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Chrysalis pampers you and pleasures you, cuddles and coddles and crafts you to suit her needs. Sweet treats and a collar just for you? Why, of course, darling. You’re her precious pet, her trophy and keepsake. She assuages your anxieties, if she can; kindness is only a means to an end for her. A source of love is all she needs.
But soon, she finds herself weakening. The fortress of her heart is not so closely guarded as she assumes, and your love for her flares like a flame. A spark so brilliant that even such a one as she cannot ignore.
She allows you to get close, even as she knows she cannot. Secrets spill from her jaws like oil. Her praise becomes more frequent, personal and trivial. Her belly swells and softens, heavy with your devotion; her chitin relaxes, her armor laid down. You’re only a pony, of course, a token clinking with affection, a tame pup lying by her side. But you love her.
Her scars, her aches, her wounds—you know them all. Every rage-kindling matter and every soothing balm. Your cage becomes finer, burnished and gilded, but its bars weaken as you entrap her. You’re not as innocent as you seem, although she remains willfully ignorant. Perhaps both of you are manipulators, honey on your tongue and blood glistening on your teeth. Perhaps she looks and cannot face it.
Kindness is only a means to an end, and every flattery false, but oh, she loves you. Like one pebble inciting an avalanche, like a hawk preening a dove, she has fallen.
Romance is nothing but nourishment to her, merely some saccharine succor to suckle. You can relate, in part—courtship has always been a mystery.
The two of spend years together. You, no longer a consort or a courtesan to be conquered. Her, a queen mightier than most, caring for you honestly at last.