Power fantasies are weird. Sometimes they're about being strong, or about being capable, or any number of other things we feel like we're not. But sometimes they're just about being … safe.

Maybe that's just me. I don't know.

But it's where my fiction leads me sometimes, and I like it.

Hopefully you do too.


.


Late that night, long after everyone else was asleep, Kisara found Seto standing out in the backyard. She approached him, and they stood in silence for a time; they watched the stars together. For Seto, who'd spent his entire life in a city with so much light pollution, it was entrancing.

". . . So?" Seto asked.

Kisara sniffed and sent Seto a sardonic look. "My father told me . . . he owed me an apology. He said that he's been so wrapped up in being a proper example that he forgot to be a father." She let the statement hang for a while, soaking it in. "He said he'd never been prouder to see everything turn out the precise opposite of what he'd expected or wanted; that despite all he'd done, despite what they'd all done, I had grown into a fine woman."

Seto smirked to himself and said nothing.

"My mother," Kisara went on, "told me that if I wanted to live on the coast, if I could make it there, then she would keep my room dusted and clean, ready for whenever I come to visit." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffed again. "I . . . didn't have to say anything. All the speeches I worked through, all the things I thought I'd have to force myself to say . . . the things I hoped I would finally push upon them. It all just melted away. None of it was necessary. Everything I was so scared of, everything I've been scared of . . . since I was a teenager. It's all just . . . smoke."

Seto nodded. "Good," he said. "The second-best thing that fear can be is experience. The best thing it can be is unfounded."

"I don't . . . know how you did it. I don't know what you did. But . . . thank you."

"You're welcome." Seto shifted his weight. "I said this to your grandmother: we take care of our own. Yours aren't the first conservative parents I've had to confront in the name of helping an employee."

"Employee," Kisara repeated. "Is that what I am?"

"For how much I pay you," Seto said, "I reserve the right to call you an employee."

Kisara laughed. "Fair enough, my prince."

"You didn't tell your parents about your salary," Seto said, suspiciously, "did you?"

"Are you kidding?" Kisara rolled her eyes. "If I told my father with a straight face that I make more than he ever has, I think he'd stroke out immediately."

". . . How long until your grandparents ask whether we're dating?" Seto wondered.

"I'd be surprised if they haven't asked someone already." Kisara looked wistful. "I was so worried about today that I was reasonably sure I'd be the one having a stroke. Even with the dragon's help, I'd still end up in the emergency room. A not-insignificant part of me was sure that would be what finally convinced my father to back off. But now I feel so light that I might well float off into space."

"The anticipation spreads poison far more than anything you anticipate," Seto said. "Or so I've always told Mokuba when he goes to the dentist. I'm reasonably sure the same concept applies here."

Kisara snorted, then jabbed an elbow into Seto's ribs.

Seto pretended not to understand the problem.

They stood there, in silence, studying the sky together. They thought about entirely separate things, but both had the understanding that this was right. Wherever their thoughts took them, the destination would be the same, and that was correct.