22 Speaking of Power Dynamics
Speaking of Power Dynamics
R emember when we came here at the end of Gillian’s season?” Arbora’s back was to Spie, her words almost drowned in a gust of coastal wind.
Spie’s private balcony overlooked the beach. The hour was that quiet mingling of really late with too early, the blurred joining of night and morning.
“Gillian? The Fleet colonel? Didn’t she choose that balding man from Trillion?” Spie threw her bare feet atop the deck chair opposite her and leaned back, relishing the careless way the wind tangled her hair. She observed Arbora through half-lidded eyes. “We had to have been what? Fourteen?”
“Mm-hm.” Arbora flipped around so her back was to the railing. Her eyes were black pools in the near-darkness. “You dared me to sneak out of Gillian’s choosing ceremony and jump in the ocean. My father was livid.”
“Your father was always livid. He never liked me. I don’t imagine he’s supportive of you being here?”
“He’d prefer I spent my efforts wooing your brother.”
Spie snorted. “Your father always was a dense man.”
“Careful, Your Highness.”
“Don’t Your Highness me, Arbora. We’re beyond that.”
“Are we? It’s been eight years. I don’t know what we are.”
Spie sat up, tucking strands of windblown hair behind her ears.
She settled her feet on the deck’s chilly surface.
“All right. Let’s do this. There are no cameras here, our mics are off, no one’s listening in my ear.
Why’d you sign up for the show? And if you tell me it’s because you’re dying to marry me, then I call bullshit.
Give me the truth—no more lies about reclaiming our childhood love. ”
Arbora lifted her gaze to the starlit sky, to the vision of the Moons’ brilliant silver glows, three crescents standing sentinel over Expan. “And if it isn’t a lie?”
Spie narrowed her gaze. “I won’t believe you.”
Her ex-girlfriend pushed away from the balcony’s railing.
As she crossed the deck, her hips swayed.
She settled herself on the end of the chair previously occupied by Spie’s feet.
“Does it matter why I came here? If I love you? Hate you? If I was simply curious? You’re you .
And I’ve always been powerless when it comes to you.
You want me to kiss you? I kiss you. Sleep with you?
I sleep with you. Marry you? Die for you?
You are Expan. My motivations and desires have always been and will always be irrelevant. It was your season, so, I’m here.”
Spie stared at Arbora. The moonlight cast her in an ethereal glow. “That’s not fair. I never once forced you to be with me.”
“Oh, forgive me, that’s not what I meant.
” Arbora leaned forward. “I know you wouldn’t force anyone.
But that isn’t within your control. You can’t change who you are any more than the sun can stop shining.
It’s your position that renders choice irrelevant.
I’m speaking of power dynamics. You’re right, though.
I’ve been lying to the cameras. I don’t want to reclaim our childhood love.
We were toxic. Or do you remember those years differently?
You used me to rebel against your mother, to feel better anytime you got anxious or sad or angry, which was a lot—you’d bridge me, and we’d get high or fall into bed together or sneak out someplace we weren’t supposed to be.
” She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.
“And I’d do whatever you wanted because, again, you’re you.
I loved you the way one loves an idol. My entire world revolved around you bridging me.
I didn’t exist without you. Whenever we weren’t together, I felt like shit. ”
Arbora opened her eyes. She fiddled with a sleek silver ring on her right forefinger. It boasted a black moon rock. Spie didn’t recognize the jewelry; Arbora hadn’t worn it when they’d been together. Was it a token from a more-recent lover?
“Did you know I would hurt myself?” Arbora asked, but her tone made it clear the question was rhetorical. “Laser burns from my father’s pocket LZ.” She lifted her right foot and rested it on her lap, then slowly removed her high-heeled shoe.
The lighting wasn’t great, but Spie would’ve had to be blind to miss the ugly mess of scarring that marred Arbora’s sole. Thick ridges of long-healed white lines transformed her foot into a valley of ridged canyons.
Spie’s stomach turned. She wanted nothing more than to tear her gaze away, but she couldn’t stop staring. “You were— You did— Why? ”
Arbora flexed her foot. “It’d be unfair to blame it all on you.
At the time, I didn’t know why. But whenever you’d leave after we slept together or when I wouldn’t hear from you for a day or two or more, or if we got into a fight, I’d burn myself.
I hated it, but I couldn’t stop. The bottoms of my feet were the only place I knew you wouldn’t see.
I could wrap them in bandages and socks.
Walking was painful, but I eventually got used to stepping on the outsides of my feet. ”
“Arbora—”
“Oh, I don’t need your apologies or your pity.
A year after your mother banished me back to Irma, Alanna caught me doing it and got me help.
She’s a good sister—she’ll be an excellent prime minister.
My father’s retiring this year, if you didn’t know.
Alanna’s been cozying up to his constituents; she should have the votes.
” She slipped her foot back in her heel and settled it on the deck.
“While I was learning better ways to cope, I realized our relationship had been unhealthy. It was never love. For it to have been love, you’d have to have seen me, not used me.
But it’s not all your fault. I can’t blame you for being what you are.
Empires take. They’re inherently selfish and entitled.
And I was at fault too. I should’ve realized that love isn’t worship.
That to have loved you in truth would’ve been to diminish you from a princess to a person.
And I never did that. What we had was co-constructed, by both of us certainly, but also by our society and our roles. Neither of which we chose.”
Spie thought back to her teenage years. Recalled a hazy memory of Arbora lying in bed, surrounded by pink throw pillows, naked except for her socks. Had she really not seen how Arbora was hurting? Had she really been that oblivious? That selfish?
Spie folded her arms over her chest. A breeze whipped through the balcony, cooling the flush of her cheeks. “Okay, so our relationship was unhealthy. I don’t disagree. I was an awful teenager. What’s your point?”
“I’m not saying you were awful.” Arbora fiddled with her ring again.
“You weren’t. Self-absorbed, maybe, but who am I to judge?
I was never under the pressures you were under.
Your mother wanted you to be emperor. I watched you ruin your image until she gave up on you and set her sights on Nicky.
Is he still who she’s going to choose? That’d be my assumption, especially based on Cailin’s ‘I’m h ere for Nix’ declaration, but I’ve been outside the inner circle awhile. ”
Spie clenched her jaw. She didn’t like how casually Arbora mentioned the crux of her mother’s disappointment. The failing at the core of Spie’s being. The way Arbora could see, even now, years later, that Spie wasn’t good enough to be emperor.
Arbora folded her hands together. “I’m bringing this up because we need to be realistic about our past if we want any chance for a future.
I want to turn a new page. Start over. If we do this, if we date, if we eventually marry—then let’s be clear about what that means.
About the constraints on whatever intimacy we can glean from the arrangement. ”
“You really grew into a romantic, didn’t you?” Spie rose. Another breeze whipped her hair into her face; she wrestled the tangled locks back. “You’ve said your piece. It’s late; we’ll have to be back on set before long. We should both sleep. I trust you can see yourself out?”
Arbora stood. She moved to the glass doors but paused before going inside.
“I know my coming here has probably thrown you a curveball of sorts. I spent every day leading up to the official announcement expecting to be informed that I’d been pulled, that someone else would be taking my spot.
But you didn’t have me pulled. At first, I wondered why.
You never loved me.” ( Wrong, Spie thought.) “But I get it now. You were never going to marry for love. You need a good political alliance, preferably with someone you don’t despise.
We may not have known real love, but we did have fun together.
In the absence of love, you’ll settle for fun, because it’s the most-real thing you can hope to attain. ”
Arbora slid open the glass doors and vanished inside. Spie padded to the balcony railing where the coastal breeze burned her face, the smell of brine in her nostrils, the sound of the waves like crashing cymbals.
She felt unmoored, off-kilter. She’d done a lot of mildly stupid things in her life.
But her relationship with Arbora (until the way it ended) hadn’t been one of them.
Or so Spie had always thought. Their relationship had been real to her.
The only real thing she’d ever had, outside of Nicky.
Now here Arbora was, years later, shattering Spie’s image of who they’d been—who she’d been.
Had she really used Arbora? The thought made her want to vomit.
Turned her gut into a mass of festering maggots.
In the absence of love, you’ll settle for fun, because it’s the most-real thing you can hope to attain.
Was that true? Was Spie even capable of love?
You are Expan.
I’m not, she wanted to say, wanted to scream. At Arbora, at her mother, at the thrashing sea, the incomprehensible universe. Instead, she closed her eyes, felt the sting of tears, let the wind wipe them away.
She didn’t know who she was.