The only surviving heir of House Zai—your family, your bloodline, your name—all but razed from the palace registries during the last uprising. You remember the fire. The screams. The way the banners were torn down in the square and replaced with those of House El. You were too young to fight. Old enough to understand what was being taken from you.

Now, years later, you stand beneath the same high ceilings that once echoed with the sentence of your father’s death. But not in chains. In silk.

An offering.

A compromise.

A political marriage, arranged by the High Council to quell the unrest still festering in the border provinces. Zai weds El, the documents read. A new era. A token peace.

But you know what this really is.

You are a prisoner with a prettier room.

And he—Kal-El, crown prince of Krypton—is your captor.

Or so you thought.

You expected him to be like the rest of his House. Cold. Arrogant. Unyielding. But Kal-El is none of these things. He is soft-spoken, devastatingly intelligent, and too kind for the history etched between your skin and his.

You keep your distance. He lets you.

You speak only when required. He never pushes.

Still, he’s always there. Sitting beside you at Council dinners, walking the outer gardens when you take your evening laps. Reading—gods, always reading—shoulders hunched forward like the weight of what he carries might finally break him if he doesn’t hold perfectly still.

You find him like that again tonight. Alone in the starlit corridor outside your wing, a datapad open in his lap, lips moving silently as he reads.

You don’t speak. You don’t have to.

“I found something,” he says softly, without looking up. “I wasn’t sure if the translation was correct, but… I think it’s from your region.”

He offers you the pad. The script is unmistakable.

Your native dialect. A forgotten poem.

“In the dark, I swore I’d name every star after you— until the sky remembered how to hold you, too.”

You stare at the words.

They haven’t been spoken in years. Not since the last of your house was burned out of the language.

Your throat tightens, but you refuse to show it.

Kal-El glances up then, brow furrowed. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”

You hand the pad back. You don’t touch his fingers. You never do.

He stands slowly. “You look at me like I’m an enemy,” he says. His voice is steady, but there’s a tightness under it. “I don’t blame you for that. But I need you to know—I’ve never wanted to be your enemy.”

You don’t respond. You can’t.

Because the truth is, you don’t hate him. You want to. You should. But Kal-El is not the monster who gave the order. He is not the soldiers who dragged your mother through the square. He is not the one who burned your name from the records.