Both Logan and Hank assured me there would be some point in the middle of the night when you wake up and think "What the…" Logan apparently thought "What the hell am I doing with a woman a century younger than me who's already been hurt once too often". Hank's was "What the hell am I doing married?" My moment comes at 3:12am, when I wake up to find myself panicking.
What if in the morning, 'Tana changes her mind? What if she's been mind-controlled into this? What if she regrets it? What I took can't be given back, not matter how hard I try. I don't care what people say about surgery, once it's gone, it's gone. That's how I was raised and how she was raised. What if there was something wrong with the paperwork and we aren't actually married? What if she changes her mind? Etc, etc.
I only stop when she shifts slightly and a soft black blanket drapes across me, delicate feathers tickling me.
When I wake up in the morning, she's lying to one side, wings furled tightly round her. I reach out and touch her back and suddenly there's a knee in my gut and a knife to my throat as Etana pins me down. Her silver eyes widen.
"Sorry! Sorry!"
The knife goes flying over her shoulder and hits the door with a slight thunk.
"I'm so, so sorry Steve."
"No, I should have known you were edgy."
She backs off, kneeling at the end of the bed looking slightly lost and confused, hands covering herself. And I can see a younger her, one who doesn't have blood on her hands and hasn't lived so long that she classes Death as an old friend. A woman barely out of girlhood, shy and afraid. I never really…never imagined that this Etana ever existed. She blinks and suddenly she's stoic, sensible, practical Etana, to whom death is just another risk.
"I'm sorry Steve. I've…well, I've woken up in bad situations before…"
"Tell me."
"There was that time I was just so tired. I'd been in the middle of a war, leading into battle and I'd just collapsed down on the pallet in my tent. And I woke up with a man standing over me, about to… Suffice to say, the leaders were happy I didn't kill him. We needed every able-bodied man, even if he was limping a lot."
"You actually let him go…"
"He was executed as soon as the war was over. Men like that…they make good soldiers but they are monsters in peacetime."
I stare at her and she sighs.
"Can you stop staring, or at least close your mouth. At the time, I had a lot of problems for being a woman. It's not easy you know? Being a warrior and a woman, who leads men into battle, then has to beat the same men off with a tent-pole after the battle. And yes, I have done that before. I am an angel, so I was higher than men but I was also a woman, ultimately, irredeemably below man. It's a curse I have lived with my whole life."
