Beloved Odilia,
There is so much I wish I could say to you. This distance between us is like a wound in my heart, the worst and cruelest of Kushiel’s punishments. My heart weeps its lifeblood, my eyes weep neverending tears hidden in the night for the loss of your comfort in my arms. My eyes miss the sight of your beauty, my ears miss the music of your laughter, my hands miss the soft touch of your skin. So much of the King that I am was shaped by your hands, by the counsel you gave to me those years ago when I was a boy just becoming a man, and you showed me the light of the night that you are in your Dahlia House.
You are still the light of my nights, even with the nights I have spent alone separated from you. I look out the windows of my palace to the glow of Mont Nuit and am ever more resolute that you are the star Azza himself hung in the sky by which I set my course. The first night I saw you, I never wanted that night to end, I never wanted to return to a life without you with me, without you near.
But here we are now, more apart than we were even before we met, for now I have known what it is to have your beauty in my eyes, your warmth in my arms, your comfort and counsel at my side. To be without you, my beloved, my everything, is to be empty and hollow. A hollow man wearing a hollow crown, gilded only on the outside so the world can see what they expect to see. A king. But you know the truth of my soul, the truth of my self that was shown to you on the day that I thought was the start of my joy.
I am sorry for what these months have done to you, what this quest of the court to find me a queen has done to us. You know what my desire is, if I were free to do as I wish, but a King is not free. I must follow Elua’s Precepts, but Elua’s Precept only governs how we love, not how we rule. A King needs a Queen, and there is nothing that I wish more than to craft a crown of dahlias to put on your head. But I know you, my heart and my everything, and I know you would refuse. Please do not hate me for seeking to appease the nobles and choosing another for the place at my side that should be yours.
Please, Odilia, do not let this wound become a distance insurmountable between us. I will break this mountain apart with my bare hands if I must to return to your arms again. Since the night that you looked at me and saw my self and not my title, I have known I was yours. I am meant to be in your arms, in this Terre D’Ange and in the True Terre D’Ange Beyond. Please, Odilia, I beg you, not as your king, but as your Gustav, please find a place for me in your heart again. I fear I may die without your love sustaining me, for my heart is in your care and gone from my chest since the time I placed it in your hands those years ago.
Forever yours, my delight. Forever yours, my everything. Forever yours, my love.
Gustav