"There's one more matter we should discuss," she said, her voice steady despite the weight of what she was about to propose. "Before the Tournament. Before we commit to this presentation of unity."
James looked up from the notes, his violet eyes sharp with attention. "I'm listening."
She drew a breath, choosing each word with surgical precision. "My House's position is... precarious. My mother courts the Third Prince's favor. My brother despises you for reasons both personal and political. The Council watches me for signs of duplicity." She paused, meeting his gaze directly. "I am, in every practical sense, a liability to you. A weakness your enemies can exploit."
"Is there a point to this self-assessment?" James asked, his tone mild but watchful.
"The point," Seraphina said, "is that I'm offering you an alternative. A contract marriage."
The words hung in the air between them, sharp as drawn steel.
James's expression didn't change, but she saw the minute shift in his posture—not quite tension, but a heightened awareness, like a soldier hearing a suspicious sound in darkness.
"Explain," he said simply.
"We proceed with the betrothal as planned. We attend the Tournament, present the unified front we've discussed but privately, we establish terms." Seraphina kept her voice level, professional, as though discussing strategy rather than the framework of their lives. "I provide political intelligence about the Third Prince's faction—I can access circles you cannot. I manage the social maneuvering that court demands. I serve as your shield against the kind of soft power attacks that bypass military strength."
"And in exchange?" James prompted, though his eyes suggested he already knew.
"In exchange, you provide protection. Military backing. The weight of the Celosia name to counterbalance my House's questionable loyalties."
She paused, and here her voice faltered slightly despite her best efforts. "And when the political landscape shifts—when it's strategically advantageous for us to part ways—we do so cleanly. No acrimony. No scandal. Just... a quiet dissolution of an arrangement that has served its purpose."
"A business arrangement," James said, and his voice carried something she couldn't quite identify. "With built-in termination clauses."
"Yes." Seraphina forced herself to maintain eye contact, to not look away from whatever judgment she saw forming behind his careful expression. "I know what I am, James. I know my House makes me a political risk. I know—"
Her throat tightened unexpectedly. "I know what it means to destroy someone through closeness. What it costs when your family's choices poison everything you touch."
The truth beneath the words—that she had destroyed him once already, that her betrayal in her first life had led directly to his death, that she had screamed his name into rain and darkness while mourning a man she'd only realized she loved after it was too late—remained buried. But it colored every syllable, made her hands shake slightly as she gripped the edge of the table.
"This way," she continued, "with clear terms, with defined expectations—we both know exactly what we're getting. No illusions. No false promises. Just mutual benefit until such time as the benefit no longer outweighs the cost."
The silence that followed felt like standing on a frozen lake, waiting to see if the ice would hold or crack beneath her feet.
James leaned back in his chair, his fingers resuming their slow, rhythmic drumming on the armrest. His gaze never left hers, those violet eyes reading her with the same methodical attention he'd give to battlefield intelligence—cataloging details, assessing motivations, weighing implications.
"No," he said finally.
Seraphina felt something cold settle in her chest. "No?"
"It's too late for that," James replied, and his voice carried absolute certainty. "We're betrothed, Seraphina. Publicly. Formally. The King himself has taken an interest in this union, and the First Prince has given his blessing. A contract marriage—with its implied temporary nature, its suggestion of conditional commitment—would be seen as exactly what you're worried about. A sign of weakness. An admission that we don't believe in the stability of our own alliance."
He leaned forward slightly, and despite the careful distance he maintained, his presence filled the space between them.
"You're trying to give me an exit," he said, more gently. "To make this easier for me by framing it as a transaction with a termination date. But that's not what we need. That's not what will keep us alive at the Tournament or in the Council or against the Third Prince's machinations."
"What do we need, then?" Seraphina heard the slight tremor in her own voice and hated it.
"We need what we've been building," James said simply. "The truth. Or as much of it as we can afford to reveal. You respect me. I respect you. We're bound together by circumstances neither of us chose, but we're choosing—actively, deliberately—to make something worthwhile from those circumstances."
He paused, and his expression shifted—something softer beneath the tactical assessment, something that looked almost like understanding.
"You're not your House, Seraphina."
The words landed like a benediction, like absolution for sins he didn't even know she'd committed.
"You're not your mother's ambitions or your brother's grudges or the Third Prince's target," James continued, his voice carrying quiet conviction. "You're not defined by proximity to power or the machinations of people who see you as a tool rather than a person. You're defined by your own choices. Your own actions."
His violet eyes held hers. "Your choices—staying when you could have fled, protecting me when you could have exploited my weakness, planning strategy when you could have sold information to my enemies—those choices tell me exactly who you are."
Seraphina felt her carefully constructed walls crack further, fissures spreading through foundations she'd thought unshakeable. He was offering her something she'd never had in her first life—separation between her identity and her family's sins. Permission to be judged on her own merits rather than inherited guilt.
"I've killed people through proximity," she said quietly, the confession slipping out before she could stop it. Not the full truth—not yet, perhaps never—but a piece of it.
"I've made choices that destroyed lives because I was too afraid or too foolish or too convinced that loyalty to blood mattered more than loyalty to what was right." Her hands clenched into fists. "I know what it costs to be bound to someone who brings nothing but poison."
"Then you also know," James said softly, "that the antidote to poison isn't isolation. It's choosing better bonds. Stronger ones. Built on something other than blood or obligation or fear."
He paused. "You're not a liability, Seraphina. You're an asset. A dangerous one, admittedly—intelligence and political acumen wrapped in a presentation that makes people underestimate you. That's exactly the kind of weapon I need beside me. Not hired temporarily. Not borrowed until a better offer comes along. Mine."
The possessive word landed with unexpected weight, and Seraphina felt tears threaten—not of sadness, but of something more complicated. Relief, perhaps. A stirring of the love she still held. Or the beginning of something that might be forgiveness for crimes he didn't know she'd committed.
In her first life, she'd loved him. Had realized it far too late, standing in the rain with blood on her hands and his name on her lips. Had spent her final moments wishing she could take back every cruel word, every calculated distance, every time she'd chosen her mother's approval over his trust.
Now he was offering her a second chance. Not because he knew what she'd done. Not because he'd forgiven her betrayal. But because he was choosing to judge her by who she was now rather than who she'd been.
"I don't know how to do this without terms," she admitted, the confession slipping out before she could stop it. "Without knowing exactly where the boundaries are, what's expected, when I'm allowed to stop performing."
"Then we figure it out together," James replied. "We make mistakes. We adjust. We learn what works for us rather than following some template of what court marriages are supposed to look like."
His lips curved slightly. "I've never been particularly good at following templates anyway. Tends to get you killed on battlefields when the enemy doesn't behave according to the strategic manual."
Despite everything, Seraphina felt a smile tug at her own lips. "That's a terrible approach to marriage."
"Is it? Because from where I'm sitting, the traditional approach—where political alliances are negotiated like trade agreements and the actual people involved are afterthoughts—has a rather spectacular failure rate."
James's expression sobered. "I'm not promising you romance, Seraphina. I'm not even sure I'm capable of it, if I ever was but I can promise you partnership. Honesty, within the bounds of what we can safely reveal. Loyalty, as long as you extend the same to me and the certainty that I will not discard you the moment you become inconvenient."
The words settled into her chest, heavier than she expected. This was, she realized, more than she'd had in her first life. More than she'd dared hope for in this one.
"You're certain?" she asked, giving him one more opportunity to reconsider. "My House—"
"Is politically compromised, yes. I'm aware." James's voice took on a harder edge. "I'm also aware that you've spent weeks managing my recovery, protecting me from vultures who would have exploited my weakness, and planning strategy for a Tournament that could determine whether I maintain my position on the Council. You've done all of that knowing your House would suffer political consequences if you chose wrong. Knowing your mother would be furious. Knowing the Third Prince would take notice."
He paused, and his next words carried the weight of absolute conviction.
"You stayed anyway. That's worth more than any contract."
Seraphina felt something crack in her chest—one of the walls she'd built so carefully, designed to protect her from exactly this kind of vulnerability. She'd offered him an exit, and he'd refused it. Had chosen, deliberately and explicitly, to bind himself to her without escape clauses or termination dates.
It was terrifying.
It was also, despite every tactical instinct screaming caution, exactly what she needed.
"Then no contract," she said finally, her voice steadier than she felt. "Just... this. Whatever this is."
"Whatever this is," James agreed. "Though I suspect we'll figure it out eventually. We're both reasonably intelligent. We should be able to manage one functional partnership between us."
The dry humor broke the tension, and Seraphina felt herself relax fractionally. "One would hope."
The moment of vulnerability passed, replaced by the comfortable rhythm of strategic discussion. But something had changed—a subtle shift in the dynamic between them, an acknowledgment of partnership that went deeper than political convenience.
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