To my beloved Prince,

I write this letter from the last village before we cross the border. There is so much to say to you, and now here they are what may be my final words in my own hand, and I find myself short of them. Before I come to those precious ones that can only pass from my heart to yours, there are things I must tell you. I'm sitting here across from my escort, and a terrible… terrible wrong has come to pass which I have only just learned of.

General Leaman did not brief her. He never visited her home and never called her to his. He sent no letter. No word of any kind passed to her from him on what to expect over the border. My Prince… he tried to have my escort killed, and he used me to do it. I needn't tell you how wrong that is, what the Tlalmok would do to her if she resisted any of their degrading rituals meant to bring terror or humiliation down on us… she was so brave just to come this far. I offered to send her home, but she has refused. She promised to see me on, despite General Leaman's treachery, she will not go back.

I know he helped to raise you, how much he meant to you, and you to him… but something like this has never been done to an escort before. You cannot let it pass, no matter how much you might wish to.

My escort has been a comfort to me, strange as she may be. Though predictably she teased me for my fear of heights, she lets me hold onto her as we ride, and… somehow just knowing that the woman who broke your orichalcum blade is with me gives me strength. Strength I badly need, without you to lay my head upon.

Now I can only pass on to you my words as a woman. I remember the day we met, I had injured my foot in a performance the day before. You saw me kneeling there, in a collar of bright silver, and called for a private performance for yourself alone. Fidelity, chastity, what are these things to people who are not people? I was prepared for your desire. I was prepared to slake your lust and pretend to care for you. I was not prepared for your gentle heart, I was not prepared for you to be… who you were.

I remember the time you walked me through the garden, and told me you loved me after we lay together beneath the willow, the way the long green strands touched my back, stroking it in the breeze while your hands ran through my long raven hair. That was the day I knew the truth, the day I knew beyond any doubt that I was more than a favored receptacle. A man might tell a woman he loves her in order to get her legs to part faster, but a man who says it when his lust is sated, who looks at her as you did with me?

I never wanted to be away from you. I knew our time together was going to be nothing more than a happy dream, bound to end sooner or later, either through your passing as you got old… in which case I just wanted to hold your hand as you slipped away from me, or from some terrible war. But this way? This way I did not expect.

Curse the Tlalmok and all their dark and twisted hearts. My companion here would say, if she could read this letter, that we should curse ourselves, our weakness is our sin. That if we were not weak, I might be saved. I find there is great truth in her beliefs, after all, she saved Prince Sado, and it was us who failed to protect him, and he and his people who failed to protect themselves before that. Perhaps at least in this, the death worshipper is right. Weakness is our sin.

But if weakness is our sin, love is our strength, it is the only thing that gives me the strength to get on that horse tomorrow and ride with her over the border, the only thing that lets me live these final, terrible days without falling into total despair.

I don't know if my courage will hold, I don't know what I'll feel at the first ceremony, or the second, or the third, fourth, fifth, or in my final hour. But if I can keep my wits about me, if I can keep my courage at least for the minute in which I need it most? Then my final thoughts will not be of my parents, or my things, or my city… it will be of you, you and those precious to me. Our Loddy, and you, if I only had you two, that is heaven enough that I need no gift of paradise from the stars.

I think that by the time you see this, as slow as villagers are at conveying messages assuming all goes 'well' in the twisted way that word must be used, I will have reached the Tlalmok capital. Or perhaps I will have already passed in body as I have from sight. I suppose I will never know. But I want you to know, the time we had was the happiest of my long and mostly bitter life. I pray you, My Rasgen, My Prince, My Rasgy… and our Loddy… find all the happiness you can in the days ahead. Don't let my death dominate your life.

Just live it, live it as well as you can, for as long as you can, and I'll be waiting on the other side for you both to tell me all about it.

Your immortal beloved,

Sobella