We would never have been friends.

Different worlds, different expectations, how should we have crossed that gap? History and tradition are wider than any winedark sea.

Still: we might not have been enemies. What was he to me, or I to him, beyond the convenience of a moment’s politicking? A marriage against a civil war, no more, and such things are as honored in the breach as in the observance; swear us safe and powerful and i would as liefer lived my own life as live hers.

I cannot find it in me to fault her, even now. Did she not do as much or worse for his weal? Was it not his place to weigh costs and futures? He claimed a throne; what were we but kingdoms?

We would never have been friends, but we might have been more than sisters. Now, past burning, I can see her rage, value her fury: were things different, I might have done the same. But nothing is more damning than what need not have been. Sister mine, Medea, these men have turned us one against the other; your only sin was their success!