Chapter 48 – Undaunted

She really had to talk to Gaudbert now, to find out more about Prince Frambert and how the nobility of the Triarchy thought about Prince Gwilet’s conspiracy narrative. For once, he didn’t seem to be with the ladies behind the horse pasture, so Shaelith decided to try her luck at the castle itself.

“Stop!” the man at the gatehouse called out to her. “I have to check if you’re authorized to enter.”

Afraid I’m a siege weapon in disguise?

“Are there many Shaeravyn noblewomen currently staying in Bomfrey?” She raised an eyebrow.

“No, Your Highness, I beg your pardon.” He continued searching for her name on the list and then checked it off. “But rules are rules.”

Shaking her head, she walked through the gate. As soon as she reached the courtyard, a young woman in an embroidered dress approached her and curtsied. “Your Highness? Princess Obelaine would like to speak with you, if you could spare a moment for her.”

Shaelith suppressed a sigh. She supposed she had better speak with Obelaine if she was asking for her. “Of course. Take me to her!”

She was led to Obelaine’s private chambers, which were guarded and had their own balcony. As Shaelith was ushered into the bright room with tall stained-glass windows, Obelaine was standing on the balcony, but she turned around immediately when she heard Shaelith coming in. The maid withdrew, leaving them alone.

Obelaine ducked to fit through the doorway with her hennin and greeted Shaelith with a hesitant smile, as if she weren’t quite sure yet whether she was allowed to be glad to see her. “I’ve been watching you from up here and hoping you’d accept my invitation.”

Shaelith bowed her head slightly. “Of course, Your Highness. I think that with the sound advice you’ve given so far, you’ve more than earned my attention whenever you have something to say. Beyond mere courtesy, I mean.”

Obelaine gestured toward a chair. “Please, have a seat.”

Shaelith sat down, and Obelaine sat across from her, folding her hands in her lap. She didn’t seem quite sure how to begin.

Shaelith simply waited with a friendly smile on her lips, giving her all the time she needed.

“I don’t know if I should talk to you about this… but… I feel like I can talk to you about it,” Obelaine began hesitantly. “You know, after… in Myzelemaerlazin, when your healers took care of me…”

Obelaine looked down at her hands. “They never… they just treated it as if it were just a… a wound.”

“Because that’s exactly what it is,” Shaelith said softly.

“Here, it’s not.” Obelaine’s voice trembled. “Here, it’s more than that. It’s a shame. My shame. The memories are terrible, but there are nights when the memories don’t torment me, when I can bear them, and yet I still can’t sleep because it breaks my heart that my father can’t even look at me anymore.”

Shaelith said nothing but reached out her hands toward Obelaine’s clenched fist and gently enclosed it. Obelaine seemed surprised but relaxed her fingers into the embrace of Shaelith’s hands.

“Of all the things I’ve lost because of this, the loss of my father’s untarnished love hurts me the most.” Her eyes remained dry, but she looked piteous. “I could talk to him about anything. But now no one is allowed to talk about it. Now I’m alone with my shame.”

“It’s not your fault that this happened to you, Obelaine.” Shaelith squeezed her hand.

“It is, in a way.” She laughed a dry, sad laugh. “I was determined to go on this country outing, even though my father and almost everyone else was against it. I talked him into it. He never was very good at saying no to me. And then they ambushed us… they just came out of nowhere. So many good men died, and… and… we were taken captive, and Semprelle… my lady-in-waiting, no, my best friend, really, she… she died while giving birth to one… one of those things. And it was my fault.”

“No, no, it wasn’t,” Shaelith said firmly. “I can imagine that you keep returning to this point in your thoughts and wishing you’d made a different decision, but that wish is the best and strongest proof that it isn’t your fault. You did not want this.”

“I… maybe you’re right.” The princess closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s what I tell myself sometimes, but-“

“But it doesn’t work. Because you still care about them anyway, and because you still hurt anyway. But it will work, one day.”

I haven’t forgotten you, Mom.

“That’s what I’m afraid of! That one day I’ll get over it and move on with my life, and they… they’ll still be dead.” She wrung her hands. “It’s… just not fair.”

“You’re allowed to keep living and to be happy again, eventually. That’s not a betrayal of the people you’ve lost.”

“I…” Obelaine took a deep breath. “Maybe.”

“It will take time.” Shaelith squeezed her hand again. “Just keep reminding yourself that it wasn’t your fault. And let the people who care about you remind you, too.”

Obelaine snorted, quite unladylike. “That’s a little difficult. It’s a secret, after all. My father is afraid that if my betrothed found out about it, or his father, it might jeopardize the wedding. He fears that in their eyes I’d be just as tainted as I am in his. I’m all alone with this. Almost no one even knows what happened to me.”

“I do.”

Obelaine frowned. “I know that you helped rescue me, but-“

“That’s not what I mean.” Shaelith shook her head gently. “Benderast saved me, too, that day, before we got the rest of you out.”

“I… I didn’t know that.” Now it was Obelaine who squeezed Shaelith’s hand.

Shaelith returned the squeeze. “I was locked in a cage in the room next door for two weeks. They’d removed my glyphs, so I had no access to my sorcery. I tried everything to somehow draw a glyph with blood, but nothing worked.”

“Did they… were you…” Obelaine faltered.

“I was lucky.” Shaelith shook her head. “The warlock wanted me unharmed, so the goblin chief gave the order not to lay a hand on me. They stuck to it until almost the very end… it was a close call. Benderast arrived just in time.”

“The other Dusk Elves in… in the kennels. Were they your companions?”

“Only one of them.” Shaelith now had to blink away a tear herself. “My other companions… didn’t let themselves be captured. They chose a different path. And just like with you, good men died trying to protect me. And I couldn’t save them.”

Obelaine opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated, and tried again. “I notice that my first instinct was to assure you that it wasn’t your fault. Is that why you told me this?”

“No, Princess, it’s not my intention to teach you a lesson. I’m usually more direct than that. I just want to tell you that I was with you. Not right there with you, but I heard everything, every moment. I heard what…”

Shaelith now paused briefly herself. The memory still felt sharp and piercing, as if it might hurt her if she didn’t handle it carefully. “I heard what they did to you and the other women, and I heard what they did to my companion, who is very dear to me. While I sat unharmed in the next room, unable to do anything. What I want to tell you is that you’re not alone in this. Neither with the memory nor with the feeling of guilt.”  

Obelaine flinched briefly, as if she wanted to move toward Shaelith, but then remained seated.

“You were just about to hug me,” Shaelith guessed out of the blue.

Obelaine blushed slightly. “Yes.”

Shaelith stood up and took a step toward Obelaine, who, hesitantly at first, also stood up and hugged her tightly. Shaelith was stroking her back as Obelaine sobbed violently a few times and clung to her almost as tightly as Ben had long ago, when they had been drowning.

It took quite a while before they sat down again.

Obelaine dabbed her eyes with a silk handkerchief and was still suffering from a slight hiccup. “I… you know… ever since Myzelemaerlazin, I’ve admired you…” She startled herself and clarified. “I mean, you Dusk Elf women!”

Obelaine blushed. “But I guess I admire you personally as well.”

Oh.

Now it was Shaelith’s turn to be surprised.

I would have thought you were jealous.

Obelaine continued. “You’re just so… so… so undauntedly yourself. As if you know exactly who you are and wouldn’t dream of apologizing for it. I wish…” She trailed off and laughed softly, as if ashamed of the rest of the sentence. “I wish I could be like that.”

A smile appeared on Shaelith’s face.

I feel like the least authentic person I know. I like who I am, but I hide who I was, and there’s so much I hold back. I wear a mask over a mask, and the most authentic thing about me is probably that at some point I made a conscious decision about which face I want to show the world.

But who knows, maybe that’s exactly what authenticity is. Who the hell knows, maybe the dwarves are right. Recognize your form and then hold it. Maybe that’s all there is and all there can be. We’re all performing in a great theater, and the only decision we can make is which play we want to stage.

“Obelaine,” Shaelith finally said. “You are incredibly brave.”

“That’s not-“

“Yes, it is. It takes courage to show yourself to be as vulnerable as you’ve just dared to be. And please believe me, you can be whoever you want to be. You can choose every day to be this woman you imagine me to be.” She leaned forward. “Being undaunted doesn’t necessarily mean succeeding. It just means deciding to do it, no matter what and then giving it your best.”

Obelaine took a deep breath. “Then I want to be brave right now. I want to ask you something.”

I should have seen that coming.

Nevertheless, she gave her an encouraging nod.

“Benderast and you…” Obelaine smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress, even though there was no need. “This concubine contract. Is that… you said it isn’t a marriage. But what is it? What are you? I mean, do you love him?”

“A concubine contract is a kind of political treaty,” Shaelith said. “And a, um, reproductive agreement, so to speak. In my culture, it’s not a matter of the heart. At least, it almost never is. Among the Shaeravyn, it’s completely normal for a concubine to continue having her lovers, just as the contract holder does, who in most cases has several concubines anyway.”

Obelaine listened intently and seemed torn between her curiosity about Shaeravyn customs and her burning desire to learn more about the relationship between Shaelith and Benderast. “But… that sounds… to be honest, that sounds like something men would invent, not women. I thought only women held power in your society.”

“Well, historically speaking, the system was indeed invented by men. We weren’t always a matriarchy, and the concubine system predates the primacy of women. The first matriarchs simply adapted the system to their own purposes a few thousand years ago.” Shaelith shrugged. “It also reflects, to some extent, the biological realities that even a matriarchy cannot change. One male can impregnate many women, but one woman can only get pregnant by one male at a time.”

Obelaine blushed bright red at the casual mention of sexuality.   

Shaelith looked her straight in the eyes and went on the offensive. “I’ve noticed that you have a huge crush on him. Benderast, I mean.”

A stifled sound escaped the princess, and although Shaelith hadn’t thought it possible, she blushed even more deeply.

“The thing is,” Shaelith continued, “even though my concubine contract with him wouldn’t theoretically stand in the way of this, and even if I personally had nothing against it… Obelaine, you are betrothed to Prince Frambert, and this betrothal naturally has a political dimension as well. And Benderast is…”

 He’s what? What am I supposed to tell her? That he’s a nerd with some social dysfunction and anxiety, who, thanks to some cosmic joke, turned into a buff gigahunk with a jawline to die for, and whose romantic and general maturity is roughly that of a fifth grader?

“…a complicated man who’s still in the process of figuring out for himself who he really is,” she finished the sentence.

Obelaine smiled thoughtfully.

Oh no, that probably sounded more like an advertisement.

“Thank you for your honesty, Lady Shaelith, really, I… I’m very grateful to you.”

For fuck’s sake, if she takes this to mean that he’s emotionally available and our contract is completely non-binding anyway… fuck. I have to set the record straight, I-

But before she could limit the damage, Obelaine had taken her hand again, and her face was serious. “Shaelith… I have to tell you something. Benderast… he… he’s probably in great danger.”

“What do you mean?”

Obelaine lowered her voice but spoke urgently. “Men die at every Concord Tourney. Yes, they’re all wearing armor, but all it takes is a broken lance with a splinter piercing the visor, or an ill-timed sword strike in the wrong spot, and…”

Shaelith raised her eyebrows. “And you think your brother…?”

Obelaine gulped. “My brother will do everything in his power to make sure Benderast doesn’t leave the tournament field alive, if he can manage it.”

Shaelith’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m afraid for him,” Obelaine said.

It’s not an act. She really is worried.

“Thank you,” said Shaelith. “Thank you for the warning.”