Eren shrugged. “As you say. When the Elders emerge, all will be clear. And you and I will both obey whatever they say.”
“Of course I will,” Eleya said, prompting Eren to glare at her.
Then he turned to Isolde. “You must not worry, human. When the Elders confirm I was right to protect Rhea, I will make sure you are safely escorted back to Terra.”
Isolde didn’t believe him for a second. What was weirder was that she didn’t feel the temptation to. Being homesick for so long and wanting nothing more than to escape the insane mess she had somehow gotten herself into, it had boiled down to her not wanting to go home. She didn’t feel Terra’s call any more, not even Rhea’s. All she wanted was to be wherever Diego was.#p#分页标题#e#
“I will stay with my gerion,” she told Eren. The senator gave her the fakest consoling smile she had ever seen.
“Of course,” he said, with all the compassion of death itself. “Only he has decided to challenge the newest addition to our armies. General Crane is a formidable fighter, as is, of course, Diego. Still, I would not bet on the outcome.”
“Diego will win,” Isolde found herself saying. She did that often of late, coming to defend Diego’s honor without really planning to and knowing he didn’t need it. “He killed General Gawen, he can win against Crane as well.”
Eren nodded, but it was like someone amusing a child. “Gawen was a great fighter, indeed. But I imagine against him, Diego had a spear, did he not?”
Eleya suddenly stood very rigid. Isolde nodded carefully. “He did, yes.”
“He is good with all weapons,” Eren said, not a shred of compassion in his cold eyes as he clearly enjoyed delivering the bad news. “Which is why General Crane has chosen they will use none.”
Eleya was shaking with fury, but even Isolde knew they could do nothing to object. Challenges were fought with the weapons the challenged selected. It was Crane’s right to choose to fight unarmed, even if it was rare for the Brions to use anything other than their signature spears. Another man might have considered the implications of seeming dishonorable, but Crane had no such limitations and neither did Eren.
The senator clearly took pleasure in seeing the array of emotions passing behind Isolde’s eyes. Eleya was speechless as well. She might have guessed, but had still hoped it wouldn’t come to that. However it was already clear as day that fate did not seem to be on their side much as of late.
“Rest easily, then,” Eren said, turning away from them. “It will all be over soon. And you can go home and forget all about the Brions.”
---
They had set aside rooms for her in the senator’s palace. Despite the danger still lurking around her, although none of them were certain any more if anyone planned to harm her, Isolde had asked for privacy. Deliya and Narath had taken up their positions by her door, making it feel just a bit homey.
Homey. Isolde almost snorted at the idea that home now meant the Triumphant for her, apparently. It was amazing how quickly someone could get attached to a place they hadn’t wanted to go to in the first place. Yet she missed her room, missed Diego’s rooms, missed him.
One entire wall of her room was basically missing, with only two large pillars separating the balcony floor. There she stood, watching Briolina through the protective shield around the palace.
It was not as ugly a planet as she had imagined. Eleya had been right about that. Even the nature seemed wild, but in a way that reminded her more of untouched reservations where nature went where it wanted without anyone trying to bar its way. The capital of Briolina sparkled in the light of day, its citizens carrying on with their lives, unaware of the danger they were all in. She felt for them, now that she knew the Brions a bit better.
Yes. Eleya had been right. There was nothing wrong with Briolina itself as much as she had seen. The people seemed to be pretty much the same as on the Triumphant. No one looked at her weirdly, on the contrary, she truly seemed to be the small wonder Eleya had assured her she would be. Isolde longed to explore the planet further. With Diego at her arm, she could go anywhere, press her lips to his when no one was looking, have him take her under the immense colorful trees, scream her pleasure for the general, not caring who heard…
Isolde wondered how she had missed the moment when she had lost the fight with herself.
She guessed it had been Eleya. Something about the way the senator had phrased the whole question had made her realize she had misunderstood all of them. When they had kept telling her that any Brion woman would have been overjoyed to have Diego for a gerion, Isolde had assumed they meant she should have been publicly drooling all over him and jumping out of her skin for a famous general. Partly true, but not entirely so.
What they had meant, but it only occurred to Isolde when Eleya said it, was that it could have been so much worse. The binding was sacred to the Brions. Damn oversimplifying and all that, but she had never thought of what kind of a terror it was to the Brions themselves. All the galaxy heard was that it was the Brion way and the binding always made the couple happy and they were meant for each other. Isolde had thought there was something wrong with her, that the fact she wasn’t losing her mind in thankfulness meant that perhaps the bond, or she, was somehow flawed.#p#分页标题#e#
It made sense, especially to an ethnographer, that the Brions would deny and hide the more complicated versions of the binding. Would deny that fate didn’t always make everything easy. It was logical to hide something they had to have been afraid of themselves, if Brions even felt fear. Eleya had spoken of praying.
Isolde couldn’t imagine sitting and waiting for her fated to come and claim her only to find he was nothing like she’d wanted him to be. With a moment to sit and gather her thoughts that had been running all over the place, Isolde finally felt like she was on the same page with them.
They hadn’t meant “oh look at that hunk of a man, don’t you want to climb that like a tree”.
All true. And she did.
They had rather meant “Diego is a good match”. Not just for having the body of a Greek god and a voice that made Isolde’s legs tremble and eyes that made her forget her own name.
Also true.
It could simply have been… so much worse. So there Isolde was, the gesha to a man who was not only gorgeous on a level that bordered on ridiculous, but who also adored her completely and was willing to fight for what was right.
Which raised the question of why exactly was she still saying no? All her life she hadn’t really wanted anything with a passion, had always been lukewarm to any of the options. Now she had something she wanted so much it hurt, when it could have hurt in so much better ways – when it could have been the sweet, ecstatic pain of being filled with a cock that huge, having Diego all to herself and not coming out of the bedroom for weeks to make up the time they’d lost.
Having her general fuck her until she couldn’t walk and then simply being with him. That was the pain she wanted, not ripping her mind in two by trying to refuse something she wanted more than anything. It wasn’t merely physical either. Diego called to her, in his entirety. They were one.
Isolde shook in frustration. She should have told him, should have told Diego when she left the station. Definitely should have told him before he fought that beast who could easily kill him…
She dashed out of her room.
--
Isolde found Eleya in her office or whatever passed for it in the great palace. The Brions stared at her as she hurried, Deliya and Narath making way for her. Some of them seemed pretty important, one or two wore senator’s robes and Isolde probably should have stopped to greet them, but she had denied herself for too long. She had to tell Diego. At least that. If he died, if she never got to be in his arms again, at least he’d know…
Eleya was, Isolde noticed with slight annoyance, not surprised in any way. The senator smiled as words simply poured out of Isolde, uncontrolled, unchecked. Telling her anything she could to convince Eleya to let her speak to Diego.
“It is not that uncommon for someone to have an epiphany before fighting Crane,” Eleya said, amused. “Only usually it is the one fighting him reevaluating his life choices.”
“Can you send him a message?” Isolde pleaded. The focus of her life had suddenly become getting those words to Diego.
“He is already on his way to the arena,” Eleya said, regretfully this time. “We will join him there.”
“Can I see him before the fight?”
“No. But we can take seats right at the edge. He can see you there.”
It had to be enough, although Isolde would have preferred not to have thousands upon thousands of Brions as an audience to her confession.
Deliya and Narath joined them in the wait to the beginning of the fight suitably held very close to the senators’ palace. On the walls of Eleya’s office, screens showed the arena, clearly the event of the year.
“Everyone is rooting for Diego,” Deliya said supportively. “There should not be sixteen generals. Eren is not making himself popular with this. And everyone knows Crane is unfit for command.”