Pulling Ika to a stop, Valen signaled to his bodyguard. "Ben? Can I ask you something?"
Benna halted her mount and the two stood on the edge of the road that led up the slope to the palace compound. "Of course, Your Grace." She flipped the sides of her fur hat up, freeing her ears. It was a clear, spectacular day and the sky above glowed a striking perfect blue, Anun's white sun throwing shards across the snow. Shadows, violet and gray-blue, huddled under the edges of jagged blocks of stone the size of houses, snow hanging off the sides like wet blankets and dripping as it melted. As the air was surprisingly still for this altitude, Benna pulled a burner and a cigarette from her coat and puffed on it. "You've been quiet this morning, what's troubling you?"
Valen looked back at the compound walls as if he expected to see Fang trudging through the snow towards them. At the moment she was probably talking to Abita about her wardrobe for the reception, how they would treat her hair and which pieces of her extensive jewelry collection she would wear – she was much too busy fretting about her clothes to come spy on him in the snow. Valen missed her, even when he went for short rides to exercise Ika, and he knew that had been a factor in his reticence. Finally he turned back to Benna. "It's... it might be a personal question, but I was wondering..." He paused to breathe, pulling cold air through his nose and watching it puff from his mouth. "Did you love Freya's father?"
Ben drew thoughtfully on her cigarette. "I did. It took some time, but after Freya was born I came to realize I did."
"You told me his proposal was a surprise."
"It was," Ben flicked ash from her sleeve. "I hadn't been looking for a prospect, but I was registered as eligible so I left it at that. I wasn't expecting a much older man to take an interest in me, much less send a formal proposal before we even met."
"Hngh," Valen snorted. "That sounds familiar." He hadn't needed to register as available – everyone already knew the Little Drassian was untethered – and he didn't think it would've made a difference if he had. "Did you like him when you met him?"
"I thought he was a good man. He came from a good family, no criminal record, educated, not wealthy but definitely comfortable. I knew he'd give me a stable life and he said he wouldn't stand between me and my Warden training. He was almost my father's age but he never treated me like a child – to him, I was more than a pretty prize." Benna looked out over the mountain ranges, the cliffs and piles of scree dusted liberally with snow and glittering. She seemed wistful, perhaps remembering a simpler time. "When I found out I was pregnant, he told me he would stay with the baby when I went back to training; he would provide for us so I didn't need to worry. I trusted him, and as I got bigger he proved to me he could take better care of our home than I thought. I stayed up late studying for the knowledge exams and he cooked and cleaned, and he made me go to bed when I started nodding off. And when Freya came along..."
She paused and Valen waited. Rodin had never had any business in the palace, but Valen recalled receiving gifts from him as a little boy – books and simple toys, mostly – token things, nothing expensive or flashy. Freya had nothing but good things to say about her father, and for years a much younger Valen often wished Rodin was his father as well. Benna sighed. "He loved Freya from the moment he saw her. He held her while the nurses were cleaning me up, I remember him saying 'she's as beautiful as her mother'. He thanked me, can you believe it? Thanked me for sweating, bleeding and crying on him while I delivered his massive baby. But that's when I realized I loved him – when I saw him holding Freya and staring at her like they'd just handed him a billion kai. He never looked at anything else like that, nothing else in the universe made him so happy."
Valen thought about how his brother Aeden had looked when his daughter was born – he'd hardly put baby Susa down for the first year of her life, carrying the baby girl to council sessions and holding her so Yena could take notes. "Did he ever say if you made him happy?"
"He did." Benna nodded, a ripple of wind fluttering the fur trim on her hat. "He told me he was grateful to have an ambitious woman as his partner, and who wasn't upset that he was so much older. He said it was fine to have a handsome woman, as most men want, but he thought it would be better for his future family if he had a smart one with goals as well. He was a smart man, my Rodin." The Warden smiled. "I miss him."
I miss Fang, and she's right over there. Valen watched a red and gold pennant swirl in the updraft, metallic threads flashing in the bright sunlight. Rodin had passed some years ago, an old man surrounded by his family. Valen hadn't been in touch with him much then, wrapped up as he was in teenage angst and shame at his missed growth spurt.
Benna pinched out her cigarette and tucked the stub away in her coat pocket. "Would this be about your feelings for the Lady Fang?" She smiled at Valen's stunned expression. "I thought as much. When are you going to tell her you're actually in love with her and not just pretending for the people?"
Valen's tongue was wood in his mouth. Was it that obvious? "I-I, um, how did you–"
"With respect, Your Grace, I'm not stupid. You two might be fooling everyone else, but I practically raised you and I know there's more to it than you're telling. So, out with it, what's really going on in that thick head of yours?"
Valen was quiet for a while, looking back over his shoulder again at the palace compound and the waving pennants that reminded him of Fang's silky hair. Then he drew a long breath and let it out as a longer, sadder sigh. "Ben, I'm in trouble."
The Warden Shrugged, unfazed. "Wouldn't be the first time."
He shot her a look, which Benna ignored. "You're right, though. I am in love with Fang. I tried not to be, but..."
"But you didn't realize how hard that would be?"
"No, I didn't realize how fast it would happen, or how much I would come to care for her in such a short time. I used to think that if she had to stay with me for years, then maybe we'd become good friends. But now... Now I'm afraid of what could happen if she finds out how I feel."
"What makes you think she doesn't feel the same way?"
Valen scoffed. "Tch, as if a woman like Fang would ever fall in love with a runt like me. There's no point in being my Lady – I'm never going to sit the Dragon Throne, so she'll never be a Dragon Empress. All I'm ever going to be is either a governor or some minor official, which is good enough for me but for her..." He sighed again. "It's not fair to her, not after I promised I'd set her free."
Ben's amused expression abruptly changed to alarm, yellow eyes flying wide. "You did what? When? Does your father know about this? Val– I mean, Your Grace–"
"He doesn't, and I would appreciate it if you kept it between us." Briefly Valen contemplated telling Benna of his plan to declare Fang his Lady Consort, but by the set of her ears and the anxious lashing of her tail at Grandmother's flanks he didn't think the moment was appropriate. The timing has to be perfect, one wrong word at the worst time and no one will take it seriously. "Just promise me your support when I need it, please? I'm doing this for her, I'm trying to give Fang her life back."
"I thought you were in love with her?"
Valen's hearts sank into the snow under Ika's belly. "I do love her, which is why I have to let her go."
"Let her go..." Benna's brow furrowed and she turned to look at the palace compound carved into the belly of the mountain. "So she knows you're planning to send her away?"
"I'm not going to send her away, I'm trying to make it so she can leave on her own. I want her to know she can stay, if that's what she wants."
"Have you told her?"
"Of course I have, but..." This was the part that made him feel the most guilty. "I want her to want to stay, but I don't know how to do that. I don't want to make her stay, either – if I make her stay with me, she'll grow to resent me eventually. Besides, if I make her stay then I'll have broken my promise."
Benna nodded and rubbed her chin with a gloved hand. "True... Eyah, you really have done it, haven't you Your Grace? Legally you can keep her, but you don't want to, but you do want her to stay... Ashes, you really don't know how to make things easier on yourself, do you?"
Valen shrugged. "If I knew how, I would've done it already."
"How would you feel if she did leave? If she said 'I've had a wonderful time but now I'm free, see you whenever'?"
Cracks, finer than baby hair and twice as cutting, crinkled the edges of Valen's twin hearts. I don't really know what it would do to me. It would hurt, of course, and Valen certainly wasn't looking forward to the day Fang smiled at him for the last time. He tried not to imagine her reaction when he told her she was free to go, not wanting to see the light in her face as she began to gather her things. I think it would hollow me out, after which I might collapse. Living as a hollow man wasn't exactly unfamiliar, but Valen very much did not want to remember what it felt like to wake up every day in the same enormous, empty bed and go through the motions of his life. "I can't let my feelings get in the way of her happiness, Ben. I can't stand that she's being kept here as it is, I don't want to think about how it would feel knowing I'm the thing that's keeping her. The guilt would eat me alive, and I don't think I could enjoy having her around if I knew she wasn't happy."
"But you would let her go," Ben commented. "Even if it killed you, you'd let her leave because you think her feelings are more important than yours."
"Yes, that's exactly it. If I let her go, at least there might still be a chance she'll come back. Maybe not as my Lady, but I wouldn't turn her away if she did."
"Or not leave at all," Ben suggested. "I still don't think you're considering that she might feel the same way – she might be afraid of you sending her away, or being forced to. She might be just as worried about leaving as you are of letting her go. So, what will you do if she doesn't leave?"
"She will," Valen nodded with confidence. "She'll want to be around humans again eventually." She'll get tired of me at some point, or bored, or decide that the life of a Lady Consort is too much. I won't blame her if she decides to go back to her own people, I'd feel strange around humans if I were in her position. Besides, the idea that she'd want to stay because of him was laughable – him? The Little Prince? The Dwarf Drassian who pawed at her in front of a Federation official and made it look like the two of them couldn't stay off of each other long enough to hold a conversation? She doesn't seem annoyed, but I can't always tell – she doesn't have the ears or tail.
Then again, perhaps Benna had a point – how could he know if she held the same feelings for him if he couldn't always read her body language? Maybe for humans it was easier to hide their emotions because they didn't have tails that wagged or ears that moved independently of each other. But how would he find out? He couldn't just ask Fang if she loved him, that was too blunt and she might get the impression he was gauging her willingness to remain with him. The only way to know for sure is to free her, give Fang her life back and see what she does with it. Valen could only hope he wouldn't accidentally push away the one thing that made his life as a Drassian tolerable, that he wouldn't fumble what was easily the best thing to ever happen to him. Please, whatever she chooses, I just want her to be happy...