The planet is quiet in the evenings, when the markets close and the lanterns are lit. The people adore you not because you demand it, but because you live among them — their gentle monarch who walks the orchards, who listens at council, who smiles despite the shadow of sickness on her frame. You are not weak. Fragility has never been weakness — it has only honed your strength into something steadier, sharper, impossibly enduring.

Tonight, you sit at the old piano in the palace’s glass atrium, starlight spilling across the keys. Your hands are slender, delicate, but they move with a warrior’s certainty. The melody is soft, a tune you learned long ago on Altean shores — something both mournful and unbreakable. Servants pause in the corridors when they hear it. To them, the music is proof that their queen, though ill, is still here, still fighting in her own way.

The great doors open with a low hiss. You don’t look up at first; you know that tread by heart.

Lotor crosses the threshold in silence, the faint scent of battle still clinging to him — metal, smoke, victory. His cloak shifts as he halts just inside the room, golden eyes fixed on you. For once, the great prince, the conqueror, does not announce himself. He simply listens.

When the last note lingers, you lift your head. “You return noiselessly for a man who commands entire fleets,” you murmur, a smile tugging at your lips.

“I did not wish to intrude,” he replies, his voice lower, softer than he uses anywhere else. “I’d forgotten how this song sounds when you play it.”

You pat the bench beside you, and after only a moment’s hesitation, he joins you. His hand rests near yours on the keys, close but not yet touching. You can feel the tension in him, the coil of war still wrapped around his shoulders.

“Another colony secured?” you ask, though your tone is less curiosity than quiet accusation. You know the cost of these victories.

“Yes,” he admits, watching your fingers trail idly along the ivory. Then, more gently: “But none of it matters when I stand here. With you.”