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episode one: the queen mother
“It doesn’t need to be done right away. Wait a year or five, if you want.” His mother smiles, easy and sharp.
From far away, Zen’s brain supplies: Izana always did take after her looks.
“You’re serious.” Zen doesn’t know how he got here. There was a report on naval trade routes. He went to deliver it to his brother. Then, like an apparition, his mother was at the desk instead of Izana. Her circlet—a fine twined-silver thing—sitting on top of the piles of paper. At the corner, water. On the ground, a shattered vase.
And Izana, more still than a sea about to roil, standing by the window, looking out at the castle grounds, the green grass, the soldiers on patrol, the trees, the flowerbeds, and beyond all that: the city. The distant, smudged strip of it visible against the horizon.
Zen sat down at some point, listening to his mother explain. She has a way of talking that’s steady and measured, accompanied by a precise smile that urges you to interpret her words in whatever way suits you best. Which means you interpret her words in whichever way suits her best.
“You’re really serious,” Zen says again and realizes where he made his mistake. He should have bolted the instant he saw her.
Dowager Queen Haruto has not voluntarily walked the halls of Wistal Castle since the mourning period for the late king ended. She claimed to be allergic to the castle, to this place where she married a prince and buried a king. This place where she gave birth to two princes. This place which has held her, a foreign queen in a foreign land.
Zen still remembers the day she left. Early morning, the sun still half-hidden in the horizon. Servants removing the drapes from the walls. Billowy-white, big enough to swallow tapestries, and in the hands of the servants they shrunk down to neat, small squares. Bereavement, done. Just like that.
“Where are we going?” he asked in a high-whining voice he’d soon discard.
“Hopefully to prevent a disaster,” his brother said without looking back. There had been a wrongness to his posture, a strange stiff line from his shoulder down his back. Then again, it had looked like that since the death of their father.
The confusion picked at Zen, and he pouted all the way through the castle corridors, almost dragging his heels just to be contrary. He didn’t yet know how to obey his brother, nor did he want to. He wanted to go back to sleep. He wanted to keep sleeping. He wanted to sleep forever to escape from this entire awful year.
Izana kept walking, his grip on Zen’s hand tight and painful. They looked like children in that moment. Looking back on it, of that much Zen is sure: they looked like ordinary children, siblings cleaved together in grief and desperation.
When they reached the Starlight Gate, most of Haruto’s belongings had already been stowed away in three carriages. Gleaming, polished trunks in stacked piles dotted the courtyard, their silver locks glittering in the dawn light. A servant carried another one out from the castle, hoisted on his shoulder, the shadow he cast falling over Zen as he went.
“My two beautiful princes!” Haruto exclaimed, turning away from where she had been directing the servants. She wore an implacable smile—the smile Izana would one day grow into, or learn, or steal, or all three of these things—and approached them with open arms. “What’s this?” She looked at Zen. “Have you changed your mind, Izana?”
“No,” Izana said firmly, but he squeezed Zen’s hand and took a step forward, almost as though shielding him. “I’ve come to ask that you change yours.”
Her smile persevered. “Aren’t you being too greedy?” She bent down, reaching for Zen, except Izana pulled him back and stepped fully in front of him. “One victory against your queen is more than good enough.” She straightened, waving a little at Zen when he peeked out from behind Izana. Still smiling.
“A queen’s place—”
“A queen’s place is wherever she makes it,” Haruto said neatly, watching as the last of her belongings got stowed away. “Besides, this castle makes me itch. It’s the dust. I’m terribly allergic.”
“There is dust at Wilant too,” Izana ground out. This was one of the last times he’d let emotions color his voice so freely.
“Izana,” Haruto said, something heavy and reprimanding in her voice. “I can certainly change my mind, but you won’t like it.”
The courtyard went quiet and flat. Years and years later, Zen would look back on this moment—for he is always looking back on this moment—and recognize it as the first clashing of two monarchs. Of these two particular monarchs. This morning, with an entire kingdom shuddering out of its mourning veil, was Izana’s first battlefield as a prince-king.
It was also his first defeat.
Haruto sidestepped Izana, her hands cupping Zen’s face. Suddenly, his brother seemed so far away. When did Izana let him go?
“My adorable little prince”—she bent to kiss him on the forehead—“I will miss you dearly.” She wore her sorrow genuinely, the smile on her face finally faltering. “Zen,” she said, “be good.” Her thumbs stroked his cheeks and traced the arch of his brow after she kissed him there once more.
It was not the last time Zen saw her, but sometimes he forgets this. He forgets that he gets called to Wilant once every other year at least. He forgets that the woman who resides at Wilant is mother. He forgets that he Izana are not orphans after all.
In this way, he thinks he and Shirayuki can empathize: they have a parent that does not feel like a parent at all, a parent severed from them by their own grief.
Zen has been silent too long, he realizes. Haruto tilts her head forward, a bare hint of movement, and says in a manner she probably thinks is gentle, “Isn’t this what you planned for your future?”
“Yes,” he says. And then, “No. Maybe.” Helpless, he casts his brother a pleading look.
“Which is it?” Haruto asks. She’s persistent. The stories go that she courted Zen’s father doggedly, charmed him until he gave in. Like a tidal wave or a wall of wind.
Hands on his knees, Zen exhales loudly. “Mother, please,” he says. “It’s not solely my decision to make.”
“Oh?” Her tone sends a shiver down his spine. “From what I’ve heard, it’s quite mutual, no?”
“It”—Zen looks away, aware that he can’t control his expressions the way everyone else in his family seems able to do—“is?”
“Zen.” He stiffens, feeling himself sweat. “If this is the kind of conviction you have, then maybe this isn’t a good idea after all.” Too soon for him to feel relieved, she adds, “The only way left is to take you with me back to Wilant, then.”
The moment sharpens, crystalizes, and Zen’s heart tightens. “Wait,” he pleads. “Let me talk to her first.” He looks again to Izana. “You know I can’t make decisions for both of us.”
Finally, his brother regains movement. “Very well,” he says. His words are directed at Zen, but he’s looking at Haruto, whose gaze has not left Zen at all. “It’s for the best that you discuss it with that girl first.”
“That girl,” Zen repeats despite himself.
“If I use her name, you’ll get jealous, won’t you?”
“I won’t!” Zen-half shouts, his cheeks blistering with heat. Before anyone can change their mind or say something more outrageous, Zen scrambles to his feet, politely bids his brother and mother goodbye, and practically runs out the door.
*
episode two: the hallway interlude
Outside, Mitsuhide and Kiki immediately flank him. They can sense the urgency in his footsteps and trade expressions of anxiety as they wait for him to say what happened in Izana’s study.
Irritated, frustrated, and disappointed—Haruto’s first words had been I’m sorry, and for a moment he thought she was apologizing for abandoning her sons and her duties because he’s still a child, deep down, who thinks fairness should extend to mothers and queens—Zen turns the events over in his head, organizing them into something coherent. He should probably explain the why and how of it, but all he has are Haruto’s words and her reasoning. How he feels about it, he doesn’t yet know.
So he settles on: “Shirayuki and I are getting engaged. Probably.”
It’s Mitsuhide who makes a long, drawn out sound of surprise, embarrassingly loud in the corridor. They’ve reached the open courtyard, so it echoes back from the far-off walls. The tips of Zen’s ears turn hot.
Finally saying the word makes it real. Plucks it from the abstract machinations of his mother and puts it into his own hands. Engaged, he thinks to himself, thinking of the far future that belongs to him and Shirayuki.
They’ve made promises, talked of when and one day in soft words while tucked against each other, but this is different. This is immediate, and not strictly under their own terms.
He needs to see Shirayuki. The need is urgent, thrumming under his skin and vibrating along his jaw. But the castle grounds are large and long, and it’s not proper for him to sprint across the whole distance in broad daylight.
“Are you ready to be engaged?” Kiki asks, ever practical.
“Yes. No. Maybe?” It’s the same answer he gave his mother.
And then, because Mitsuhide understands Izana’s nature, he asks, “Do you have time?”
Zen bites his lip. They didn’t give him a time limit for speaking to Shirayuki when he left, but he can still feel Haruto’s cold hands slapping both his cheeks as she drew their faces together. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I simply cannot wait any longer. Izana will be king.”
And though it wasn’t said, Zen understands that he’s meant to escort Shirayuki to them immediately, to explain as much as he can to her on the way and parse the rest of it out with an audience of two.
“No,” he admits at last.
Kiki says, “Zen, permission to take a break?” When he turns around to give her a questioning look, Kiki’s expression is steady.
He bites back a grin—she’s always, always so practical. “Permission granted.”
*
episode three: the greenhouse
After making unsubtle inquiries as to Shirayuki’s whereabouts, Ryu points him to the greenhouses. Taking advantage of the privacy inherent in this wing of castle, Zen jogs through the grounds, down the stone steps, past the rows of herbs, and to the cluster of greenhouses. He’s not sure which one Shirayuki is in, so he loops through them methodically.
At the fourth greenhouse, as he peers through the doorway in search of Shirayuki, a hand closes over his mouth. Another one slides over his eyes.
“Guess who?” Obi singsongs into Zen’s ear.
Zen elbows Obi and wiggles out of his grasp.
“Ah,” Obi says, “no fun at all.”
“Obi. Where’s Shirayuki?”
Obi put his hands behind his head, shrugging as he looked away. “Around,” he said airily.
It’s incredible how Obi manages to consistently get a rise out of Zen.
Giving him a cat-eye smile, Obi asks, “Do you need the mistress for something?” Then, bending to whisper conspiratorially into his ear, “She’s just inside.”
Pulling away, Zen squints at Obi. “Thanks,” he says dryly. “Mitsuhide will fill you in.”
Inside the greenhouse, Zen weaves through the rows of plants to find Shirayuki kneeling with her hands buried in soil. She has dirt smudged on her nose, and all Zen wants to do is wipe it off for her.
No, that’s not quite true. He wants more than that. He wants to take her hands in his, to let the soil transfer from her skin to his, to keep holding her hands until he forgets what it feels like to do anything else, until letting go would leave him with a sense of wrongness. He wants to pick her up and twirl her around or carry her far, far away. He wants, absurdly enough, to braid her hair one day. She used to wear it long in Tanbarun.
But for now, he settles for clearing his throat and gently rubbing the dirt off her nose when her head snaps up to meet him.
“Zen?” She says, hands still in the soil. Her cheeks have gone pink, and he can feel his face warm too, but it’s a low, soothing contentment.
So the queen has come. So Izana will be king. So there are decisions being made that go beyond him. So they are still here, the two of them, despite all that.
“Is something wrong?”
There’s no easy way to say it.
“Run away with me.” Shirayuki jerks, hands coming out of the dirt, and Zen takes them, saying again, “Run away with me.”
With a little frown on her face, Shirayuki says, “Okay. But I need to plant the meadowsweet first.”
Zen can’t help the laugh that leaps out of him, bending over their joined hands.
“Don’t laugh!” Shirayuki says sternly. “If we ran low on meadowsweet, it would be a disaster.”
“No, it’s not that,” Zen says, pulling away to cover his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s just—you’re always so reassuring, even when you don’t mean to be.”
Her expression gentles. “What’s wrong, Zen?”
He knows what he wants, but more than anything he wants her to be happy. Them. He wants them to be happy—together. It’s the providence of a prince to be selfish, isn’t it? This one thing—this one thing—that encompasses all others. To hold her, to her hear laugh, to kiss her, to wipe her tears away. To be the one who nurses her back to health one day, when she catches a fever, and let her enjoy being a patient for once. To show her the world, the deserts in the east and the snow-capped mountains in the north.
He also knows this: when the scales are weighed, when it comes down to the knife’s edge this or that devil’s choice, his kingdom or her, it will always be his kingdom.
His kingdom and her. He wants both, but he’s only able to let go of one.
“Later,” he tells her. “Let me help with the meadowsweet. How many are left?”
“Okay,” Shirayuki says, scooting over to make room for him. “Later.” She turns it into a promise. She turns everything into a promise.
Maybe princes aren’t meant to kneel and be up to their wrists in dirt, but Zen has never been conventional. Izana, Haruto, Kain. The royal family of Wistalia has always been this way, but if you ask Zen—who has circled around royalty in new ways only just this year, stepping further and further off the tried and true path, led by a girl with red hair—all royals have a thread of nonsense in them.
He thinks of Raj in Tanbarun, with his exaggerated gestures and quick coin-flip turns of mood, and of himself, always running away from the castle and then running back.
Zen pats at the soil, the last of the meadowsweet planted.
Wiping her hands on her apron, Shirayuki surveys their work, a profoundly serious look on her face, before she turns to Zen with a bright smile and a nod. “We did good,” she says, taking his hands one at a time and cleaning them.
Slick with sweat, her bangs stick to her forehead. Magnetized, drawn in by some unseen force, Zen slowly leans in until his lips meet the crown of her head.
“Zen,” she says, clutching his hand tighter. It’s all she needs to say.
The clattering of hooves break them apart. Shirayuki meets his gaze, and Zen smiles. “Let’s run away.”
*
episode four: the running away
They don’t usually share a horse. Shirayuki rides with Mitsuhide or Kiki or Obi, if there’s absolutely no other choice, but not with Zen. Not unless it’s the two of them alone, just like this.
Zen doesn’t think about where to take them, just goes. Runs. Hooves against stone, against grass, against mud. It occurs to him, as the castle is nothing but a distant pale color against the horizon, that the trust Shirayuki places in him is enormous. Absolute.
There’s no surprise to the revelation. He trusts her just as much too.
*
episode five: the conversation
The woods, not quite the same place where they first met, but they’ve held enough serious conversations among trees that it still fits.
Zen knows who he is. The second prince of Clarines. Royal, and therefore powerful, and therefore coercive. Shirayuki has proven time and time again that power holds no authority over her, that the arbitrary authority assigned to status and blood will never make her bow. But it doesn’t mean she can’t feel when someone’s trying to back her into a corner, which is why Zen makes sure to approach her from equal, or lower, footing.
He sits her on a fallen log and goes to his knees. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Where does he start?
“My mother says we need to get engaged,” he says, just to hear it said out loud. Start from somewhere.
Shirayuki turns red, then redder. It’s that rabbit-fear she wears whenever their relationship trips forward with unexpected speed.
Zen doesn’t touch her. Slowly, he says, “It’s not optional, but you do have a choice. You always have a choice.”
“Engaged,” Shirayuki says, rocking forward a little with the momentum of the word. “I—but we,” she stutters, gaze fixed on him, “we can’t.” Her hands fly out to stop him before he can talk. “No! That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that I wanted to”—she looks away—“stand by your side as an equal, to deserve—no, to prove, not to you, to anyone who has doubts, that I…”
When she doesn’t pick the faltering sentence back up, Zen carefully takes her hands.
“You don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” he tells her.
“It’s not that!” This angle obscures her expression. “I know what it means to stand by your side, Zen, and I wanted to do it when I had the capability.” Softly, she adds, voice lilting like she can’t be sure she remembers correctly, “Your mother?”
Zen sets aside her declaration and focuses on that. “Yes. Queen Haruto. She lives in Wilant, north of Wistal. Near Lyrias—you’d like Lyrias.” But that’s a tangent for another day. “This is the first time she’s come to Wistal ever since she left. Ten years, more or less.”
“That’s a long time,” Shirayuki says, almost as though she feels the hurt too.
“It is, but she couldn’t bear to be in Wistal after my father died. They were—no one approved of their marriage, not really. Not my grandparents, both sets.” He shifts to sit down and cross his legs. “She saw him at a dance, or a festival, or a diplomatic afternoon tea session. Whatever it was, she wasn’t meant to stay in Clarines for long, but she stayed anyway. Imposed on the hospitality of foreign royalty because she—well,” Zen interrupts himself with a huff of laughter, “she thought he was cute.”
Shirayuki gives an answering laugh, and he insists, “It’s true! She wasn’t subtle about it, and she was so stubborn—she still is—that my grandparents almost considered threatening a war if she wouldn’t leave.” Their hands are still joined. “But she’s a good queen. She understands exactly what it means to be a queen, which sometimes means she only does just enough for herself to still be called a queen.” The words clink out of him, almost diplomatic in nature.
“That probably makes her sound like a terrible queen, but she only wears the crown out of obligation. Because she loves Clarines, and she could never throw the kingdom into the disarray caused by an empty throne, or even a throne filled by someone who isn’t ready. She’s always thinking in circles, twenty steps ahead, a solution for situations that might never arise. Izana takes after her.” He doesn’t add that people usually compare him to Kain. Not directly, never directly. But oblique ways, out of place blinks and side-glances and light comments.
“They’re both so clever,” he says, “and they both care so much for this kingdom. So even though this isn’t what we wanted, I can’t do anything but give it proper consideration.”
Shirayuki squeezes his hands. “What does our engagement mean to her?”
Honesty. “A chance to step down from the throne. Izana has no wife and no heir, and he won’t ascend to the throne without one or the other. I don’t count,” he adds, almost wry, “because he never groomed me for the throne. For other positions, other responsibilities, but not for the throne.”
Piecing the fragments of his childhood into a story that makes sense comes easy with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge. Haruto wanted to take him with her to Wilant, but Izana refused. How could she even think to take him, the second prince, so far away from the capital because she couldn’t manage her own grief? No, Izana would raise him and teach him how to be a prince to his people himself.
Hindsight also tells him, and Izana too, that Haruto would have taught Zen the same lessons Izana did. In different ways, perhaps, but the same lessons. They live with this knowledge, and Zen doesn’t think about where he would be if he had been taken to Wilant after all.
“If we get engaged,” Zen continues, “then it distracts from the fact that Izana isn’t.”
The wind catches her hair, revealing her eyes. “Do you want to marry me?”
“It’s just an engagement,” Zen says. “It doesn’t need to be done right away. Wait a year, or five.” He takes a breath. “Yes, I do.” Stands up. “Come on, let’s go for a walk. If I needed an immediate answer, we wouldn’t have run away.”
*
(episode six: the flashback)
People turn their heads away with a polite, knowing smile, pretending that they don’t recognize their young prince. Zen plays along with it and puts in token efforts to conceal his identity. Wears a different set of clothing, doesn’t try to hide his hair or his face.
“Izana told me that he would be our ally.”
Shirayuki looks up at him, at first absentminded, and then his words and their meaning sink into her. “I’m glad,” she says with a small smile.
“Of course, knowing my brother, he’ll still be testing us every step of the way.”
“That does sound like him.”
Something about the way she says it strikes him as odd. Zen looks around to see what’s caught her attention, but all he can see are the townspeople going about their daily lives. Children running, people ducking in and out of taverns, the shuffle of a busy mother, basket laden with food, workers carrying crates and sacks over their shoulders, and every once in a while, someone sneaks a glance at the two of them.
Shirayuki’s expression offers no easy answers, so Zen says, “You seem distracted. Should we head back?”
The stress of a royal pharmacist isn’t inconsiderable. No matter how much she enjoys the work, she must still feel the physical toll of it.
“Ah,” she says, blinking rapidly. “Sorry, I was just thinking that this will have to end one day.”
Zen trips over a nonexistent stone.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.” She helps to steady him. “I intend to stay by your side as long as you want me to, but eventually it’ll be irresponsible to wander around like this, won’t it?”
The eccentricity that defines Zen as a member of royalty is his tendency to roam. It used to be more often, long rides from city to city, all the way to the ocean. Then the scales were weighed, and he handed all that over for Shirayuki. Still, Izana would have put an end to it eventually. Whatever plans his brother has for the future, these are the crucial years—Zen can feel it.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” Shirayuki continues, taking in the bustle of the city. “It just means things will be different.”
Lately, Zen’s noticed that the way Shirayuki talks about the future—the way they talk about a shared future—has turned into something absolute. It’s no longer a wavering question, pulled taut and trembling in the face of uncertainties, but a steadfast fact. Zen can’t remember how he used to think about it before Shirayuki came along, what kind of future he imagined for himself without being at her side.
*
episode seven: the wandering
They sleep under the stars—is what Zen would like to say, but what really happens is that they go to a nearby town and book two rooms at an inn.
He almost sleeps outside her door. It doesn’t feel safe to leave her in there alone without Kiki, and if anything should happen, there’s no way he can reach her in time from the next room over. Shirayuki puts her foot down, jabbing one finger at his chest, and puts an end to that idea.
In the morning, they eat breakfast and head back out.
“This is probably the last time we can do something like this,” he tells her when the town is far behind them.
“Oh.” She must remember that conversation too. “Well, it came sooner than expected, but I can’t say that I’m unhappy.”
That’s good, he thinks. That must count for something.
Their route takes them along the edge of the ocean, the entire glittering blue expanse. At some point, they tie up the horse and climb up a chalky cliff. Half way up the top, Zen sweeps her off her feet and runs the rest of the way up. His legs burn, but it’s worth it to hear her delighted, surprised laughter.
Stretching out on the grass, she sighs happily.
“Do you remember when I mentioned Lyrias?” Zen asks suddenly, impulsively. “Yesterday?”
“Near Wilant, right?”
“Yeah. Further north, so the weather is cold. It’s a city of scholars. All the books you could ever want are probably in Lyrias,” he teases, and then sketches out the city to her. The siege walls and the market streets bursting with color. The greenhouses, the ceiling-high shelves filled with books and handwritten journals, every inch of it crammed with knowledge.
He had gone once as a boy, one of the infrequent trips with Haruto. She’d taken him all over the city, weaving through libraries that all looked identical and monumental to him, and said, “Without this city, Clarines would be nothing.”
In the same breath, she’d also complained that the tedious scholars of Lyrias needed to get some fresh air and learn how the real world operated.
“Life is about balance, Zen,” she finished breezily.
Later, as they find dinner at a town nestled at the base of a mountain, Shirayuki offers stories of her days in Tanbarun. Teenage boys who came crying to her about a little muscle ache and thought the world was ending even though they acted so tough. Girls who sighed about herbs for smoother skin or shinier hair. And vice versa. Old men and old ladies with aching joints. Anxious new fathers and exasperated mothers.
She pauses in her meandering stories, all spliced together and looping backward as though trying to catch a fish that keeps swimming upstream, only to touch her fingers to the corner of her eyes, surprised when they come back wet. “I’m not sad,” she says immediately, her first instinct to reassure. She looks ready to argue with him about it.
“You miss them,” Zen says, wiping away her tears. He’s leaning on the table, chin in hand, and the gesture, so naturally propelled, shouldn’t feel as significant as it does.
“I just worry about them from time to time,” she says rebelliously, cheeks puffed up.
Laughing, Zen says, “Yes, yes. Of course.”
Stories about Tanbarun are rare. References to Shirayuki’s past are always abstracted, carefully distanced. No names, no specific places. Like she walked out of a dream, or a story, with an incomplete backstory. He used to wonder at how easily she uprooted herself to come to Clarines, about why she never mentions friends when making them comes so easily to her.
Now, knowing what he knows, having met her father, Zen thinks that Shirayuki must have been very lonely. Maybe the grief couldn’t be shaken off until she left.
She’s so strong.
*
episode eight: the running back
The next morning, Shirayuki says, “We should probably head back.”
They take their time and use a different route.
What they’ve done is scandalous, of course. The second prince of Clarines running off with the royal pharmacist. Oh, the servants and the people won’t know any better, will have been redirected into another narrative, but the nobles—the counts, earls, lords—they’ll all be thinking elopement.
Zen has been careful before. Chaperones, Mitsuhide or Kiki not far away. Talking to her outside in the hallway rather than going inside her room. Checking corners to make sure there are no eyes on them. Keeping his touches brief and light.
The danger in going back will be that he’s almost forgotten how to keep himself in check. He holds her hand, fixes her hair, touches the crook of her elbow, carries her. Carefree affections given without the reflexive over-the-shoulder look. It’s only been three days. They’ll take at least another three before they return to Wistal. Six days, almost a week. By then, it’ll be a hopeless cause.
“Zen,” Shirayuki says. He’s helping her cross a creek, both her hands in his as she takes that last leap to safety from stone to bank.
“Hmm?” he says absently, looking up from her flushed-pink feet. Her shoes made it across the creek before her, tossed from one side to the other.
“Thank you.”
It’s a light touch, so brief and chaste he thinks it must have been a vivid daydream, but no, she really—
Zen touches his cheek, surprised and pleased all at once. They’re standing so close. He slides a hand into her hair, cradling the back of her head as he presses their foreheads together.
Oh, he thinks. How silly, to have never done this before.
Zen breathes in.
“I love you,” he says, putting the entirety of him into the words, meaning it the way rivers carve mountains, the way the sun rises, the way Wistal comes to life and lives and goes to sleep. Meaning it like it’s a part of him.
He’s terrified.
Reading her expression is easy, but Zen has always thought that the real truths lie in her hands. The way they twist and flex, the way she reaches out or closes in.
Now her fingers curl into his shoulder with the slightest tremble.
“Let’s get married,” she says, blotchy with unshed tears.
“It’s an engagement,” Zen corrects, smiling through his own tears. This elation, this joyous thing which has filled him up. His kingdom or her. How could he ever think that he’d be able to pick anything over her?
It’s too much. She buries her face in his chest, and he wraps his arms around her. “I know,” she says, muffled now by both tears and his shirt. “I know.”
*
(episode nine: the omake)
“I”— a sneeze—“am so happy”—another sneeze—“for you two.” The wet sound of a nose being blown.
“Um,” Shirayuki says, still covered in the dust and mud of their journey, wondering why half the castle has poured out to greet them at the gates. “Maybe you should come to the pharmacy?”
“Oh, no, no,” Haruto says breezily, no sign of congestion at all, “it’s just this castle. I’m terribly allergic.” She adds a forced cough, for good measure. “It’ll clear up when I leave,” she says, the well-practiced smile smoothly in place.
Shirayuki turns to Zen, dropping her voice into a whisper. “Is she really allergic to a castle?”
“I’ve stopped questioning it,” Zen whispers back.
*
(episode ten: the other omake)
“It’s like,” Shirayuki mutters, staring at her hands in abject horror, “like an evil witch out of a fairy tale.”
Zen, standing next to her with the same expression, steadily bangs his head against the wall.
“Our firstborn,” Shirayuki says, clutching at her head with shaking hands. “Our firstborn.”
Newly crowned and radiant, Izana sits laughing on his throne. “I have no intention of marrying,” he says, easy and casual. “Naturally, your firstborn will be my heir.”
Zen tries to imagine it, a faceless child with Shirayuki’s bright red hair, sitting on that same throne with that implacable smile and evil laughter. It’s terrifying, but at the same time—
Their child. Theirs.
*
(episode eleven: the other, other omake)
They don’t elope after all, but they do disappear immediately after the ceremony.
Izana gives them a whole month before he personally comes to drag them back from Lyrias.