“Poor Unah didn’t make an appearance tonight either. Valkom did, up to his debauchery as usual.” 

The Countess Janehs Ions fanned herself with a large, feathered, fan under the shade of the patio umbrella she shared between two other women and Nikase. The scent of her strong floral perfume wafted in the visitor’s direction.

The Palace of Bejiv was in the midst of another week-long holiday festivity, and Nikase made the cautious decision to make an appearance on the day with the least amount of people in attendance. The first afternoon. This was because on the first day, most people were holed up in their apartments, exhausted from their day of travel. 

Countess Janehs she knew by name and nothing else, nor was Nikase familiar with her friends. She was of a generation before her, proper gentry. Her group showed up when there were no other tables and made some small talk with Nikase before settling down at the table, claiming it as their own. 

Nikase was willing to give it away anyway, her plan was to leave soon.

“What. A. Pig.” said one of the girls, boredly sinking her cheek into her white-gloved hand. 

“I don’t know, I’ve had a moderate number of interactions with his highness, and he’s been cordial.” Nikase said as her contribution to the conversation, not particularly invested in the subject, or willing to defend her comment.

But the reaction to her comment was unbridled. A sharp, deliberate, jaded statement. 

“Of course he has. The man doesn’t have a death wish.” 

“Janehs!” one of the girls exclaimed, appalled. 

The Countess kept her eyes on Nikase, her detached grin eager. She stunned the younger woman out of all her agency and all of her words. Her body felt hot, and her fingers were cold.

Getting out of her chair was messy, she shifted the patio table hard when she bumped into it with her leg. She walked only a couple of feet away from the women, blinking her thoughts into order, fumbling for words, a retort, anything but tears, clinging to an unbroken promise to herself. 

Nikase was in a situation of her own making. Tears were for victims. 

From her spot on the patio, she had a clear view of the gardens, where other guests were enjoying themselves.

As the heat in her face faded, she caught the eye of Valkom, standing and talking to his friends under a pergola. He smiled and waved before returning to his conversation. 

Behind her, the women bickered in loud whispers. 

“That was too far Janehs!”

“Oh, like you weren’t thinking it.”

Sharks. 

Valkom was right. They were all sharks. The women at the table and… Nikase. 

She found her footing and walked back to the table. Countess Janehs stared at her expectantly with half-lidded eyes, a stark contrast to her two-wide eyed companions. 

The visitor kept her voice level. “I held his hand through all of it. Never once did I leave his side. I ate and slept when he did, and towards the end, those moments were far and few in between. I cried. Not for me. I cried because I didn’t want to lose the man I loved.” She collected her jacket from her chair with a half-hearted smile. “But I don’t expect you to know what that is like, you acidic loveless bitch.” 

The breeze picked up, shifting the umbrella and the glasses on the table again. Countess Janehs’ expression didn’t waver, but Nikase turned to leave before the woman finished processing the interaction. One of the girls muttered something that was lost behind the sound of her heartbeat in her ears.

Once she made it to the stairs at the end of the patio, she picked up her pace, hoping to outpace the building tension in her face. At the bottom, she made a sharp left, slipping between a hedge and the building. The nook was isolated from the garden and out of sight from all of it. 

Nikome, her brother, was going to have a coronary if he ever caught wind of how she handled that. But what did that matter if Nikase was having a coronary now. She used the wall to brace herself, the lightheadedness fading. 

Valkom slipped between the hedge and building, and if she wasn’t struggling to catch her breath, she would’ve yelped. 

“Oh, so that’s what’s back here,” he commented on the space jocosely, his face dropping at the sight of her. “Wait—are you ill? Here… sit down.”

She nodded, taking his drink upon his offering, but handing it back because her hands were shaking too much for her to hold it. 

“It’ll pass,” she heard her alien voice say.

“Hold your breath for seven seconds, then breathe out through your mouth.”

Counting came easy to her, like music. She found that focusing on the rhythm helped more than the breathing itself. But it helped, and that’s what mattered.

Her heart settled, and her mind returned to a state where nothing had ever happened. Not a trace of awkwardness or embarrassment either. The whole event deleted itself from her active memory. 

She had to acknowledge it happened however. It had been a few minutes of her and Valkom sitting in silence. She watched him carefully, and he pretended not to notice. 

If he was really being polite to her because he was scared she would otherwise hurt him, he was doing a poor job of looking out for his best interests. No one in their right mind would follow someone they were frightened of into a hidden, isolated corner of a garden. 

So she broke the thickness of the air with an offhanded remark: “I called her an ‘acidic loveless bitch’ and I can’t help thinking I would’ve come up with a better insult had I more time to think about it.” 

He struggled between making light of the moment or retaining his composure. It broke at her prodding smile. 

“Right. We should brainstorm a couple of insults now, so you are prepared for future transgressions,” he said. “I favor ‘rancid’ over ‘acidic’ because while the latter does imply the person is sour, the first implies the person is sour and foul smelling.”

“And past its prime,” she added with jest. 

Although he liked that answer, what he didn’t like was just as obvious to Nikase. She wasn’t going to address the situation, and she wasn’t going to waste any words on it. In their short acquaintanceship, she had picked up on his habit of prying into others' lives, all while divulging little of his own. A collector of secrets. 

Whether it was tied to his role in his kingdom, or if it was something rooted deeper in his character… Nikase hadn’t worked that part out yet. For one reason or another, he wore his flaws on his sleeve. One of those being his lack of respect for others’ boundaries. It was audacious. He was aware of the lines people drew, and made it known he was aware before stepping over them.

He didn’t do that with Nikase. But he wanted to, that was clear enough. 

And maybe Countess Janehs was right. He was afraid of her, and that was why he never crossed a line with her. The alternative was that he felt bad for Nikase, and she couldn’t work out if that was worse.

After the episode in the garden, Nikase became a third wheel to Lady Liorit and Valkom’s outings. Sometimes Lior would bring a companion or two along, and they would take up the majority of her focus. She was popular in a way Nikase didn’t envy. When the walls spoke about her, it was always in harsh judgment. 

Despite this, Nikase liked Lady Liorit. What people said about her had to bother her, yet she never wore it in her face. There was a candidness in the way she treated people as well. She wasn’t wearing the same mask other visitors were. To deny there was a mask at all would be moot. She was blending in with the sharks to survive, lest she be swallowed whole.

Today their group was making their way up to the upper Palace’s archery range. They had taken what Valkom described as the ‘scenic route’, and Nikase interpreted as his avoiding his wife. 

She also suspected the point that he was trying to make was that there were levels to being disliked, and depending on the severity of it, people would omit saying it to your face. She suspected this because he was presently standing before her, telling her there were levels to being disliked, and depending on the severity, people would omit saying it to your face. 

He waved his hands as if his animated gestures would further prove his point. “I won’t tell you what to do Nikase Ojeda, I will only say that leaning into it is an option.” 

She pressed her hands flat on the surface of the stone railing of a small bridge, peering over the edge at the small stream running below. “You have said this since day one, and since day once I have reminded you that I cannot get away with that behavior, especially in Dofev.” 

They were waiting for Lior and her companion to catch up to them. Lior’s companion forgot something, and Lior was having fun tormenting the young woman. Her friend’s flustered scrambling was endearing. 

Val paid no mind to the happenings further down the road, unwilling to deviate from the topic at hand. He stood a couple of feet away from her, picking at the crevices of the bridge with a dead branch he found on their way up. 

“Sure you can, you have money,” he said without difficulty. 

“Money does not allot you everything. We’ve discussed this before.” She squinted into the distance, watching the newcomer drop whatever she was carrying. “Who is Lior’s new friend?”

Valkom didn’t recognize her either. “I haven’t the slightest idea, her secretary or something. Don’t change the subject. I said I’d rather be poor and marry who I want, that was different.”

“Was it? Your complaint is that you have money, yet you can’t marry who you want,” she said with a near smile. “It's exactly the same thing. You have money, and you can’t do whatever you want.”

He furrowed his brow and bit his lip, working on a counterargument. “I forget you’re from a family of lawyers.”

“Family of what?” She’d never heard the word before.

“Lawyers, the Saigars,” he clarified in her tongue.

“Saigars of Rites?”

“Yes, they’re the same thing, solicitors, legal council, etcetera.” 

“Oh,” she realized.” I see your point. At times, I forget that what my family considers ‘casual conversation’ is seen by others as combative. I apologize for my tone.” 

He shrugged, “Don’t apologize, I quite enjoy the banter, and you must miss your family.”

She thought of her older siblings, Nikome and Onixe. Being so bright and like-minded, the afternoons of their youth were filled with pleasant discourse. Their father, also a Saigar of Rites, would often encourage it, and throw in a seed or two to further their discussions, much to the disdain of their mother, who dreamed of a dinner in silence. 

 “Very much, yes.”

“Then let's go visit.” The statement was too easy for him to say. “If I travel with you, people will reserve their slanderous comments for me instead of you.”

“If we travel together, we will both be the subjects of their slanderous comments,” she remarked, keeping her tone playful this time. 

“Alright, I’ll invite Lior and her friend, that way we are a group of friends traveling together,” he grinned at his own weak argument. 

After nearly a year and half of keeping her distance, the idea of seeing her home again was wonderful, and so were Valkom’s intentions. If only the characters involved weren’t so notorious, then perhaps she could go. 

In her letters to her brother, she mentioned her acquaintanceships but never by name, and that was intentional. If he didn’t like Valkom, he liked Liorit least. She was a walking protest of everything Dofev wanted of their women. 

Dofev had its roles for the genders. Some people outside the nation thought it outdated, and some people inside the nation thought so too. Growing up in that world, she believed it wasn’t as bad as outsiders made it out to be. Except as of late, Nikase had her doubts. She may not know what was best for the country, and she was beginning to think its own leaders didn’t know what was best for the country.

And how could they? How could one person know that? They were not Gods, they were mortals. How could the world expect so much of mere mortals? 

In Dofev, a woman would never beat a man at anything. In Dofev, a woman only wore skirts and dresses. In Dofev, a woman’s proper place was supporting a man. 

She suddenly found those beliefs nauseating. And on further reflection, who was she to dismiss Valkom and Liorit as traveling companions because of the character they were in rumors? When they had every opportunity to distance themselves from her based on the character she was in rumors, and they didn’t. 

“I will… think about it,” she said into the wind. “If you are serious about visiting Dofev that is.”

He put his free hand up to his chest in faux offense, “Lady Nikase, I am always serious.”