I’ve been thinking for a while that Gideon knew she loved Harrow first, but Harrow’s gonna say it first.
With what we know about how Gideon thinks Harrow erased her because she didn’t care about her, multiplied by Kiriona’s overt anger (and covert sadness), I can imagine that she wouldn’t admit that she loves Harrow in so many words. Sure, she’ll go on about devotion, and she’ll throw herself on a spike for her. But she’s not gonna say it. And yet, as Palamedes told her: evidence outweighs testimony.
…Whereas Harrow was casually tossing out “first flower of my house” in GtN and sobbing into the mattress while “consumed” by “the arson taking place in her heart” as soon as she remembers Gideon in HtN’s Canaan House 2.0. Now that she knows, I don’t think she’s gonna be able to keep it in for too long. If she came back to Gideon just as she was at the end of GtN, I’d be counting down the seconds before she makes some baroque declaration. But she’s not gonna get that. She’s coming back to Kiriona.
In my most self-indulgent fantasies, this ideally happens in a fit of pique after they’ve been reunited and simmering in prickly tension for some time. They’re on their way back from just barely having escaped from some horrible encounter: the adrenaline is flowing, Harrow’s heart is beating fast. Gideon’s would be too, if she had one. Harrow rounds on Gideon to yell at her for doing something impulsive and reckless and putting her life in danger. Gideon lobs it right back at her: why does she care, isn’t that what she wanted? Gideon out of her life forever? And she has no room to talk, she sliced her brain open and risked death just for the chance to be rid of her!
And Harrow just explodes. If there was arson in her heart before, it’s a wildfire now. Gideon’s never seen her like this, her voice already raw and jagged from screaming. She did this all for you! She couldn’t let go! How could you expect her to live knowing she’d destroyed the one thing she loved the most? She had so little time with you and then you went and died and came back wrong, she should have died instead! (There’s probably also some residual plot relevant secrets from their childhood that come to light here.)
And they just duke it out, right there. Gideon can barely process but hey, she didn’t come back wrong, just so you know, but if that’s the price, so be it! And eventually they can stop yelling, but they’re standing so close to each other and their breath is still heaving so loudly in the quiet. The only other sound is the soft lapping of the water, because did I mention? This is all happening while they’re crossing through a body of saltwater for some unspecified reason. And they stay looking at each other in the silence for a long, long moment, until Gideon’s mind catches up with their mouths:
Did you say you love me?
