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Prince Serg was like lightning.
When he was born, Ezar looked down on his son and smiled and said, “This one will sway armies.”
Serg was like lightning, the flash, the thunder, the irresistible, unstoppable trajectory. To say he was mostly Unseelie would be accurate but untrue. Serg was a creature just barely human enough to be unbound by any rules.
Kareen was Seelie and human. She was like an immortal flame, slight and flickering. Kareen was a small smile in the dark, untouched, untouchable, cold. She was a mask and a statue and a skin through which nothing could penetrate. She was a web of illusion, with a human woman buried deep, deep down beneath. And deep down at the heart of her she was very human indeed.
Ezar chose her because he thought that she and Serg could balance each other. And they did, in their way. But there was no power that Kareen held to tame Serg. She could sway him a little, sometimes. She could mesmerize him, to keep his attentions solely on her, for a little while.
And she was attracted to him, a little, in a way. The strength of him, the cruel freedom. She had had little of strength and freedom even before she came to him. She wanted to touch that wild, cruel energy, wanted to channel it. And she did sometimes, she could a little.
But Serg was stronger than she was, more powerful than she was, more than she was, he was a crown prince, and she only his bride. Serg liked broken things, he liked breaking things, and so he broke her again and again and again. And yet still she appeared unbroken. Her small smile never waivered, her back never bent. She glided, small and upright and serene, through balls and through her home, unruffled and unfettered.
Her unbrokenness fascinated him and infuriated him, and he wished to devour her, and consume her calm and quell himself a little (though he never allowed her to quell him, never allowed her gentle touch to change his nature, as she tried to, to bend him to her will as Ezar had meant her to, to bind him to faerie law or human morality or something that could guide him true.) so he took her to his bed and broke her again. But he could not swallow her up, could not change her nature any more than she could change his.
So they balanced.
But an heir can not be spun from silver thread. An heir, a child, is a thing of flesh and blood, material. Kareen could paint herself, could clothe herself in silvered glass, smoothe, reflecting, and unpierceable, but she could not defend her body. She could not form a boy-child from illusion, could not protect him by force of will alone, nor serene endurance. And so, when Kareen conceived for the fourth time, she went to Ezar.
Kareen knelt before the Emperor and dropped all Seeming.
“If your line is to continue,” she said, “You must protect me from your son.”
And Ezar looked at her in her nakedness and saw. And then he knew that his son was lightning. A short burst, an immediate release. Lashing out, jagged, in the course of least resistance, to strike the nearest target. Serg was lightning, unheld and untamed, incapable of wisdom. He would lead armies, perhaps, but only to destruction.
So Ezar granted Kareen his protection.