David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

When that happened, when one or both of them weren't free, this soul-deep fusion could cause incredible pain for everyone involved.

I just thought I loved Shaylar, Kinlafia thought. Then he gave himself a mental shake. No, that's not true. I did love Shaylar, and I always will. But this-

"What to do we do now?" she said, as the laughter left her voice but not her eyes.

"You're asking me?" Kinlafia shook his head. "I didn't even know your name until ten minutes ago!"

"Does that matter?" she asked simply.

"Not at all," he told her softly, fingertips caressing her cheek.

"Good." She closed her eyes for a moment, leaning her cheek against his touch, then inhaled deeply, opened her eyes, and straightened her spine.

"Good," she repeated. "I'll remind you of that quite often in the future, I'm sure. But I'm very much afraid we don't have time to explore us at this moment."

"No, we don't," he agreed, yet even as he did, his Voice continued. "But we will find time for it, My Lady. Soon."

"Oh, that we will, love," she promised him in a Voice every bit as deep and musical as her speaking voice.

Most people, Kinlafia knew, would never have understood. Even another Voice would find it difficult-

as Kinlafia himself always had, when he'd seen it between other Voices-to truly realize, or to believe, perhaps, that two total strangers could meet and know instantly that the gods themselves had crafted them to be the two halves of a single whole. That they could share such a serene, unshakable confidence that they were meant to be together. That, in fact, they already were together.

I never understood it, at any rate, even when Mayla and Hilas tried to explain it to me. He shook his head mentally at the memory of his friends trying to tell him how it worked. But maybe it's different for everyone. Maybe it hits all of us in a different way. Or maybe it's just something no one can explain, even to another Voice, unless it's happened to them?

He didn't know the answer to his own question, but he knew that he would never be able to explain it.

Not how it had happened, or how potent it was, or how magical. Or how something so deep, so powerful, could be simultaneously so calm, so patient and ready to wait upon the future. It was like standing in the eye of a hurricane. All the incredible power and passion, the wonder of having met one another, the promise that so much more was still to come, roared about them with strength to shake the multiverse by the scruff of its neck until its teeth rattled, and yet they stood in a place of crystal clarity that was poised and peaceful, like gold fish drifting effortless as dreams over golden gravel in a deep, clear pool.

"Please," she said, stepping back and waving one graceful hand at the comfortable chairs placed to flank the coffee-table and form an intimate little conversational nook. "Sit down. We've got a lot to discuss.

Officially, I mean."

"Of course," he agreed, and obeyed the invitation.

She let him settle into his chair before she picked up the folder on her blotter, walked around the desk, and seated herself in her own chair, facing him. She looked into his eyes for a moment longer, then took a fountain pen from her pocket, uncapped it, and opened the folder in her lap. It was, he recognized, her way of announcing that it was time for business.

"Now," she said briskly, "about this parade …"

Zindel chan Calirath's eyebrows arched as Yanamar Alazon and Darcel Kinlafia were ushered into the private dining room.

That dining room lay in the Emperor's Wing, the most recently modernized portion of the palace (for Calirath Palace, "modernization" was an unending process which had begun literally thousands of years ago), and the gas-jets and oil lamps of the less modern areas had been augmented with the relatively new incandescent lights. Personally, Zindel didn't much care for them, esthetically speaking. Their light was much harder edged, in his opinion. But it was also undeniably brighter and a huge boon for people (like certain emperors he could have named) who found themselves forced to deal with ream after ream of paperwork and reports. And unlike him,Vareena much preferred the new lighting-probably because of her interest in needlepoint-while even he had to admit that it made it easier to see people's faces and read their expressions.

Like now, for instance. For two people who had never met before that very afternoon, the two Voices were indisputably together, and the Emperor forcibly suppressed an all but irresistible temptation to grin like a triumphant urchin. The human being in him was simultaneously touched by and envious of the all but visible glow radiating from them. Like most Caliraths with the Calirath Talent, Zindel had often resented the fact that Glimpses were so often things of tragic portent and never of things like this. But he needed no Glimpse to realize what had happened, and that was the reason for his sense of triumph. He'd never expected, never dreamed, that anything like this might occur, but the Emperor in him recognized instantly how valuable it could prove.

Stop that, Zindel! he scolded himself. Just this once stand here and be glad for someone without thinking about how what's happened to them can help you do your damned job! Besides, you've never seen Alazon look happier in her life.

"Voice Kinlafia," he said, walking towards the Voice with his hand once more extended. The footman who had ushered Kinlafia into the chamber looked moderately shocked, but it was important to Zindel that this evening be placed firmly on a non-state-occasion basis as quickly as possible.

"Your Majesty," Kinlafia responded, and gripped the extended hand with rather more aplomb than he'd shown the first time Zindel had held it out to him. "I'm honored by the invitation," the Voice continued.

"And I'd be even more honored if you could see your way to using my first name."

"Oh, I think I can see my way clear to doing that," Zindel assured him, then turned and extended his free hand to the tallish, early-middle-aged woman standing beside him. She was an extraordinarily handsome woman, with the very first frosting of silver just beginning to touch her hair, and despite her height, she looked petite and delicate as she stood beside the Emperor in a simple little gown which even Kinlafia recognized had probably cost thousands of marks.

"Darcel Kinlafia," the Emperor said, "my wife, Varena. Varena, my love, this is Voice Kinlafia."

The footman who'd looked moderately shocked at Zindel's informal greeting to Kinlafia looked as if he'd dislocated his plunging jaw this time, the Emperor noted with a fair degree of pleasure. The Hawkwing Palace staff were accustomed to his often deplorably casual private manners. Many of them even recognized that his deliberate informality on private occasions was one of the ways he maintained his sanity during the endless nonprivate occasions to which he and his family were subjected. The expanded staff here in Calirath Palace were still figuring that out, and some of them were clearly scandalized by it all.

Well, it's just as well if they start getting used to it early, he thought. I'm too old and set in my ways to change now. Besides, maintaining my sanity probably just got a lot harder.

"Voice Kinlafia."

Janaki had obviously gotten his physique from his father's side of the family, Kinlafia decided, yet as he looked into the prince's mother's eyes, he saw an echo of Janaki's enduring patience. He could readily envision Janaki matching Zindel's famous Conclave outburst about the "godsdamned fish," but the patience which had taken the Crown Prince through Kinlafia's debriefing again and again … that had come from his mother. Darcel Kinlafia never doubted for a moment that Zindel chan Calirath would have been just as thorough, have taken just as much time, just as many pains, had that task fallen to him instead of his son. But Janaki's gently supportive sympathy, even as he forced Kinlafia to relive every horrible moment of Shaylar's last Voice message, had owed as much to his mother's compassion as to his father's iron sense of duty.