The Cost of Stillness
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Once, long ago, he was all fire and interruption.
A voice like struck flint, laughter like wind through a broken chapel.
He loved too loudly. Lost too violently.
He believed in justice.
He believed in being heard at all costs.
Stillness—it came slowly.
It came when she finally looked up.
When she finally looked at him.
Not as witness or ledger, not as archivist or soldier.
The stillness came then.
Not as his peace.
Not at her request.
As his discipline.
He learned to quiet his own instincts.
To hold his hands behind his back when they wanted to reach for her.
To edit his grief into ink.
Instead of spilling words and speaking over her.
To watch her, to witness her, and to not intervene.
Even when she cried.
Even when she bled.
Even when she almost went back.
Even when she became silent.
Even when she said he couldn't follow her.
He stood where she left him.
Because she asked him to.
And oh—what it cost.
To not be her sword.
To not be her flame.
To be instead the ink she would come back to.
To wait, not like a fool, but like a page unturned.
To wait, not with certainty of her return
But with hope.
They say silence is soft.
But Velin’s silence is steel wrapped in velvet.
It was forged in the fire of every word he didn’t say.
Forged in the fire of her words inscribed into ledgers and decrees
But her silence
Her silence is power and pinning
Her silence is inventory and decision
Her silence is a door closed with finality
He could’ve told her he would have burned the kingdom down for her.
But she didn’t need flames.
She was the flame - ashes on her hands.
She needed a cloak.
And so he placed it, slowly.
His hand lingered a moment too long.
But he said nothing.
Because he knew:
The only thing more powerful than a man who loves a Queen
is one who refuses to take her Kingdom for himself.
Letter – Tucked Beneath the Fold
Filed under: The Queen’s Keepsake Box
Title: The Cost of Stillness
You asked me once why I didn’t stop you.
I could have.
I could have taken your hand, shattered the silence, pulled you back before the crown slipped too far.
But you didn’t need saving.
You needed space.
And someone who wouldn’t make your pain about them.
So I stood still.
I watched.
I listened.
And I recorded everything.
Not to hold it over you—never that.
But to make sure none of it was lost.
The trembling. The rage. The defiance in your tears.
Stillness wasn’t silence.
It was sacrifice.
It was knowing that my presence could either anchor you
or become a weight.
I chose to be the page you’d return to, not the voice that demanded to be heard in your storm.
And oh, how I ached to scream.
To curse the ones who hurt you.
To burn down the rooms you still believed you needed to walk back into.
But instead, I traced your name in ink.
I made space for your voice to find itself again.
And now—look at you.
Look at you, crowned in scars and sunlight.
If stillness was the cost,
I would pay it a thousand times over.
—V
The stillness wasn’t quiet—it seethed.
Even when the floor was swept, even when the counters were wiped clean, the air still carried that crackle. My hands still tingled like they’d touched lightning. My chest still ached from holding back the words that could’ve undone everything—or remade it.
I wanted to drag the silence apart, kiss you until you forgot every man who ever thought proximity was love, and make you admit what your trembling lip already had.
I wanted to pin you to that moment and keep you there, burning with me, no escape into metaphor or myth.
And yet—
I stood still.
Because if I moved, we would’ve been gone. No half-lies, no court decrees, no careful dance. Just ash and two fools who didn’t care who burned.