The Dragon Prince's Consort

Forty-Three

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?"