There’s a book series I’m enjoying called The Locked Tomb. The first book, Gideon the Ninth [for which there will be spoilers], is about two young women who grew up together with no socialization with anyone else their own age, because everyone else on the planet is ancient and none of the other children – survived – except for the pair of them. These women – Harrow and Gideon – hate each other from birth, and they spend most of their lives trying to make each other miserable in ways that are, without question, traumatic and abusive. You could make the excuse that they were only children, neglected and brought up in a desolate environment without love, you could make the excuse that they’ve both lost everything and internalized the idea that this was their own fault and that their best coping mechanism is to take this out on each other  – but this does not explain away the fact that they treated each other badly. This is important for the sake of the story.

Harrowhark is the reverend daughter, the cult leader of her house by virtue of her family’s social status. She is also a necromancer of considerable ability. She’s good at death magic, especially bone magic. She can do weird but impressive things with skeletons. Harrow wants to answer the emperor’s call for help from his necromancers, hoping to travel away from her home and study to become a Lyctor, which is a more powerful and nearly immortal/invincible form of necromancer. Harrow thinks if she accomplishes this task, she will be able to return home restore her house to its former glory.

Harrow will not be able to complete this task alone. She requires a cavalier, a partner to accompany her on her journey, a soldier who is trained as a swordsman and is sworn to protect her necromancer from harm. Literally the only viable candidate for cavalier primary on the entire planet is Gideon Nav, Harrow’s arch nemesis, who is – in the opening pages of the first book – caught red handed trying to run away from home, not for the first time.

Gideon is the kind of person who doesn’t have much in this life except for her yearning to escape from a bad home, the muscles she built from scratch with pushups and situps on the floor of her cell, her dirty mind and her magazines, and her (justified) hatred for Harrow. Because agreeing to assume the role of Harrowhark’s cavalier is Gideon’s best chance to leave the Ninth House and never return, she agrees to serve. Reluctantly. She can see no better alternative.

As they set out on their journey, they have no idea how their trials will bring them closer together in unexpected ways, how they will grow to look out for and care for each other, how each of them will betray the other, and all of the things each of them will sacrifice for the sake of the other in the end.

I suppose you could try to interpret their story without acknowledging that these two characters love and are in love with each other. Romance or marriage between a cavalier and a necromancer is taboo everywhere except for the fifth house, and possibly the sixth. We know both of these women are queer. We know this because one of them, Gideon, never stops thinking about titties and is flattered by the attentions of an older woman who has been slowly dying for a long time. The other girl, Harrow, is canonically obsessed with the corpse of a beautiful woman. We know they’re both queer, we just don’t know if the narrative is ever going to serve us, the readers, this particular lesbian couple. I guess you could read this story without interpreting the relationship between Harrow and Gideon as a tragic slow burn enemies to lovers romance. You could, if you wanted to, do that. It’s just that the books would be boring as all hell without Griddlehark.