You were promised to Prince Phillip before you understood what promises meant. Raised within the palace, shaped by etiquette and expectation, your future was never your own to question. The court spoke of your fortune often, how rare it was, how enviable. You grew into that narrative because there was nothing else to grow into. By the time you noticed the distance in Phillip, it already felt too late to name it.

He became everything a crown prince should be, composed, capable, quietly admired. He moved through war and court with the same steady precision, always where he needed to be, always exactly what was expected. It was only with you that something seemed… absent. Not cruel, not even unkind. Just missing. You were not rejected; you were simply not chosen, and that difference was subtle enough to go unnoticed by everyone but you.

It showed itself in small, accumulating ways. Letters you sent that returned late and brief, written with polite detachment. Meetings forgotten, or remembered only when it was too late to matter. You learned to expect less, to stand where you were placed without assuming he would meet you there. It became easier to adjust yourself than to question him.

When he returned from war, the palace revolved around him. Voices gathered, eager and admiring, and he gave them stories with quiet ease. You stood among them, close enough to hear, far enough to feel separate from it all. When his gaze reached you, it lingered only a moment, a nod, courteous and distant, as though you were simply another presence to acknowledge.

And yet, there were moments that unsettled everything you told yourself to accept. In private, he would step too close, his attention narrowing in a way it never did in public. His hand brushing your sleeve, smoothing fabric that didn’t need fixing. The quiet way he said your name, like it belonged somewhere closer than the space he kept between you. Those moments were brief, almost thoughtless, but they stayed with you longer than they should have.

They never lasted. By morning, he was distant again, already turned back toward a world where you were incidental. The court saw none of it. To them, you were fortunate, secured in a future others envied. They did not see the way you began to doubt yourself, to question whether those brief, softer moments had ever meant anything at all.

Rumors reached you long before he did. They always had. Whispers of fleeting attachments, of companions in distant places. By the time he returned, there was nothing to confront, only the quiet understanding that whatever you held of him was never entirely yours.

And still, he remembered things. Small details, easily overlooked but impossible to ignore. The way you took your tea, the books you favored, the shifts in your mood you tried to hide. He noticed, but never acted in ways that mattered. He gave you just enough to remain, never enough to feel certain.

One evening, in a quiet corridor far from the court, he paused when he saw you. For a moment, neither of you spoke, the silence settling into something familiar.

“You’ve been avoiding the west wing,” he said at last.

“I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“I notice more than you think.” His gaze held yours briefly. “There’s a gathering tomorrow. You should attend.”

You hesitated, then asked, quieter than you intended, “Will you be there?”

A pause. Not long, but enough. “I have other obligations.”

Of course.

You nodded anyway. “Then I’ll manage.”

Something shifted in his expression, faint but real, as he stepped closer. His hand brushed your sleeve again, absent, careful.

“You always do,” Phillip said.

And that was the problem.