In lieu of screencaps (please, someone make a movie of these books!), have this artwork made by FlourishingFables--available on Etsy!
*Spoilers.*
Oh, how I love Shiori and Takkan. Shipping isn’t usually my go-to instinct with stories I consume, but when a pairing works for me, they really work. These two are a delight on the page from the jump.
Shiori meets Takkan under incredible circumstances, to say the least. Both are pretending to be someone other than they are. Oh yeah, and Shiori is under a curse; a wooden bowl on her head obscures her face, and she can’t speak, having been told that one of her brothers will die for every sound she utters. Thrown from the palace, she’s posing as a poor girl named Lina, working in the kitchen of an inn. Takkan stays overnight with some of the other sentinels, a brief pause in their search for the missing princess and princes, Shiori and her brothers.
One of the first and strongest signs that Shiori and Takkan’s strands of fate are knotted together is the fact that he’s able to understand her gestures and mouthed words. Many don’t have the patience or the temperament to understand her, but nearly from the beginning, Takkan has entire conversations with Shiori, and not one-sided ones, either. He’s kind to her and doesn’t look down on her for seemingly being poor and mute or fear her as a demon (which is what many who encounter her in her cursed state believe.)
Shiori doesn’t learn who Takkan really is until the second time they meet. That’s a fairly loaded matter, since they’ve actually been betrothed for years (shades of Aurora and Phillip from Sleeping Beauty.) In fact, the book begins with Shiori running out on officially meeting him at court. By the time she discovers the truth, she’s been taken to his home in Iro, again working in the kitchens. When Takkan is gravely injured, she’s able to coax him to eat with the same radish soup she’d made back at the inn, at which point his family regards her with gratitude rather than suspicion.
Another major sign for these two is the fact that Takkan’s beloved little sister Megari takes an immediate liking to Shiori. Bright and inquisitive, Megari is also unbothered by Shiori’s curse and seeks to foster an eager friendship with her, one that only deepens after Takkan recovers.
I love that Takkan is warm and creative and follows his own masculinity instead of conforming to what he’s “supposed” to be. I love that he woos Shiori, in an understated fashion, by telling her stories. And I love that, as their lives only get more and more complicated, he rolls with her no matter what.
I love that Shiori is impulsive and goodhearted and stubborn in the best ways. I love that she’s charmed by Takkan’s occasional shyness and his unself-conscious love for Iro, seeing his home through his eyes. And I love that, even when she’s offered a life wed to the dragon prince Seryu in the second book, she only has eyes for her sentinel back on the surface.
Both books test the two of them greatly. As Shiori wrestles with the mighty tasks placed upon her, she doubts herself even as she presses on the best she can. Throughout, Takkan is beside her every chance he gets, doing anything to help and protect her even to his own detriment.
It’s just so lovely. It’s wonderful to see their relationship form amid curses and threats, to be nurtured by stories and bowls of soup, and to persist through separations and trials. Theirs is a love so unbreakable that not even a goddess could deny it, which is every bit as it should be.
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