All it took was one look at his face.
Last week had been the worst week of Mia's short, charmed little life. The man she had been engaged to since childhood ran off with a mistress just before the ball. The moisture from her tears undid any taming of her hair that had occurred in preparation for the ball. Her world was a whirlwind of indescribable pain she thought could only happen in the fairy stories she read when she was young. She had thought to tear her gown to shreds if she wasn't undone by the loveliness of it every time she looked at it.
Her grandmothers attended her and told her that it was her ex-fiance's shame that would be with him the rest of his life, that she was innocent and had done nothing wrong (she had indeed done absolutely nothing at all - they had never met before and were supposed to on the night of the ball).
Eventually, Mia choked back her tears, allowed her servants to dress her, and went to the ball. It was on the arm of her butler instead of her intended, but she tried not to think about how it looked.
It was the first party she had been to of this size, thrown by the Emperor himself, and she had been looking forward to it all year. It felt so different from the other balls she'd been to in the past. The walls of the Imperial Palace were taller than her family's villa, and the music echoed off them magnificently, but it couldn't make her forget her pain. Her mother and father ordered her to smile, and like a good little girl who wanted to make her family look good in front of Emperor Solus, she put on her sweetest face.
Her butler had known all the dances for years, but she felt like an inanimate doll the longer it all went on. A servant was forbidden to touch a noble, so they each worked with polite hands as they danced, but she longed for true attention, and the warmth of someone taller than her who wasn't forbidden from physical contact. It was then that she happened upon a face in the crowd that stood out to her, whose expression echoed what she felt inside.
A young man with white-gold hair was dancing with an older woman that appeared to be either his mother or grandmother. His strong-jawwed and handsome face was wrought in an expression she recognized as regal restrained annoyance. As soon as the current dance ended and she could escape her butler's fussing over her, she made her way over to him.
The intensity in his bright yellow eyes pierced her composure, causing her to stutter as she tried to introduce herself. "P-pardon me, my lord, I am Mia cen Veron. I noticed you across the dance floor earlier. I sense we might have something in common, so I wanted to make your acquaintance." She had taken two drinks off a tray as pretense to break the ice and offered the young man his. Their fingers touched and her heart soared.
"Varis yae Galvus, my lady, if it please you," he bowed as was proper for speaking with a woman outside the imperial family. In shock, she took a step back when she realized she was addressing the emperor's grandson himself.
"F-forgive my overstep, your majesty!"
"Think nothing of it. If anyone chastises you, I will see that they are quieted."
"Thank you, your Grace...!"
"I would prefer to insist you call me by my given name, but that would endanger you needlessly. Please then, you don't look quite as agitated as I feel this night. Why do you find my scowling of kindred sort?"
Mia recounted the story of her fiance gloomily and the telling of it softened his expression. She ended with, "...any smile I make is a mask, meant for others to enjoy."
"Then smile no more for now, honored guest of mine."
Mia looked down for a moment and let the last tears fall from her eyes. "Thank you, your Grace."
"Would you like to know why I'm not smiling?"
"I dare not invite scandal, my lord, but I am curious."
"There are things I suspect that are wrong on a grand scale, yet raising my voice without evidence will do no good. For the time being, masking my face in a permanent scowl is a good defense against those who would suspect I know too much." A rare upward bend of his mouth crossed his face and she tried to keep from blushing.
"That seems an intelligent way to go about that indeed, my lord."
Varis bowed a bow specially reserved for commending his lessers without seeming an equal. "And I see you have been trained properly in just what to say to royalty. Your face shows subtle truth to your words, but believe me, I'm not as smart as I need to be for what I'm dealing with." The sour look returned, but Mia was still enchanted. "I seem to impress you nonetheless?"
"You've given me reason to smile where I have not this past week."
"To celebrate the occasion, would you like to dance?"
Her eyes widened. "It would be an honor, your grace!"
They both put on their best dour faces at first, but the longer they danced, the more each was genuinely smiling. Near the end of the ball, Varis escorted her back to her starstruck mother and father and introduced himself to them. Before they left, a letter was pressed into her butler's hand with the imperial seal.
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The letter, from Varis and addressed to Mia, gave her permission to write to him (as required by the rules of court). The contents of the letters were to have their seals unbroken, with severe penalties upon exception.
He wrote to her of his vague misgivings about his family and of her beauty, wishing to know when the next time would be appropriate to see each other again, as it was unbefitting of royalty to visit a house lower than his own, and his movements were watched closely enough that he wasn't willing to risk a slight that might bring the wrath of his betters down upon her family.
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"Tis a terrible cage in which we must live, propriety. When I was a very young boy, I wanted nothing more than to run away and live among the wolves, that way I could be free of things like peerage and practiced grace and pretending to like people you really don't."
Mia sighed. "Though I had no will to run away, I wish I were brave enough to not be so entrapped myself."
"Mia, with your permission, I would like you to read some of the histories of our country, and I want to help sharpen your critical thinking skills so that you may protect yourself from the monsters that court creates. It is the way of the nobility to keep their children soft, but I care for you enough that I would see you able to defend yourself."
"Of course, my lord."
"You are of noble birth, and above most of your peers at court, now, especially now what I am pursuing you, but this has also put you in a sphere above your previous one. You stand to be surrounded by people who are explicitly trained to make you doubt your worth, but know this - your worth is given, as is every man's - at birth. No matter your stature or stars, your deeds increase your nobility, not your birthright. Please promise me to commit this to heart, my dear Mia."
=============
It didn't take very long before she was spending a day at the palace every week, then every day. Several balls passed and they danced on front of their families in the presence of others with exaggerated politeness as to not invite criticism from the higher-rollers within the court, but when the crowd dispersed, they spun around in the gigantic grand hall as if they were teenagers.
An envoy came to Mia's family house and verified her noble blood ahead of Varis' official proposal.
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