--- "Nere" ("Mine") -- 330 -- SHADOWS ---
When he whispered, "nere" in her ear, she didn't want to correct him. She didn't want to inform him that technically, he belonged to her, not the other way around. He was Vabren; she was Pure Balreqiean. It could never be any different. He was Vabren. She was Pure Balreqiean, and the Solaine of her House. Someday, she would be the Marqi of House Monteqiel and the Duchesse of Atlantiq.
She loved him. She really did. It was painful to have to remind him that in the eyes of the Pure Balreqieans, he was a consort, no matter what Modern Balreqiean law said. No matter what Vabren custom said.
But because she loved him, she had to. Because he would never be able to claim the legal rights of a husband, and it would be cruel to let him think so. His children would not inherit Atlantiq. His eldest son would not become the Solan and then Marq of House Monteqiel.
So when he whispered "nere" in her ear, she turned away. She stayed silent, so that she would not tell him what he did not wish to hear.
But she turned away, and she fled down the halls of her ancestral home. The train of her heavy black gown made rustling sounds against the wooden floors.
Behind her, he whispered again the word that rent her soul in twain, and she fled even faster. She became a mere shadow in the dark halls of the house she knew so perfectly. Every step she took, every echo of that whisper, every footstep that resounded so quietly in the halls as he followed her, entrenched the pain deeper.
Someday, she vowed as she smoothed that heavy skirt beneath the dropped-V waist and unlocked the third floor corridor with a bronze key, she would tell him. But it did not have to be tonight. It did not have to be tonight.
When he opened the door, she let the black dress fall.