Aurelian didn't speak, not immediately. He watched her like a man bracing himself for an approaching storm, not out of fear, but anticipation. Sibylla's words carried no plea or threat, they held something far more dangerous: conviction. And conviction, had always proven harder to kill than kings.
Sunlight outside cast long shadows into the suite, one stretching like a phantom scar across his face. He said nothing, simply studied her with a hunter's stillness. When her words finally ceased, hanging in the air between them like a last, lingering note, he exhaled. Slow. Controlled.
Then, with the practiced grace of a man who understood theater to his very bones, Aurelian stepped into her space again. He moved close enough for the tension to bloom in the shared breath between them.
"You'd support my candidacy?" he said softly, as if testing the words on his tongue, seeing if they fit.
"Just like that?" A pause stretched between them, then a dry, humorless smile touched his lips.
"Not the outcome I expected from a conversation that started with 'why did you save me?'"
He turned his face slightly, as if sharing a private joke with the air itself, before tilting his head back to regard her fully. That signature smile flickered again, not dangerous this time, but something far stranger: admiring, curious.
"And they say I'm the reckless one."
He stepped around her slowly, orbiting her like a predator circling a star he might be foolish enough to fall into. His voice followed, smooth and deliberate.
"You come here dressed in silk and steel, asking for the truth. I give it to you. You answer with poetry, prophecy, and terms I didn't think you were willing to consider. And now…" He stopped behind her, his breath ghosting near the edge of her shoulder.
"Now you offer me the throne." Aurelian didn't touch her, but the palpable absence of his touch felt louder than any contact.
"You surprise me, Sibylla Abrantes," his tone dipping low, amused and full of smoke.
"You always have. I don't know whether to thank you for understanding or suspect you've finally learned to lie as well as I do." He circled back into view, his gaze sharp and glittering like a blade unsheathed in candlelight.
"But you're wrong," he said with maddening softness.
"This fire isn't mine alone. You lit it too."
He stepped closer again, until he was just shy of brushing against her.
"You want the new Naboo, Sibylla. You just want to build it in daylight." Then, finally, he touched her again. One gloved hand lifted, slow and reverent, brushing a loose strand of her hair behind her ear with maddening gentleness. The touch was feather-light, as if he were handling something sacred or supremely breakable.
"But I…" His voice was a whisper now, the edge of a confession.
"I was born in the dark."
Their eyes locked again, a volatile mix of heat, tension, and something else, something precarious.
"You want to be my temperance," he said.
"My conscience. My hope." A faint, incredulous smile curved his lips.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that makes you?" His thumb ghosted just under her jaw for a moment, reading the pulse there like a sentence he didn't quite believe.
"I've killed for less," he added, his tone too soft to be a joke. Then, barely audible, he murmured,
"And died for even less than that."
But the intensity didn't break. He held her gaze, breath to breath, inch to inch. Then, with the same maddening calm, he stepped back, as if the storm had passed through him and finally gone quiet. The playboy prince, the broken boy, the would-be king, all masks worn at once.
"Very well," he said, straightening his cuffs.
"Let it be written, then."
He turned toward the archway, the waiting crowd, the celebration, and the myth they were both walking into like a mouth of flame.
"But know this," his voice hardened, becoming something older, sharper.
"If you stand beside me, you stand with me. No hesitation. No doubt. No betrayal."
His eyes burned with promise and a stark warning.
"Because the next war doesn't wait for the High Republic to finish its pageantry. It's already here. And if you falter, even once, Sibylla…" Aurelian turned fully, offering a slow, mocking bow that felt too sincere to dismiss and too cruel to trust.
"…they'll bury us together in the same legend." He straightened.
"Are you ready for that, my lady?"
There was no smile now, just truth. And the sound of the kingdom, calling them both.
Dominique Vexx
