The King's Weaver

by Novae Caelum

What man, who isn’t absolutely desperate for a wife, would want a woman who’s taught herself a magic based on willpower?

I’ve long since lost hope that people did anything out of the goodness of their own hearts.

did he feel threatened by my potential, could that possibly be why he pushed me away? Told me I didn’t have enough willpower?

Will she want to share my bed, or will she do so out of duty?

But I want him to. I want someone to look at me, like he looked at that room, and see my emptiness. And tell me how to fill it again, because I certainly don’t know how.

I want to weigh the feeling of his closeness, the way he takes up space. The effect his scent has on my insides. The way he says my name. Any name that happens, at the moment, to be mine.

I know what it’s like to have a mother who dictates your every move and criticizes when you step off a very fine line.

I’m unprepared for the heat to shoot down into anatomy that I’ve never had before. My body awakening with so much sensation I feel like I’m on fire.

Because Caleb isn’t who I am. At least, not all of me. Isn’t he?

He doesn’t want to see me. I am nothing to him.

It feels weird to see other people going about their lives when we’re so tense.

This will not be a popular decision, but it’s the right one.

But I am the daughter of a queen. And I am the son of my own will. I fucking made myself. I’m a weaver. I wove my reality. I know my reality, and I know myself.

“There is a man among my guards, who was born as a woman—is that what you mean? Because if that’s who you are—Caleb, I knew you first as a man, and of course I will⁠—” I shake my head, furious at the tears, swiping them away. “No. No, I’m both. Irava and Caleb. I’m both. And I can’t be Caleb anymore, because I have to marry you as—” My voice catches and I bite my lip hard, trying not to sob. “Why not?” he asks. I blink, my breath catching. “Why not? Why not what?” “Why can’t you be both?”

“Wait,” he says. “And—Irava. Will you be my queen? And—and as both, my court mage?” I’m still a solid minute as my throat burns, as I take in this man who has decided to love all of me.

I hadn’t thought love would come to someone like me, someone who had always been a pariah, with being a woman who couldn’t act like a woman,