“He underestimates his popularity, human. You will be the gesha of a famous general on Briolina, come to protect a tradition we hold very dear. Who do you think would try to hurt you?”
Isolde honestly hadn’t thought about that. One answer still remained.
“Eren,” she said. “The other senators. What about them?”
“Them,” Eleya said with contempt. “Leave them to me. A bunch of cowardly snakes, afraid to accept true responsibility for their choices… Do not worry. Every day Eren keeps hiding from our generals, he hurts himself. Brions do not look kindly upon weakness and on hiding behind stronger men to fight your fights for you. He is not as popular as he thinks.”
“Are you?” Isolde asked. “You think his position isn’t as strong as he perceives it. Is yours?”
Eleya’s smile was almost dreamy as she replied. “Nothing is ever certain. That is the Brion way. If someone challenges me, then that is how it will be.”#p#分页标题#e#
The valor squares going up her slim neck pulsing bright beams of light when she was upset made it difficult to forget that she had been a general – and she did have a temper – but that was one of the moments it was very obvious to Isolde that she was, after all, so very different from the other senators. She hoped Eleya was right.
“Why do you hate Senator Eren so much?” she asked instead.
The dreamy smile was gone in an instant. Isolde thought she might lash out, but the fury wasn’t directed at her.
“You put it well in our meeting: we all keep our reasons.”
When it was clear she wasn’t about to say anything further, Isolde’s wandering mind almost instantly returned to Diego, who seemed to be the beginning and the end to everything these days, the welcome distraction gone. Every free moment she had set her heart thudding faster at the memory of him, turning into a dull constant pain.
The senator, however, kept watching her and finally seemed to come to some conclusion.
“Could you leave us for a moment?” Eleya asked her guards. When they were gone and Isolde was alone with the woman she was still unsure was going to be a great help or stab her in the back, the senator leaned back in her seat and asked bluntly, “Diego would never answer me this, nor forgive me asking in the first place, but you are a human. So tell me, why do you refuse him?”
Isolde glared. The world was going mad, it seemed. Everyone was fighting battles that weren’t theirs. Eleya fought for Rhea, thinking it would be better left to the Brions. Diego fought the Brions, his own people – even if not all of them. Faren had watched his brother die. And now Isolde found herself having to fight the same battle she’d been fighting from the moment this whole gesha thing had come to light.
The one she desperately wanted to lose. The thought of Diego’s hand in hers, his parting words still warming and scarring her heart at the same time, hurt too much even as a private matter. How should she explain this to Eleya, when all she wanted was to be on the Triumphant, screaming her voice hoarse in Diego’s bed while the rest of the galaxy dealt with its own problems for a while.
“If he would not answer, why should I?” she said coldly. “I keep my own reasons.”
Eleya chuckled. “If you must. I suppose that is fair. I am just… interested. Any Brion woman would be glad for him.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Isolde burst out. “Really. Explain to me. Why would I simply accept a man I met not even two weeks ago? Yes, sure, he’s hot and strong and all that, I get that I should cream myself at the thought of him –”
You shouldn’t take the moral high ground on that example, her mind provided helpfully.
“– but I was not brought up this way. Humans want to know the people they bind themselves to for the rest of their lives! I get that this is your way, I really do, that is my bloody job, to understand this, but that does not mean I have to go along with whatever it is you believe. You obey fate, that is fine. Humans like choices. We’re very fond of them.”
A human might have been upset at being yelled at like that, but Eleya didn’t blink an eye. It made sense, Isolde thought, that the Brions were very oddly relaxed about confrontation. It was their way to fight everything, including other people’s opinions… She shut up.
It wouldn’t have done any good to keep screaming, because she might have gotten to the point of not knowing any more why she kept saying no, if it was so clear she could no longer bear to without him, not even for a stupid shuttle ride to Briolina. Already, her hands ached for his skin, her lips for his, her… well, her body had been aching to claim his cock for a while, that was nothing new.
“I understand,” Eleya said, when it was obvious Isolde wasn’t about to continue.
“How? How could you possibly understand? Have you been practically kidnapped from your culture and forced to uphold the ways of another? How do you know what I feel? Are you bound?”
Just as Eleya slowly shook her head, looking her straight in the eye, Isolde finally put the clues together. The hate she’d displayed hadn’t seemed rational to her, but it wasn’t rational, was it?
“I am not, that is correct,” Eleya said. “But I can imagine what you feel.”
Isolde sat, stunned. Eleya sat opposite of her and they both looked at each other, similar in so many ways, trying to bridge the gap that separated their views of the world. Many times, Isolde had tried to imagine what trying to communicate and meet aliens halfway would look like, but she’d always pictured Rhea. This… was different.#p#分页标题#e#
“Him?” she asked finally, her voice much gentler now.
A look of cold fury flashed behind the senator’s eyes, then it disappeared and was replaced with simple regret. “We are both rarities, you see, Isolde,” she said, not adding anything to Isolde’s name to show she was talking to her as a person and not as part of whatever she and Diego were. “You are the first gesha who is not a Brion and I… I am the gesha that rebelled.” Another smile made her eyes flash wildly. “You see, Brions like their choices too, sometimes.”
Isolde hadn’t the faintest how that was even possible. The entire galaxy knew that the Brion matches were indisputable to them.
“You are not the first?” she dared ask.
“No,” Eleya said, taking a drink. Isolde thought they had more in common than she’d have ever guessed. She needed a drink too, which Eleya poured when her eyes had stared at the bottle too longingly. “I am not. At least that is what the healers tell me. But it is rare, so very rare.”
For a long moment, they sat in silence, sipping the alcoholish thing. “I did not mean to offend you by asking, you know,” Eleya said. “I just – really wanted to know.” When Isolde looked at her, the senator appeared, for the first time she’d seen her, relaxed like a normal human. Like a woman – a woman first and a senator and a former general and all the rest second.
Isolde’s resolve not to speak of anything was crumbling before that brutal honesty. She didn’t need to ask to know that what Eleya had trusted her with wasn’t public knowledge in any way. They were the Brions, for gods sake, neither of them could have held high office while defying the most sacred of Brion traditions.
“I’m not honestly sure I am refusing anymore,” she said quietly. “I want him. I really do. But this whole fate thing is so… so…”
“Flimsy?” Eleya asked, smiling. When Isolde nodded, a truly, truly grateful sigh falling from her lips, she nodded. “I know. You have no idea how much I thought that when Eren told me.”
Just for a moment, her eyes were melancholy. Not for him, but for old days full of hope. Only when a surge of compassion shot through her heart did Isolde realize how much of the recent weeks she’d spent pitying herself.
“I had such dreams for my fated,” Eleya was saying, barely noticing Isolde in the midst of her memories. “My brothers took me to watch the fighters when I began my own warrior training. I always wanted a general. I was strong, I would have made such a great match for one. All our generals are older than me, and Faren and Diego were already distinguished fighters. How I dreamed it might be one of them.” She suddenly trailed off, managing a look Isolde was forced to pin down as apologetic. “Forgive me, it is horrible to say that of your gerion…”
“No worries,” Isolde said, smiling. “Any Brion woman, remember?”
Eleya snorted. “Yes. But of course, I had to wait. I was so afraid. You are a researcher, you must know our matches are often the opposites of each other. I feared another general might be too close to what I was myself. I ruled Diego out fairly quickly. He was too much like me. But Faren – I hoped we could be a match of generals. He was the strong, silent, precise type and I was as I am now.”
She went quiet for a moment. “Fate had other plans for me, as it seems. It was not meant for me to be happy. I always hated politicians. I always hated the senators, treacherous even then. Always trying to assert control over the Elders, believing to know better. We are the Brions. We do as the smartest of us think is right. They repulsed me. And of them all, Eren was always the worst.