meant to be. It's an accident, I can't just dig old ghosts from the grave. It's not right, for her memory, or for Zai's sake.

The world is quiet at this moral answer, with her Consciousness Committee giving its own subtle, well thought, and understanding tone:

FUCKING READ IT GIRL.

Sophia practically slams her head against the pages, almost giving herself a concussion. "IMMA READ IT!!!"

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These pages crinkle as she touches them, each filled with nearly perfect geometric carvings of Tiancin. It's literally art, like a painter capturing some vast landscape. And Sophia just reads as these delicate lines all come together, from letters to words to sentences to her.

I wonder what kind of world I will bring you into. Your father speaks of fire, of war to come. And the ministers bow to him like wind to a storm, speaking at his beck and call.

But I dream of you barefoot in these gardens, singing your first words, chasing the sparrows and squirrels. I want you to know songs from the lands, the stories told by candlelight: the journeys across the stars by our gods and ancestors. I want you to be human first, before they make you a symbol.

So I pray: to let you have that.

I hope they let you stay small here, for just a little while longer.

This was an ocean deeper than the Adranic.

A vast abyss, a sea of stars that Sophia was watching from below in its most intimate depths. From those distant supernovae of maternal worries, to those constellations of tales she would tell this developing child; each line seemed to drag its reader further into this drowning depth.

And a Fourth Princess was lost in it, choking upon these poems of motherhood, of a love unbelievably unconditional; drowning against the words and pages and…

I hope you get to fall in love.

It's a letter embedded deeply in the pages, its recipient unsigned yet still aimed directly at this ring upon Sophia's left hand.

I wish you to love someone. Not arranged like a treaty, but someone who makes your heart ache.

I do not know who they will be. Perhaps they'll come to you in poems. In long walks. In quiet trust.

Or maybe you will never be allowed to have them. And that thought grieves me.

Something breathes, a memory taking a pained exhale as she rubs her bulging abdomen.

I wish you an ocean, my love. So vast, so full of unspoken currents. And if you cannot say what's in your heart, then I pray for one to read your tides.

And if love comes, may it be yours. Freely. Fiercely. Without permission.

That is all I'll ever want for you.

To grow, and still be able to love despite this burden that will drown you.

I want you to have everything I wanted.

I will do everything to make it so, my child.

Sophia Elise feels those tears fall from her eyes, onto this floor bed and into this world she was now a part of.

Why am I crying? This girl asks herself, wiping away those droplets of liquid on her cheek.

And those amalgamated souls stuffed in the ring on her left ring finger, brought together in those clean-room foundry-labs, plant the thought into her head like a parasite. Because you, demon of silver, stole that from him.

The Imperium did this, the Dominion did this, Sophia Elise did this—committed this most horrendous act: to forever condemn this Crown Prince to this forced bond, to tear those wishes from his very hands.

Zai Tianci shall never love beyond this treaty.

Never to see her in the poems, in those long walks, and never in those quiet moments of trustful silence—forced to be with her.

"I'm sorry." The Princess whispers to this universe, to her in these words upon faded paper. "I'm sorry I hurt him like this."

Something quietly raps against the half open window.

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