She did not have an answer for that. It felt like an eternity before Jesenia found the strength to stand again. He stood with her, helping her to her feet with gentle ease.
“Thank you, Val-Theris, for mourning with me,” she said. A beat passed, and she looked up to watch an owl swoop over their heads and land in one of the well-trimmed trees of the garden. “It’s peaceful here,” she murmured. “I’ve almost forgotten what pain lies in the city on the other side of these walls.”
She began walking, following the stone path through the flower beds. Her fingers brushed the soft leaves of roses and the vines that fell from the balconies above them. Val-Theris walked at her side.
“That is the purpose of this place,” he replied. “It was built to be a fortress of calm and beauty amid chaos and war.”
“Fortress?” She smiled faintly. “That’s the difference between us. You make it sound like a prison with flowers, where I see a garden.”
They fell into comfortable silence for a time, the soft rhythm of their steps filling the space between them. Jesenia’s hand trailed across a low hedge of lilies.
“Do you ever think of what comes after?” she asked suddenly. “When the war with Korvath ends. When I return home with my people. When peace is no longer something you chase?”
He glanced at her, curious. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “What do you think life might look like then? For me, for my people. For you.”
Val-Theris considered this. “I’ve never thought of an after,” he said quietly. “Only of the next crisis. My life is a chain of moments spent averting disasters that have not yet happened.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is, but it leaves little room for imagination.”
She looked down, thoughtful, and then, so softly he almost didn’t hear her, she said: “I’d like a family one day. A large one. As many children as my body will carry.”
Val-Theris stopped walking. The image that rose in his mind startled him: Jesenia surrounded by sunlight and laughter, her hands gentle and her womb full, the world unbroken. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d pictured something so simple.
“You would make a good mother,” he said sincerely.
She turned to him with a gentle smile. “Do angels dream of families?”
He hesitated. The question was innocent, but something about it lodged deep in him. “I don’t know if I can,” he said at last. “In any sense that matters.”
Her brow furrowed. “You mean you don’t want to?”
“No.” He exhaled slowly. “I mean I’m not certain it’s even possible. My brother has taken many wives, but none have given him children. I’ve never…tried,” he cleared his throat, “but I suspect the same curse binds me.” Jesenia’s expression softened. “It appears to be a flaw of godhood. We were not made to create life. Only to preserve or destroy it. The Light gave us its power, but not its gift. Perhaps it feared what we might become if we learned how to love as mortals do.”
The silence stretched between them, filled with the sound of wind through the vines. Jesenia reached for a blossom andtwisted it gently from the stem. “Then perhaps that’s why it made mortals,” she said. “To remind you what it looks like.”
Val-Theris smiled faintly, though his eyes were far away. “I could never forget.”
She tucked the flower behind her ear and started walking again, as though the conversation were over, light as a passing breeze. But when she glanced back, she found him still standing where she’d left him, staring at her as though trying to see the shape of a future he only just now realized he would never have.
He finally caught up to her after a moment.
“Have you eaten?” Val-Theris said softly from behind her. “The council ran late, you would have missed the ration line.”
“Not today, no. How can I eat when my people starve?”
“How can you speak for them if you grow so malnourished you can’t stand?” He stepped beside her, hands braced against a cold stone railing, close enough that she felt the faint warmth radiating from him. “I would invite you to dinner, but I suspect you’ll reject me.”
He paused slightly at the implication of that, as if it was a way of courting her as opposed to a courtesy. She didn’t seem to feel the same way. She sighed softly.
“I can’t, Val-Theris. Not until I can negotiate better conditions for my people.”
“Having your first meal of the day is not a sin, Jesenia.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke, letting the city breathe below them, letting the weight of their choices sit between them. Val-Theris wanted to offer more, would have even gone without a meal himself if only she would eat, but she wouldn’t, and he knew it.
