Chapter 1704: Sweets and Snow (Part Two)
"What is it that your heart desires?"
Ashlynn’s question seeped into Adala’s heart like snowflakes melting on her skin. It seemed like such a delicate thing at first, but once the question melted into her heart, the path the icy water took wasn’t anything she could predict.
Or rather, like water settling at the bottom of a valley, it collected in the place it inevitably belonged, at the base of everything, no matter what she did to stop its flow.
"You’ll laugh," Adala said, folding her hands neatly in her lap as she watched the drifting snowflakes falling in the garden. "People like us... we’re not meant to find love. Father made sure I understood that before I ever went to the Iron Kingdom."
"He said that it was one of the few blessings given to common folk that they could marry for love," she said bitterly as she watched the snowflakes dancing in the wind. For a moment, they looked wild and unrestrained... completely and utterly free. But no matter how the snowflakes danced, they always landed on the ground.
Some things were inevitable and unavoidable, no matter how much they might briefly enjoy an illusion that things could be different if that one moment could last forever.
"Do you want to find love?" Ashlynn asked gently when Adala went silent for several moments. "Or have you found it already, but it feels out of reach?"
"There’s someone," Adala said, closing her eyes while her fingers traced the spot on her knee where Charlotte’s hand had rested less than a quarter of an hour ago. "But we were both born into the same trap..."
"It’s just that, I’ve been fighting so hard to keep the trap from springing shut," Adala said as hot tears began to collect in the corners of her eyes. "And they... they gave up fighting. I can’t accept a life married to a.... To a person I don’t love," Adala said, holding back a different word at the last moment. "But they don’t seem to care who their family picks for them..."
"That’s different now," Ashlynn said, getting up from her seat so she could pull the chair to the opposite side of the table where she could sit next to Adala. "From today forward, no one can decide who you marry but you and the person you love."
"But what if there’s something... wrong with me?" Adala said, turning to face Ashlynn at last as the iron walls around her heart grew brittle in the cold. "What if it’s the wrong sort of love? This person, they’re my friend and I... I’m afraid that if they knew..."
"If they knew, and they rejected you, then you would lose a friend," Ashlynn finished for the younger woman. "Adala," she said, wrapping an arm around the other woman and pulling her into a soft, comforting hug. "If you love them, and if they’re a good friend, then telling them how you feel shouldn’t destroy your friendship."
"If it does, then what you’re clinging to isn’t a friendship, but the illusion of one," Ashlynn said as she watched the snowflakes fluttering softly toward the ground. "I carried a secret my whole life, because there was ’something wrong with me,’" Ashlynn said softly as her gaze grew distant.
For a moment, neither woman said anything as they both watched the snow, each seeing ghosts of their own past dancing among the snowflakes. Ashlynn let the silence linger between them for several heartbeats before she spoke again.
"I lived in a gilded cage for twenty years, Adala," Ashlynn said. "I had few people I could call friends, and I worried what they would say when they learned the truth. This past year, for the first time in my life, I haven’t had to hide who or what I am... I’ve found more friends, and more love, than I ever imagined my life would hold."
"I still don’t know if my parents can accept me for who I am, and who I’ve become," Ashlynn said. "But one day, hopefully soon, I intend to face them and find out. My mother is very devout," she explained. "She protected me from the time I was an infant until the day of my wedding, but she always told me that I had to work twice as hard to earn a place on the Heavenly Shores because of what I am."
"But, that’s different," Adala protested. She could see how it sounded similar on the surface, but she and Lady Ashlynn weren’t the same at all. "The thing that makes you different also gives you power. You, you fought Owain Lothian, and you can work miracles and... And you were born like this. It isn’t some great sin that you chose," Adala finished in a near whisper as her voice cracked.
"It’s just... not the same," Adala said as she attempted to pull back from Ashlynn’s warm, comforting embrace, only to find the older woman’s grip was as firm and unyielding as iron.
"Oh?" Ashlynn said, turning her head to look at Adala, whose eyes had grown red and puffy as tears rolled down her cheeks. "You chose to love someone you shouldn’t?" Ashlynn said, pausing for a moment as she considered whether or not to apply additional pressure. She was trying to be gentle, but she hadn’t accounted for the layers of armor that Adala had built around her own ’secret.’
"Is it Tulori?" Ashlynn asked in a carefully neutral tone. "This love that’s a ’great sin,’ is it your brother that you love?"
"What!? No!" Adala exclaimed. "How could I ever love a spineless, conniving wretch like Tulori?" Adala asked, shuddering at the thought. "It isn’t like that at all; I would never..."
"Then who is it?" Ashlynn asked. "You can tell me, or not, but keeping it inside isn’t helping you at all," she pointed out. "You might be inches away from what your heart desires, but if you won’t even speak it aloud, you can never obtain it, and that desire will torment you until it destroys the friendship you have. You’ll be left with nothing in the end but a hollow, empty heart, or worse, one that replaces love with resentment..."
