Betrayal would be a different sort of sick.

She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.

...there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.

Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.

Roses are for love. Not silly sweet-hearts' love but the love that makes you and keeps you whole, love that gets you through the worst your life'll give you and that pours out of you when you're given the best instead.

If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.

What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.