The 12th Day of Resplendent Wood, 602 in the Year of Our Empress
Navia dwelled in the next few hours. For a Sidereal, able to see the ebb and flow of Fate, tampering with one's subjective perception of time was a simple trick and one she exploited without shame. She knew the gossip of Heaven, had read in the records of her Department the name her Fellowship had once labeled her. If they saw her now, they would not think her the Ice Queen any longer.
They lay together, blankets strewn haphazardly across their cooling bodies and the bed. The pale creamy silks of the bed were coarse and ordinary to one accustomed to Heaven's luxuries but the muscular, flawless body she lay against had no peer. Navia, who had never been with a man as an adult, who had not known the touch of a kind lover ever in any of her thousand years of life, nestled against Da'nashay and was content.
An hour in his arms had passed like a hundred and she had enjoyed every moment of it, in her own way. He was new to this, having always been chaste. It had helped her to feel safe and his inexperience had concealed from him her own limitations. Lost in his own pleasure, he never noticed her lack. She was relieved. Since her father had touched her as a child, she had never experienced the smallest amount of desire in the whole of her life. But the closeness, this closeness with this kind and plain-spoken man...yes, that made her happy.
"I've never met anyone like you," the captain said quietly, his breath like a whisper of wind across her shoulder.
"There are a few but not many," Navia said, her thoughts on the burning blue prayer strip that lay around the bone of her left ring finger. Da'nashay had one just like it, even though he didn't know it.
The Wanting and Fearing was a favorite Charm she'd used in the past like a scalpel, decisively forging new relationships and feelings where they solved matters, sealing up possible breaches of paradox with needed resolution. She was considered a master of the art, applauded even by the Chosen of Serenity, and she secretly delighted in her ability to solve problems by creating love.
This was the first and only time in her life she had ever used it upon herself. Other Charms could have brought him to her but this one was sure. She would not have dared to do so at all, if he hadn't been slated to die. It would require some careful manipulation of paperwork but Heaven and Fate would hardly notice if a man fell in love hours before his death.
"Will I see you again?" Da'nashay asked. He was so young compared to the eras she'd lived through but he had a man's demeanor and a man's courage. His voice didn't waver in the slightest, despite the pressure from the love that burned in his heart. She knew the strength it must take to ask such a question for she felt the same love inside her own chest.
"I imagine so," Navia answered, after a long silence stretched between them. "One way or another. Would you like that?"
"You seem a woman who appreciates honesty, directness without guile. Let me be frank with you." When she moved her head to look at him, his beautiful green eyes came into view, moving about as if to soak up her every detail to treasure and cherish. It was a surprisingly nice feeling.
"Please. I do not scare." Navia smiled a little at him, listening to the thrum of his heart beneath her ear.
"I would like to marry you."
"Marry an open Iselsi?" She smirked at him gently. "My, my, what would your mother say?"
"It's not as if we're close," Da'nashay chuckled. She liked how the vibration tickled her cheek.
"You realize you would doom all chances of establishing your own House someday, Da'nashay." Navia watched for his reaction. She wondered why it felt so important to her but she was most wise in the Wanting and Fearing Prayer and she rode its direction to see where it would take her.
"I never intended to start one, Navia," he said without hesitation. It was the honest truth. "I never intended to marry either." Also true. "The Legions are my life. You are the very first reason I have for looking outside the ranks. Since we're being honest, I'll confess something else to you. I don't want to marry you because you'd be politically advantageous, though you're not. Nor because you would make a powerful wife, though you would. I want you to be my wife because I love you. Does that frighten you?" It would a true Dynast, for his words were nonsense in their world.
"Seeing this night end frightens me," Iselsi Navia answered, plainly truthful for once as his candor deserved. "Nothing you've said frightens me."
It was at that moment, when nothing else particularly important was happening, that the Pivot Child conceived.
Navia's whole life changed. She felt the subtle possibility of a daughter transform into the absolute certainty of it. She closed her eyes, felt across her own thread with her Auspicious Prospects of Serenity Charm, and a tear fell from her eye when she saw the green of her life shot through with white now, the beginnings of a thread that would separate and become its own some day. It would belong to her daughter.
"Navia...what's wrong?" Da'nashay's rugged face, full of so much character for a young Dragon-Blooded, was concerned.
"I love you too." The admission distracted him from a truth he couldn't know or understand. For the first time, Iselsi Navia felt the sting of resentment, that she couldn't share her whole life with this man. This was why Sidereal did not fall in love. This was why she never had. This would be why she would never do so again. Even if she could tell him the truth, even if he understood it, he would be dead before it did either of them any good.
"Then marry me?"
"I'll marry you," Navia said. The only reason it was possible was because he would not live to follow through with the ceremony. A marriage to him would be awkward, tricky to arrange, after all. Not 'even with' her Bronze Faction credentials but because of them. If Da'nashay had not been scheduled to die, Ragara Yelaren would undoubtedly have plans for his lineage. It would be politically difficult for the head of the All-Seeing Eye's to marry an ill-considered scion of the Scarlet Empress. It would be even harder to get the approval of the Bronze Faction's planning division, though she did boast a very impressive heritage of Breeding thanks to Father.
If only she could marry him, though. A small love for herself. The Pivot Child Prophecy had been the secret goal driving her for ten centuries to master herself, becoming the only Sidereal of her age to manage a Fellowship in the Capital Convention. She had done inestimable service to the Bronze Faction and to its leader, Chejob Kejak, as dedicated to the cause as he was.
But it was impossible. It would completely disrupt decades of planning data. Her tampering would go on record if she used anything stronger than the most subtle Charms. And she couldn't afford to expose the Child before her time.
Navia sighed against Da'nashay's side as she heard the smallest settling of a glass window against its frame. Was this the beginning of his death, what Fate had measured out against him? The night was moonless, thanks to the Lunar Eclipse, the second exactly as she'd warned herself. A strange omen to signal the conception of the Pivot Child. Perhaps, instead, it signaled the death of the Child's father.
Her memory pricked her, as the intruder carefully crept inside in the other room. Her future self had said she would likely never see the father again. True, if he was going to die. But that's not how she'd said it. "You and I will know very little comfort for a great while, Navia. When all else fails, he may offer some." That was in the present tense!
Looking at the now-dozing Dragon-Blooded in wonder, Navia once again knew with Auspicious Prospects of Endings that he was meant to die. But, for the first time, she looked upon him with the Auspicious Prospects of Secrets...and saw that he was vitally important to the Pivot Child Prophecy still.
Was that what her future self had meant? Had she taken the same risk Navia was contemplating now? Was there any other choice?
No. Nothing could stand between her and the Prophecy of the Pivot Child coming to fruition. Not even decades of planning data, the Department of Serenity...or her best friend, Yelaren himself.
Doing this would have to be conducted with the utmost discretion. No Charms involving Prayer Strips, preferably no Charms at all. No Astrological work. Few, if any, use of her allies and connections in Heaven.
With those limitations, how could she accomplish it?
But her mental reasoning was interrupted before she had an answer. For at that time, a man stepped from the shadows. Two wicked moonsilver knives trailed in his hands and his face was furious. And Navia wondered if it was already too late.