Written By Tikva
Jan. 29, 2024, 1:06 p.m.(8/22/1021 AR)
Carrying on as though Ainsley is merely on campaign is how I have been compartmentalizing this, but I did sit down with Lara and Asharion last night to make sure they understand. It was a few hectic minutes and I know that they are as safe as children can be during all this with their cousins, but if the Eater takes everything, obviously nowhere is safe. Neither of them is foolish. Asharion looks very grave and solemn as we sit together on the floor and Lara looks fierce and ready to stab a man. I love our children very much. It will take them time, and grace, to process this. I wish I had it to give them.
Tiber has his sword on his belt. I desperately don't want him to have to use it. He's seventeen now, a man nearly in truth as well as seeming. Nearly the age his father was when I met him. He's tall and reedy, sprung up like a weed. I never realized but it almost seems to me in that moment that he has his grandfather's eyes. He puts his hand on my shoulder and says to me, "Don't worry, Mom. You don't have to do it alone this time. I got the little ones, okay?"
And that was when it was truly impossible not to cry.
Tiber has his sword on his belt. I desperately don't want him to have to use it. He's seventeen now, a man nearly in truth as well as seeming. Nearly the age his father was when I met him. He's tall and reedy, sprung up like a weed. I never realized but it almost seems to me in that moment that he has his grandfather's eyes. He puts his hand on my shoulder and says to me, "Don't worry, Mom. You don't have to do it alone this time. I got the little ones, okay?"
And that was when it was truly impossible not to cry.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 28, 2024, 12:28 p.m.(8/20/1021 AR)
I've written new verses to an old tune. The old canto is still out there, of course. I don't unwrite anything by these words. But we were friends once, family once. I loved you, Reese. Maybe we fought, maybe we failed to understand each other, maybe we hurt each other sometimes. And it's been years since we spoke like sisters.
But love doesn't die with misunderstanding, and I am proud to have known you. You had an ending to be worth a song.
Princess Ribbons rode to war
boldest, with esprit de corps
conquering hearts left and right
as she raised her shining blade to fight!
But the lady took no prisoners
With no more than a glance in particular;
She was matchless, unattached
While those Bringers she dispatched
None could claim her, nor dared try
’Twas the fire in those bright blue eyes
While she blew ‘em apart, cut ‘em in half
Smashed ‘em flat and crushed the chaff—
Our Princess Ribbons is no more
A sworn Knight of Gloria stood afore
A blade of light, sheened pink and clear
Unstoppable, unbreakable, showing no fear--
Dame Reese stood strong before the gate
and though she fell, the world's new fate
will owe to the power of her shining sword
where they drove off the sharded horde.
But love doesn't die with misunderstanding, and I am proud to have known you. You had an ending to be worth a song.
Princess Ribbons rode to war
boldest, with esprit de corps
conquering hearts left and right
as she raised her shining blade to fight!
But the lady took no prisoners
With no more than a glance in particular;
She was matchless, unattached
While those Bringers she dispatched
None could claim her, nor dared try
’Twas the fire in those bright blue eyes
While she blew ‘em apart, cut ‘em in half
Smashed ‘em flat and crushed the chaff—
Our Princess Ribbons is no more
A sworn Knight of Gloria stood afore
A blade of light, sheened pink and clear
Unstoppable, unbreakable, showing no fear--
Dame Reese stood strong before the gate
and though she fell, the world's new fate
will owe to the power of her shining sword
where they drove off the sharded horde.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 27, 2024, 10:11 p.m.(8/19/1021 AR)
I don't know what to write.
We fight to secure a future for us all, to prevent the destruction of everything. I've lost a husband to war before. Not a war like this. I don't feel the grief yet, not truly. I know it is coming.
I must strive to keep our children from being orphans. But this is not the kind of fight I can sit out. Nightingale and I will sing each encore til the finish.
Prince Asharion Grayson. Princess Lara Grayson. You are the greatest gift that Ainsley gave to me and to this world. In his memory, you will live, you will thrive, and you will grow strong.
I love you.
We fight to secure a future for us all, to prevent the destruction of everything. I've lost a husband to war before. Not a war like this. I don't feel the grief yet, not truly. I know it is coming.
I must strive to keep our children from being orphans. But this is not the kind of fight I can sit out. Nightingale and I will sing each encore til the finish.
Prince Asharion Grayson. Princess Lara Grayson. You are the greatest gift that Ainsley gave to me and to this world. In his memory, you will live, you will thrive, and you will grow strong.
I love you.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 25, 2024, 10:48 a.m.(8/14/1021 AR)
I have seen wonders beyond the telling and I feel fortunate to be blessed with the power of song.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 15, 2024, 8:03 p.m.(7/23/1021 AR)
I am Tikva, once Laveer, among other things. I have written before, publicly, about being a bastard and what it has meant to me and to my life. I am a daughter of broken vows. Everything I am I owe to the gifts of those who elevated me, and now I stand on my own two feet -- never alone; without surrender.
My father is the Dirge, once called Elegon. I spent years working to restore his sister, once Lia, once the Lianhan, who sang out her life in the War of Stolen Names. Her ghost clung to my soul like a cloak. It is done now. She is returned to the Wheel. She is free.
This is the most powerful truth I have. The last fragments of a broken soul shadowed me, borrowed pieces of my life and wove them with tears of anguish not my own. Her long horror of an undeath is ended and she has returned to the arms of the Queen of Endings. One day, we will embrace again there, like the sisters we once were in a life before this.
But I have a one last measure to sing before I go.
Let's sing it together.
My father is the Dirge, once called Elegon. I spent years working to restore his sister, once Lia, once the Lianhan, who sang out her life in the War of Stolen Names. Her ghost clung to my soul like a cloak. It is done now. She is returned to the Wheel. She is free.
This is the most powerful truth I have. The last fragments of a broken soul shadowed me, borrowed pieces of my life and wove them with tears of anguish not my own. Her long horror of an undeath is ended and she has returned to the arms of the Queen of Endings. One day, we will embrace again there, like the sisters we once were in a life before this.
But I have a one last measure to sing before I go.
Let's sing it together.
Written By Tikva
Dec. 30, 2023, 12:03 p.m.(6/18/1021 AR)
There is a long life ahead in which we can face the battles to come. We will do so free of chains, with heads high and hearts full, and the songs each sings will be her own.
It's always been frightening to be truly free. But you're not alone in this. None of us is.
It's always been frightening to be truly free. But you're not alone in this. None of us is.
Written By Tikva
Nov. 21, 2023, 6:17 p.m.(3/25/1021 AR)
The world is pristine, painted in snow and shining in the light of dawn. The breath on my tongue tastes sweeter than any wine. Spring is coming soon, but winter has its own beauty, crisp and cold and certain. And I love it. This is what possibility tastes like.
Written By Tikva
Nov. 10, 2023, 4:16 a.m.(3/2/1021 AR)
Once, I watched a woman pluck a star from the heavens through the winter branches of the tree in the Shrine of the First Choice. In her fingers the starlight was a gemstone. She gave it to my son with a smile that shone as warm as the diamond was bright.
It's his dearest treasure. He stows it in a secret place where his brother and sister will never find it. He might be too old, now, to acknowledge why it is so important to him.
For me, though, the real treasure was their faces. Gift and wonder, light and delight, a thousand refractions in a moment, and yet somehow as easy a commonplace.
It's his dearest treasure. He stows it in a secret place where his brother and sister will never find it. He might be too old, now, to acknowledge why it is so important to him.
For me, though, the real treasure was their faces. Gift and wonder, light and delight, a thousand refractions in a moment, and yet somehow as easy a commonplace.
Written By Tikva
Nov. 6, 2023, 12:37 p.m.(2/22/1021 AR)
There is one very interesting thing about being a commoner, and it is that the commoners as a rule do not embrace me with open arms as "one of them"; I still spent years being royalty, being paid an exorbitant salary to represent a noble house, clothed in privilege and status. So it is that when nobles do something wildly out of touch, like having heralds run around the city shouting to each other in a back and forth argument about cookies for the poor, I receive the side eye for it: because I am not really one of them, neither common nor noble, neither one thing nor the other, but a creature that exists in a liminal space, writing strange poetry in the marginalia of society.
Of all the things that I did not expect about this life, enjoying this was one. It is a good position to be a bard in, part of nothing but also part of everything.
Of all the things that I did not expect about this life, enjoying this was one. It is a good position to be a bard in, part of nothing but also part of everything.
Written By Tikva
May 29, 2023, 9:21 p.m.(11/24/1019 AR)
In chronicling the history of my life for Vellichor, much of it in these pages is full of the little details of any life. But I don't really know how to write this one.
I was faced with a great choice and made a sacrifice. I do not, cannot, regret it. But while I will always love my children, they remain prince and princess of House Grayson, and ward of House Grayson. I will always be Mom. But I will never more be Grayson, and that is the hardest of this.
To abandon an oath is the thing I hated my mother the most for, yet here I am. Only crownsworn. Only Tikva.
And I love you, I miss you, but I cannot truly be sorry. You will understand one day, I hope.
I was faced with a great choice and made a sacrifice. I do not, cannot, regret it. But while I will always love my children, they remain prince and princess of House Grayson, and ward of House Grayson. I will always be Mom. But I will never more be Grayson, and that is the hardest of this.
To abandon an oath is the thing I hated my mother the most for, yet here I am. Only crownsworn. Only Tikva.
And I love you, I miss you, but I cannot truly be sorry. You will understand one day, I hope.
Written By Tikva
Dec. 26, 2022, 3:59 p.m.(2/13/1019 AR)
A poem:
The bard whose voice is ink
he sings a carol by instinct
I know his tune, I smile to see
Though far apart, a gleam of glee.
The bard whose voice is ink
he sings a carol by instinct
I know his tune, I smile to see
Though far apart, a gleam of glee.
Written By Tikva
Oct. 17, 2022, 2:27 p.m.(8/1/1018 AR)
A verse my son wrote for me, which I must immortalize in my Whites without delay:
Keen blade, keen eye,
For glory be and victory
It's not truer if it rhymes
It just takes me more time.
He's right, you know!
Keen blade, keen eye,
For glory be and victory
It's not truer if it rhymes
It just takes me more time.
He's right, you know!
Written By Tikva
Oct. 4, 2022, 2:51 p.m.(7/3/1018 AR)
It delights me to see the public running outrageous dudgeon about how nasty and tyrannical the Inquisition is ... because back when we were, people feared to say so.
We have centuries of ugly history to live down. It's no surprise that people mistrust. But they feel free to criticize, secure in the knowledge that whatever they say, no one is going to disappear them for imaginary crimes for it. Before Laric took on the mantle, this was not so.
Young inquisitors, junior confessors -- when you hear people jeering you in the street, when you field disrespect for your uniform, remember that sometimes the wages of justice are ugly, but I still prefer the complaining to its absence. People are secure enough to hate you because we have made them safer. People are free to make choices. It's a good thing even if they choose opinions and ideas that hurt our feelings.
Don't worry. Limerance knows when you are true to your oaths and The Sentinel sees all and knows justice. People otherwise will accept you or not; just be at peace with yourself and your own honor. I've always found it enough.
Glory is for soldiers. We must be more pragmatic.
We have centuries of ugly history to live down. It's no surprise that people mistrust. But they feel free to criticize, secure in the knowledge that whatever they say, no one is going to disappear them for imaginary crimes for it. Before Laric took on the mantle, this was not so.
Young inquisitors, junior confessors -- when you hear people jeering you in the street, when you field disrespect for your uniform, remember that sometimes the wages of justice are ugly, but I still prefer the complaining to its absence. People are secure enough to hate you because we have made them safer. People are free to make choices. It's a good thing even if they choose opinions and ideas that hurt our feelings.
Don't worry. Limerance knows when you are true to your oaths and The Sentinel sees all and knows justice. People otherwise will accept you or not; just be at peace with yourself and your own honor. I've always found it enough.
Glory is for soldiers. We must be more pragmatic.
Written By Tikva
July 8, 2022, 10:37 p.m.(12/21/1017 AR)
Privilege is not a sin that requires absolution. Rather, it is a mark of your station and should be both recognized and embraced.
May I suggest, if anyone is feeling particularly ill at ease with their wealth and status as a noble, donations to your friendly local Knights of Solace? I find that where the time and effort fail to do work myself on behalf of the underprivileged or underfed, my coin can certainly do some speaking for me, for those who are organized and dedicated to the task.
It's far more productive than defending oneself to the pages of the Archive, anyway.
May I suggest, if anyone is feeling particularly ill at ease with their wealth and status as a noble, donations to your friendly local Knights of Solace? I find that where the time and effort fail to do work myself on behalf of the underprivileged or underfed, my coin can certainly do some speaking for me, for those who are organized and dedicated to the task.
It's far more productive than defending oneself to the pages of the Archive, anyway.
Written By Tikva
May 7, 2022, 1:42 a.m.(8/7/1017 AR)
The road to Artshall is long, and in high summer, the further you head west and south, the hotter the day seems to grow, or maybe it was just today. Rather than the clustered forests and fragrant meadows of my second home, or the rocky pinnacles and ocean crashing of my first, we took a break for lunch surrounded by reams of lush farmland with the scent of corn on the air and a thousand plump peaches in the fertile orchards of worked by the serfs on the greater outskirts of the duchy's lands, and we shared bread and meat with the knights at the Solace station house where several strapping Oathlands-born women told us stories about the old duke, whom they served when Legate Cassandra was no priest but next in line to rule here.
I've never been here before, and I didn't realize how close their lands were to the Lyceum. I promised that I would find fine presents for all the children while we are at Lady Mabelle's festival, and I'm excited to see the spectacle. Confessor Warren complains constantly about being so far from the city because we are out of our jurisdiction, as though if he can't make an arrest while he's here, he'll be trapped in a doldrum. He evidently has a secret mission from the Master of Questions, but I have a very strong suspicion that his secret mission is to obtain honey candy for Princess Pietra and Princess Kieri while I am not looking . . .
Journeying makes me pensive but the festive nature of it all makes me happy and I am ever grateful both to the steady hand of our hosts for ensuring that we will undertake no threat while we are guests here at Artshall and to the protective hold of Solace upon the roads. The Knights by Gild's grace enable so much civilized travel that it would be so easy to take for granted.
Even the air tastes different so far out in the country, and I've sung so many traveling songs I'm afraid I've gone quite hoarse. Can't stop me now, though.
I've never been here before, and I didn't realize how close their lands were to the Lyceum. I promised that I would find fine presents for all the children while we are at Lady Mabelle's festival, and I'm excited to see the spectacle. Confessor Warren complains constantly about being so far from the city because we are out of our jurisdiction, as though if he can't make an arrest while he's here, he'll be trapped in a doldrum. He evidently has a secret mission from the Master of Questions, but I have a very strong suspicion that his secret mission is to obtain honey candy for Princess Pietra and Princess Kieri while I am not looking . . .
Journeying makes me pensive but the festive nature of it all makes me happy and I am ever grateful both to the steady hand of our hosts for ensuring that we will undertake no threat while we are guests here at Artshall and to the protective hold of Solace upon the roads. The Knights by Gild's grace enable so much civilized travel that it would be so easy to take for granted.
Even the air tastes different so far out in the country, and I've sung so many traveling songs I'm afraid I've gone quite hoarse. Can't stop me now, though.
Written By Tikva
April 25, 2022, 10:42 p.m.(7/13/1017 AR)
Spent a few hours tonight working my way through some old notes on closed files that I never finished wrapping up in the old refectory. Made me miss the old days, really, in so far as I am old enough to _have_ old days. Especially nostalgic was a reference I found to an old chart full of collated evidence that Laric made when we discovered some informants had gone missing. The chart itself is long gone because it was basically a mural, but I remember all of the hours we spent collating paper to line it up, and the headache I had when we saw the sun coming up and we still weren't done . . . so I'm not nostalgic for _that_ part, but gods. The work seems different now, or maybe it's just that my passion is directed differently . . . it's been awhile since I really delved, really had an investigatory puzzle that needed me to take hold with all my teeth.
Also, honestly, . . . I don't know.
To make a record of my days, to memorialize the history of the day, and yet to spend my memorializing of the day rememberancing and nostalgizing about things that are probably findable earlier in my whites. Haha, recursive, isn't it?
I just feel like I used to be a sharper, keener investigator, you know? Or maybe I just was more arrogant. Hmmmmmmmm.
Also, honestly, . . . I don't know.
To make a record of my days, to memorialize the history of the day, and yet to spend my memorializing of the day rememberancing and nostalgizing about things that are probably findable earlier in my whites. Haha, recursive, isn't it?
I just feel like I used to be a sharper, keener investigator, you know? Or maybe I just was more arrogant. Hmmmmmmmm.
Written By Tikva
April 25, 2022, 3:34 p.m.(7/12/1017 AR)
I am a dust mote floating in a ray of light, adrift in the air around me but whirling with each change in the breeze. I glitter as the shine of the sunbeam passes through the window so that you can observe me in my travel and guess at my direction. Without me, the light would still exist, and the afternoon would only be mildly less picturesque.
Yet the infinitesimally small change that would be created by my absence is one that I treasure, because the beauty of the piece is in its wholeness, and I regret nothing about being here. Shine on, light, and I will whirl on with you.
You do not need to make a huge change in the world to matter. Whether you are the mote of dust, the light, the window, the room at large: you are part of the painting, you belong, and your presence enriches the whole.
We are all tiny fragments of a great work of art. Dismiss none.
I just couldn't make this song work so now it's just words on a page. I am stymied, but what I imagine is still meaningful. I only wish I could share it in clear enough terms so that the meaning could reach your heart from mine.
Yet the infinitesimally small change that would be created by my absence is one that I treasure, because the beauty of the piece is in its wholeness, and I regret nothing about being here. Shine on, light, and I will whirl on with you.
You do not need to make a huge change in the world to matter. Whether you are the mote of dust, the light, the window, the room at large: you are part of the painting, you belong, and your presence enriches the whole.
We are all tiny fragments of a great work of art. Dismiss none.
I just couldn't make this song work so now it's just words on a page. I am stymied, but what I imagine is still meaningful. I only wish I could share it in clear enough terms so that the meaning could reach your heart from mine.
Written By Tikva
April 12, 2022, 1:26 a.m.(6/13/1017 AR)
If you are reading this, did I give you my potato?
Written By Tikva
March 18, 2022, 5:34 p.m.(4/20/1017 AR)
Write about your love match when you have been married a few years and you will find others have less judgment of it. No one cares if you love each other after a decade. You grow in the light of Lagoma and walk the path of Limerance.
The proof is in the pudding. The marriage pudding.
The proof is in the pudding. The marriage pudding.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 26, 2022, 12:40 a.m.(1/1/1017 AR)
I swore once that I would write no dirges.
When Princess Sabella first asked for an alliance with House Kennex, I was the Voice of Grayson at the time and she, as yet, was not. I thought she was asking for a silly love match; and I, despite my own marriage, was sworn at the time to protect the House I served from acts of unbalanced affection without political gain.
Sabella insisted that Niklas had much to offer House Grayson and that he would be an asset, and I did not listen. I'm afraid it was a bit of a flaming row. She raged and I dismissed, and then I went to Ainsley and I stormed about her presumption, which was not big of me. Ainsley laughed at me, if I remember rightly, and folded his hands behind his head, and commented that he thought it quite grand that I was now the Voice and not he. He might remember the conversation differently, but this is my white journal, not his.
I hadn't met Niklas, at least not more than an instant in passing.
I chanced to meet the young Lord Niklas in the Ambassador Salon a few weeks after that. It was a chance meeting, and of course, he had no idea he was being interviewed at the time. I recognized in him the keen eyes of a writer, a student of humanity, the kind of man who pays a great deal of attention while pretending he does not. I was friendly and polite and went on my way.
Princess Sabella urged us to have Lord Niklas to dinner and interview him for ourselves. I did not tell her I had already done so, but said that I would, of course, accept such a meeting as it would be my diplomatic duty to do so. I cannot for the life of me remember what happened at the meeting. I believe everyone was on their best behavior and nothing of value was really accomplished. I believed Sabella to be discouraged. By that time, I had already reached out to Ford Kennex to begin negotiations for a treaty.
The treaty I proposed was, in a word, insulting. Beloved Orazio remarked upon it, when I sent it to the Faith for review. The marquis apparently believed that it would be the cost of alliance with House Grayson, and did not even try to bargain. All he asked was that Niklas's plays continue to be published under the nom de plume of Niklas Kennex. It was such a small thing. Of course we agreed.
I think back on that treaty a lot. House Kennex agreed to a significant financial benefit to us, which was written into the agreement as recoupment for the funds that were granted to House Kennex following the abolition of thralldom there. They agreed that several persons of House Kennex would be proteges of House Grayson. They paid it all, timely and correct. Both our Houses prospered. House Kennex has _thrived_ and while I do not claim our alliance sole reason, I can't think that the splendid economic connections we developed following the treaty can possibly have hurt.
I don't know why Ford Kennex never bargained, but I think about it a lot. All he cared about in that negotiation was the happiness of his brother.
Once the treaty looked acceptable to both Houses, I was going to surprise Sabella with it. But she had been so tragic in the intervening time, and then she wrote a white journal that I interpreted as a possible disruption in her relationship with Lord Niklas, and became consumed with anxiety that I had put my foot in it, and bridged this proposal without directing enough communication to its principals . . . But Sabella's words had not been about that at all, and she was so delighted to discover that House Grayson had changed its mind that her shrieks of joy could probably be heard all over the city.
For a long time, I kept that letter in my drawer, while I was still Voice. _There were so many exclamation points._
So many of these matches die aborning, but this one went off without a hitch. The wedding was glorious and both of them were resplendent, of course. Niklas's sense of fashion was spectacular and Sabella is always impeccable. I remember some very elaborate ice sculptures. I vaguely remember some absurdity of Prince Luca's... I wish I could remember more. Time eludes me and it seems so long ago and far away now, like something out of the kind of bedtime story I would spin for Lara and Asharion.
They were larger than life, and they were passionately, absurdly, ridiculously happy together.
Niklas worked very hard to become the Prince of Grayson Sabella had believed from the start that he could be. He kept his hand in playwriting and performance. They made many, many beautiful children. He threw himself into economic study and put that keen mind to use for the benefits of the House. And Sabella bloomed with him. They were practically inseparable. Social darlings, fashionable mavens, the writer and the actress, the dramatist and his muse.
And they have both been deeply important to me, as friends of my heart, at some of the ugliest and most confusing and tragic times of my life in this city. I know that Niklas's tongue could run away with him, his acerbity get him into trouble from time to time. And I know that his glibness sometimes followed onto foolishness and not wisdom. But after all, we are all only human. And he was my family. He chose to be my family, as I chose to be his.
I pray for Princess Sabella today. And I pray for their children.
And to Niklas's soul, in the arms of the Queen of Endings: I promise, I will finish the opera, and whatever tenor I find, he will be beautiful.
When Princess Sabella first asked for an alliance with House Kennex, I was the Voice of Grayson at the time and she, as yet, was not. I thought she was asking for a silly love match; and I, despite my own marriage, was sworn at the time to protect the House I served from acts of unbalanced affection without political gain.
Sabella insisted that Niklas had much to offer House Grayson and that he would be an asset, and I did not listen. I'm afraid it was a bit of a flaming row. She raged and I dismissed, and then I went to Ainsley and I stormed about her presumption, which was not big of me. Ainsley laughed at me, if I remember rightly, and folded his hands behind his head, and commented that he thought it quite grand that I was now the Voice and not he. He might remember the conversation differently, but this is my white journal, not his.
I hadn't met Niklas, at least not more than an instant in passing.
I chanced to meet the young Lord Niklas in the Ambassador Salon a few weeks after that. It was a chance meeting, and of course, he had no idea he was being interviewed at the time. I recognized in him the keen eyes of a writer, a student of humanity, the kind of man who pays a great deal of attention while pretending he does not. I was friendly and polite and went on my way.
Princess Sabella urged us to have Lord Niklas to dinner and interview him for ourselves. I did not tell her I had already done so, but said that I would, of course, accept such a meeting as it would be my diplomatic duty to do so. I cannot for the life of me remember what happened at the meeting. I believe everyone was on their best behavior and nothing of value was really accomplished. I believed Sabella to be discouraged. By that time, I had already reached out to Ford Kennex to begin negotiations for a treaty.
The treaty I proposed was, in a word, insulting. Beloved Orazio remarked upon it, when I sent it to the Faith for review. The marquis apparently believed that it would be the cost of alliance with House Grayson, and did not even try to bargain. All he asked was that Niklas's plays continue to be published under the nom de plume of Niklas Kennex. It was such a small thing. Of course we agreed.
I think back on that treaty a lot. House Kennex agreed to a significant financial benefit to us, which was written into the agreement as recoupment for the funds that were granted to House Kennex following the abolition of thralldom there. They agreed that several persons of House Kennex would be proteges of House Grayson. They paid it all, timely and correct. Both our Houses prospered. House Kennex has _thrived_ and while I do not claim our alliance sole reason, I can't think that the splendid economic connections we developed following the treaty can possibly have hurt.
I don't know why Ford Kennex never bargained, but I think about it a lot. All he cared about in that negotiation was the happiness of his brother.
Once the treaty looked acceptable to both Houses, I was going to surprise Sabella with it. But she had been so tragic in the intervening time, and then she wrote a white journal that I interpreted as a possible disruption in her relationship with Lord Niklas, and became consumed with anxiety that I had put my foot in it, and bridged this proposal without directing enough communication to its principals . . . But Sabella's words had not been about that at all, and she was so delighted to discover that House Grayson had changed its mind that her shrieks of joy could probably be heard all over the city.
For a long time, I kept that letter in my drawer, while I was still Voice. _There were so many exclamation points._
So many of these matches die aborning, but this one went off without a hitch. The wedding was glorious and both of them were resplendent, of course. Niklas's sense of fashion was spectacular and Sabella is always impeccable. I remember some very elaborate ice sculptures. I vaguely remember some absurdity of Prince Luca's... I wish I could remember more. Time eludes me and it seems so long ago and far away now, like something out of the kind of bedtime story I would spin for Lara and Asharion.
They were larger than life, and they were passionately, absurdly, ridiculously happy together.
Niklas worked very hard to become the Prince of Grayson Sabella had believed from the start that he could be. He kept his hand in playwriting and performance. They made many, many beautiful children. He threw himself into economic study and put that keen mind to use for the benefits of the House. And Sabella bloomed with him. They were practically inseparable. Social darlings, fashionable mavens, the writer and the actress, the dramatist and his muse.
And they have both been deeply important to me, as friends of my heart, at some of the ugliest and most confusing and tragic times of my life in this city. I know that Niklas's tongue could run away with him, his acerbity get him into trouble from time to time. And I know that his glibness sometimes followed onto foolishness and not wisdom. But after all, we are all only human. And he was my family. He chose to be my family, as I chose to be his.
I pray for Princess Sabella today. And I pray for their children.
And to Niklas's soul, in the arms of the Queen of Endings: I promise, I will finish the opera, and whatever tenor I find, he will be beautiful.
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