I don't write a lot of LingFan, but I wrote this forever ago, and I was searching my files trying to find something to work on or update, and I found it. I thought it was pretty awesome, so I finished it up and an uploading it. It's rather short, but it gets the point across.
"I guess he rubbed off on me after all."
He could see how much it affected her. She thought she hid it well enough; she always thought she could hide it. The truth was, she couldn't hide anything from him. Ling had known Lan Fan since they were small children, he could sense when she was upset or happy or hurt or sad or angry. He felt her anguish after her grandfather's death. He felt her pain when she cut off her arm for him. He felt her joy when they arrived in Xing and he was crowned Emperor.
He felt her heart break every time another clan leader's daughter became his wife.
Of course, she never said anything. It was his duty, she would say the few times he brought it up. They both knew it was a part of being the emperor; there was no way around it. To discontinue the practice would destabilize the entire government as allegiances were broken, and it would rip the country into horrible clan-fueled wars. Just like the other times, he could feel her heart break as she spoke the words.
He knew that it was slowly killing her and the kindest thing to do would be to let her go. He knew that holding her here, near him all the time, forcing her to be with him as he killed her from the inside was unbelievably cruel. He knew this and so much more. But he could not and would not let her go. He could not give up his most precious possession, even if keeping it was destroying it. He refused to let go of it, to risk it falling into anyone else's hands.
She was his.
And he was too greedy to let her go.
And for anyone looking for AlMei fluffs, the sequel to Good For the Soul will be coming out sometime in January and the title will be "A Source of Hope".
Please review!