She had to make room for other stuff! Like Vanyel brooding about his family, and music, and clothes, and magic horses, and his evil tutor, and etc.

I was really surprised when I reread them a while back and realized how abrupt and weird that whole romance was. His aunt shows up just a couple hours after it begins to give a speech validating it. Because his boyfriend was talking to her telepathically, about his self-esteem and identity problems, while they were still in bed together! Word-count-wise, people spend more time talking about their relationship than they do talking to each other.