"My mistake," Tavi said. "Obviously."
"Obviously," Kitai replied with a rather smug smile. Her expression grew more serious. "Though not solely for the immediate reasons."
He frowned and rolled a hand, inviting her to continue.
She folded her hands in her lap and frowned, as if gathering her words together before releasing them. "This enemy is a threat to you as your others are not, chala."
"The vord?"
She nodded.
"In what way?"
"They threaten to unmake who you are," she said quietly. "Despair and fear are powerful foes. They can change you into something you are not."
"You said something like that last winter," he said. "When we were trapped atop that Shuaran tower."
"It is no less true now," she said in a quiet voice. "Remember that I can feel you, chala. You cannot hide these things from me. You have tried to, and I have respected your desire. Until now."
He frowned at her, troubled.
She slid her hand across the table, palm up. His own hand covered it without the need for a conscious decision on his own part.
"Talk to me," she urged quietly.
"There was always someone nearby on the ships. Or else we were in lessons and..." He shrugged. "I... I didn't want to burden you. Or frighten you."
She nodded and spoke without rancor. "Was it because you think I am insufficiently strong? Or because you find me insufficiently brave?"
"Because I find you insufficiently..." he faltered.
"Capable?" she suggested. "Helpful?"
"... replaceable," he finished.
Her eyebrows lifted at that. She returned his earlier gesture, rolling her hand for him to continue.
"I can't lose you," he said quietly. "I can't. And I'm not sure that I'm able to protect you. I'm not sure anyone can."
Kitai stared at him for a moment without expression. Then she pressed her lips together, shook her head, and rose. She walked around the table with that same severe expression on her face, but it wasn't until she was standing beside Tavi's chair that he realized that she was shaking with unreleased laughter.
She insinuated herself onto his lap, lovely in the green grown, wrapped her pale arms around his neck, and kissed him. Thoroughly. Her gentle laughter bubbled against his tongue as she did. When she finally drew away, moments later, she put her fever-warm hands on either side of his face, looking down at him fondly.
"My Aleran," she said, her voice loving. "You idiot."
He blinked at her.
"Are you only now realizing that forces greater than ourselves might tear us apart?" she asked, still smiling.
"Well..." he began. "Well... well no, not exactly..." He trailed off weakly.
"But that was always true, Aleran," she said, "long before the vord threatened our peoples. If they had never done so, it would still be true."
"What do you mean?"
She shrugged a shoulder. Then she took up his knife and fork and cut another slice of roast as she spoke. "Many things can end lives. Even the lives of Aleran Citizens. Disease. Fires. Accidents. And, in the end, age itself." She fed him the piece of roast and watched him begin to chew before nodding approval and beginning to cut another. "Death is certain, Aleran - for all of us. That being true, we know that all of those we love will either be torn away from us, or we will be torn away from them. It follows as naturally as the night after sundown."
"Kitai," Tavi began.
She slipped another piece of roast into his mouth, and said, quietly, "I am not finished."
He shook his head and began to chew, listening.
She nodded approval again. "In the end, the vord are nothing special, Aleran, unless you allow them to be. In fact, they are less threatening than most."
He swallowed, and said, "How can you say that?"
"How can I not?" she replied smoothly. "Think on it. You have a reasonably good mind when you choose to use it. I am certain it will come to you eventually." She arched and stretched, lifting her arms straight overhead. Tavi found his left hand resting on the small of her back, left bare by the gown. He couldn't seem to stop himself from stroking that soft skin in a slow circle, barely touching. "Mmmm. That pleases me. And this gown pleases me. And the jewels, too - though I couldn't wear them on a nighttime hunt. Still, they are beautiful."
"And expensive," Tavi said. "You wouldn't believe."
Kitai rolled her eyes. "Money."
"Not everyone uses obsidian arrowheads as the basic standard of trade," he told her, smiling.
"No," she replied tartly. "Though if it cost an Aleran money every time he wanted to kill something, it might have helped make your people's history much less interesting reading." She looked down at him for a moment, smiling, then asked, "Do you think the jewels are beautiful, Aleran?"
Tavi touched her cheek. "I'd like to see you in nothing else."
Her smile widened. "That," she said, "would be wholly inappropriate, my lord Octavian." But her hands very slowly rose to the nape of her neck, and the clasp of the gown. Tavi let out another low, growling sound, and felt his hand curling possessively on the line of her waist.
Hoofbeats came rapidly thudding toward the isolated pavilion. The guards, who were stationed in a loose line forty yards down the hill at Magnus's insistence, against the possibility of further vord infiltrators, began exchanging passwords with the messenger, whose voice was pitched high with excitement.
Tavi groaned and rested his forehead against Kitai's... gown for a moment. "Of course. Something happens now."
Kitai let out a low, wicked laugh, and said, "We could just keep going, if you like."
"Bloody crows, no," Tavi said, flushing again. He rose, lifting her as he did, and set her gently down on her feet. "Do I look all right?"
She leaned up and licked the corner of his mouth, eyes dancing, then wiped it with a napkin. She straightened the lines of his dress tunic slightly, and said, "You look most proper, my lord Octavian."
He growled beneath his breath, something about remembering not to kill the messenger, and walked to draw aside one of the cloths that veiled the pavilion's interior. A Legion valet was hurrying up the slope beside a messenger in the armor of an Antillan militiaman. The Antillan strode up the hill in the precisely spaced stride of an experienced legionare, stopped before Tavi, and saluted crisply. "Your Highness."