It catches her completely off guard, her face frozen in that contorted crooked twist of indecision and dread.

And the world, living in this land, speaks the truth. Daughter of the farmhands, child of the fire and demons of our past:

You don't belong here.

Sophia blanks on any sort of answer, simply tossing this question back to Zai. "W-what I'm here for?"

"Things happen for a reason. They always do." Zai Tianci speaks to her like the lifeless pull of an ocean tide. "What do you want from my nation, what are you here to do to us, Sophia Elise?"

This Fourth Princess' mouth is left slightly open, utterly blindsided to this question, to this inquisition into her; and she just stares back at him.

Because Sophia has no answer to this, no sharp lie, no poignant truth to give him.

Nothing.

The Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium is here for nothing.

Torn from her homeland in her coming of age, brought to this foreign place for the sake of some nebulous alliance barely explained to her. Sophia Elise came to Tianci aboard the demons of the ancient ones, her hand of marriage given to this stranger of a dying nation. She once had the power of the Imperium (one in five), once had a continent at the touch of her delicate fingers, once had everything she ever could ask for.

And now she was living in this land as hideaways, her life no longer hers.

From everything, nothing.

And now, from nothing she would have everything once more.

That's why he's asking you this. Sophia makes the connection. He wants to know what you really are. What monster you can be in Landfall. When you have the Dominion in your palm, when you have an entire nation through that ring on your left hand, will you caress it as he has? Or shall you crush it like rotten fruit.

Sophia opens her mouth to answer him, to somehow improvise some incredible fabrication, some noble cause of charity from a generous empress; or even some twisted half-truth from imperial foreign policy—leveraging that overwhelming pressure from the power of her name that even Zai couldn't stop.

But before she can even begin to bury herself in these lies he kneels down, sits down, into this floor bed. He comes down to her, this Crown Prince with this monster in his very home, and he stares into her eyes and takes those hands into his.

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He feels her warmth, the gentle touch of her skin, tracing her long fingers across his palm.

And he doesn't even blink as he speaks from his very soul. "Tell me the truth, Sophia. Please."

This is how Crown Prince Zai Tianci plays his politics.

Not on the battlefields, not with the silver coins, never in the ballroom floors or the charged emotions of court.

Here.

Alone.

In the moments where the world seems so far away—just two souls separated by this vast void; an ocean tossing, drowning them all in its endless abyss.

In that emptiness, he reaches out to her.

At this moment Zai Tianci plays the game.

Those dark brown eyes reach into this politically married wife, and like a delicate surgeon he takes the truth from its locus of embarrassment, shame, and internalized neuroticism.

I don't want to tell him this. Give me something to tell him, some lie to spare me from this. Sophia begs her mind, trying to save herself. But nothing comes, a committee suddenly taking its leave of absence.

Against this oceanic soul, she can do nothing but feel the cold water enter her lungs, suffocate her in its tides.

Sophia Elise the Eighth, the Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium, Daughter of Empress Annia, Duchess of the Reichlands, Supreme Commandant of the Fourth Legion—drowns.

No more implications, no more side-stepped complaints or hours hiding within the recesses of the Imperial Palace. This will be free of assumptions, free of any misinterpretation—where even the most butchered of words could come to some semblance of prose.

So Sophia takes a very, very long breath, feels the soft touch of Zai Tianci's hand upon her palm, panics a lot, takes another breath in her tense chest, and stares into his eyes for a few seconds which makes her brain overload a bit, so she takes another breath because…

HOLY GODDESS, GET IT TOGETHER.

And for the first time she says these words to another human being, laid bare and naked without any coating of diplomacy.

"I uh… I… I don't want much… Zai. I'm actually… I'm actually kinda simple."

She needs to actually breathe a few times, splitting up her words into manageable chunks of confession.

"I-I… I really like donuts. So I wanna eat them."

Ok, good we're going for the most obvious addictions first. Not to weird him out or anything, because he's already seen us eat those delicious lil' pastries. Yes, this is a good start.

"A-and I really don't like doing a lot. I… I really like… I really l-like lying in b-bed a lot. N-not doing any-anything. Really… l-like n-not working…"

Zai keeps eye contact, staring at her, reading her for those lies, those small deceptions in that stare. Because every lie is told with boldness, told in those cold unflinching stares and long smiles, diving daggers into their targets.

But he sees nothing, because this truth is so painful that Sophia has to break eye contact to say it. "I-I also really like reading… I really like reading s-smut… like the r-really b-bad kind. B-but not b…b-bad… not th-that kind of bad. It's got good r-romance… m-m-most of the time. Actually… i-it's… bad. It's… it's really bad. Yeah…"

Zai Tianci keeps his gentle, longing gaze at her, holding air in his diaphragm as he takes this as it comes.

And the Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium keeps digging, going all in for this quite well spoken summary. "I-I want to lie in bed, eat as many donuts as I want to, and read romance novels all day."

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