After that it became a pattern without either of us deciding it would.
She struggled with something — I corrected it. Not kindly, not with encouragement. Just directly.
She learned faster than I expected. Nobody had ever bothered to actually explain anything to her before. They'd watched her fail and drawn conclusions.
"Try it again," I'd say.
And she would. Until it was right.
In return — she showed up after every training session. Every spar. Every loss.
She never commented on the losses directly. She just — arrived. Cleaned what needed cleaning. Stayed until I told her to leave.
The cuts she cleaned without flinching. The bruises she treated without asking how bad it had been.
Once — after a particularly brutal session with Atherion — she sat beside me on the training room floor for almost an hour without saying a single word.
Just present.
Just there.
I didn't know what to do with that.
So I said nothing either.
Slowly — without a definable moment where it happened — she stopped being the clumsy maid who spilled tea on my pants.
And I stopped being the prince she was terrified of disappointing.
We became something that didn't have a clean name.
One evening she was reorganizing my bookshelves, a book held loosely in both hands, looking at nothing.
"You know," she said.
I kept my eyes on my page. "Hm."
"No one ever tried to change me," she said.
The room was very still.
"They just discarded me."
A beat.
"My clumsiness. My condition. The way I forget things sometimes." She set the book on the shelf. "Everyone who ever had to deal with me just — decided it wasn't worth the effort."
She laughed once. Small. Without humor.
"I'm sorry. Forget I said—"
"They were wrong."
She went still.
"You learn," I said. "Faster than most people I've met. You just needed someone to bother." A pause. "The people who discarded you were lazy. Not perceptive."
Silence.
Then — very quietly — the sound of her exhaling. Like she'd been holding something for a long time without knowing it.
I didn't look up.
If I looked up I would see her face and I had learned by now that her face in moments like this did something to the inside of my chest that I was not prepared to deal with.
"...Thank you," she said softly.
I turned a page I hadn't read.
"Finish the shelf," I said. "It's getting late."
She turned back to the books.
But I heard it — just barely — the small sound she made when she was trying not to smile and failing.
I stared at my page.
My chest was doing that thing again.
I let it.
Just this once.
That day — I almost won.
Not a careful loss dressed up as progress. Not Veltherion pulling back at the last second.
Almost.
His blade at my throat. Mine at his ribs. Both of us bleeding from places we weren't going to mention.
A draw.
The closest thing to a win I'd ever gotten against him.
Veltherion stared at me — something genuine in his expression. Not pride exactly. Recognition. Like he was seeing something he hadn't expected to find.
"Again tomorrow," he said.
High praise. In the language we'd spoken our whole lives where almost nothing was said directly.
She was waiting outside.
She took one look at me.
Then — before I could arrange my expression — she saw it. Whatever was on my face in that unguarded half-second.
Her eyes went wide.
"You almost won," she said.
"It was a draw," I said.
"Against Veltherion." Like the distinction mattered. Because it did. "You almost won."
And then she laughed.
The real one. The one that started in her chest and came out bright and completely uncontrolled.
Something cracked open in me.
I laughed.
Quietly. Nothing like hers. But genuinely. For the first time in longer than I could remember.
We stood in the corridor — a prince covered in training bruises and a maid who was definitely supposed to be somewhere else — laughing like neither of us had any dignity left to protect.
It faded slowly.
The way good things do.
She wiped her eyes and looked at me with that expression she sometimes had when she forgot to be careful.
"See?" she said. "I told you."
"Told me what."
"That you just hadn't found your thing yet." That small crooked smile. "There it is."
I looked at her.
The smile. The warmth behind it. The way she looked at me like the weakest prince in the empire was the most obvious person in the world to believe in.
Something settled in my chest — quiet and absolute and completely without warning.
I have to protect this.
Not as a duty.
As the only thing I was suddenly certain of.
That smile. Whatever it costs — I have to make sure nothing takes it away.
I looked away before she could read any of it.
"You're late for your other duties," I said.
"Probably," she agreed, already turning, still smiling.
"Elly."
She paused.
I kept my eyes forward.
"...Good work today."
Quietly. Stiffly. Carrying approximately one tenth of what I actually meant.
She was quiet for a second.
"You too, Your Highness."
Her footsteps faded.
I stood there alone.
Chest full of something I had no intention of naming.
But it was there.
And for the first time — I stopped pretending it wasn't.
Two hundred and ninety-seven years.
That's how long it took me.
Two hundred and ninety-seven years of mornings where she arrived with tea and I pretended to read. Of training sessions where she cleaned cuts I pretended didn't hurt. Of evenings where we sat in comfortable silence that neither of us tried to fill.
Two hundred and ninety-seven years of that smile.
Of looking away a half second too late.
Of saying dismissed when I meant stay.
It happened on an evening that was completely ordinary.
She was sitting by the window mending something, humming without knowing she was doing it. I was at my desk doing nothing in particular.
The light was going.
She felt me looking.
Turned.
"Your Highness?"
I looked back at my desk immediately.
"Nothing," I said.
"You've been staring at me for ten minutes."
"I was thinking."
"About what?"
I said nothing.
She waited — that specific patient way she had when she'd decided she was going to wait as long as it took.
"Elly."
"Yes?"
I kept my eyes on the desk.
"I—"
The words stopped.
I tried again.
"You—"
Stopped again.
The soft sound of her setting down her work. Turning toward me fully.
"Keltherion."
Not Your Highness.
Keltherion.
I looked up.
She was watching me the way she had on that day in the corridor — open, warm, like I was the most obvious thing in the world.
Like she already knew.
Like she had known for a while.
"I'm not good at this," I said.
"I know," she said.
"I don't say things easily."
"I know that too."
"You matter to me." The words came out rough. Insufficient. "More than I've let myself say."
The room was very quiet.
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
Something newer. Something that had been waiting.
"It took you two hundred and ninety-seven years," she said softly.
"I'm aware."
"That's a very long time."
"I know."
"Keltherion," she corrected herself. Gently.
Something in my chest broke open completely.
She crossed the room — unhurried, no stumbling — and sat beside me.
Close enough that our shoulders almost touched.
"I've been waiting," she said simply.
"...How long."
She thought about it.
"Long enough that I stopped counting."
I looked at her.
She looked back.
No titles between us. No distance. Just two people who had taken the long way to arrive at the same place.
"I'm not good at this," I said again.
"You keep saying that."
"It keeps being true."
She laughed — quiet and warm.
"Good thing I'm patient then."
I looked away.
But I didn't move.
Neither did she.
Two hundred and ninety-seven years finally, quietly, laid to rest.
"But I can't," she said quietly. "You know that."
I said nothing.
"I'm just a maid. And you're the Third Prince." The words came out gentle. Not bitter. Just honest. "I've always known. I just didn't want to be the one to say it first."
"I'll talk to Mother," I said.
"She's been in slumber for almost five hundred years—"
"Then Father. Or Atherion." The words came out faster than I usually allowed. "Someone. Anyone. I will do anything — whatever it takes — to find a way."
She was quiet for a long moment.
Then she reached out.
Her hand found mine.
Held it.
"I know," she said softly.
I pulled her closer — carefully, like something I was afraid of getting wrong — and held her.
Her breath caught slightly. Then she relaxed into it.
"Just a moment," I said quietly. "Just give me a moment."
Her hand came up. Found the back of my coat. Held on with quiet certainty.
Like she'd been waiting to hold on for a very long time.
I stayed there.
Eyes closed.
For the first time in two hundred and ninety-seven years — no armor. No careful distance.
Just this.
Just her.
I will find a way, I promised silently.
Whatever it costs.
