YES OR NO?

“ ALLOW YOURSELF TO SHINE WITHOUT BEING SEEN” 

KIVA POV.

He looked at me for a moment like he was deciding how much to say.

"The Decaulion," he said.

I went still.

The name alone did that. Even to someone like me, someone who had spent most of her life looking down rather than up at the structures of power that governed everything around us, that name did something to the air when it was spoken.

The Decaulion. The Alpha of all Alphas. The one who sat above the gate leaders the way a sky sits above everything under it, not interfering, mostly, not visible in the day to day of things, but always there, always the outermost boundary of what was possible and what was not. He held the Northern and Eastern Gates directly. He had authority over all the others. His name was Hades and most people said it quietly, the way you say the name of something you respect too much to be casual about.

"What about him?" I said.

"Word is he's planning a check of all the gates," Fabian said. "A formal one. Going territory by territory."

I stared at him. "He hasn't done that in—"

"Decades," Fabian said. "Some people are saying longer than that. Some people are saying it's been closer to a century since he did a full circuit."

"So why now?"

Fabian shook his head slowly. "That's the part nobody seems to know. Or if they know they're not saying." He turned my hand over in both of his, looking at it, not really seeing it. "There are theories. Some people think there's been a shift in something, some kind of imbalance, some instability in the territories that's drawn his attention. Some people think it's just routine and we've all just forgotten what routine looks like at that level because it's been so long." He paused. "And some people think it's something else entirely and those are the people I'm trying not to listen to too hard because that way lies paranoia."

"Should you be worried?" I asked.

He looked up at me. "I think it's going to be fine. It'll be a visit, an evaluation, some formal posturing, and then he'll move on. It's nothing you need to lose sleep over." He squeezed my hand. "I just want you to know because I didn't want you hearing it from someone else and wondering why I hadn't mentioned it."

I nodded slowly.

He was quiet for a moment. Still holding my hand. Still with that thinking look on his face, but different now, like whatever he had been working up to had moved to the front of his mind and was waiting.

"There's something else," he said.

"Okay."

He took a slow breath. He looked at our joined hands and then up at my face and the expression on him was one I had never quite seen before. Fabian was, as a rule, one of the most composed people I had ever known. He had a steadiness to him that came from having always known exactly who he was and where he stood. Even in difficult situations, even when things were complicated, he had this quality of groundedness that I had always found more comforting than I probably let on.

Right now he looked like a man who had something to say and had been carrying it for a while.

"When Hades comes," he said, "which he will, when he does his check of the Southern Gates, there are certain things that are expected. Certain things that are looked for." He paused. "Each leader of the gates is expected to be established. Settled. To have their house in order in every sense." Another pause. "That includes having a partner. A mate."

I watched his face.

"To arrive at a formal evaluation without one," he said, "is not looked upon well. It suggests instability. It suggests a leader who hasn't committed to the future of his territory, who is still in some kind of provisional state." He looked at me steadily. "It would offend him. And offending Hades is not something anyone in their right mind is interested in doing."

I was very still.

"Fabian," I said carefully.

"I'm getting there," he said. "Let me get there."

I pressed my lips together and waited.

He shifted forward slightly on his heels, still crouched in front of me, still holding both my hands now, and his eyes on mine were more open than I had seen them in a long time, open in the way that people are when they've decided to stop managing how they're perceived and just be in a moment.

"I am so tired," he said quietly, "of sneaking around."

My breath caught.

"I am tired of you leaving before it gets late because you're worried about what people will say. I am tired of not being able to take you somewhere without thinking about who might see us and what story they'll make out of it. I am tired of having you be mine in private and not being able to show the whole world what that actually means." He turned my hands over in his.

 "I want you to be my wife, Kiva. I want you to be my mate. I have wanted that for longer than I've known how to say it properly and the thing with Hades coming is just the thing that finally made me stop waiting for the right moment and understand that the right moment is the one you make."

My heart was doing something loud and inconvenient.

"You are the only person I want standing beside me," he said. "Not for the politics of it. Not because of the visit or the evaluation or any of that. I need you to hear that part clearly. Those things are real but they are not the reason I'm asking. The reason I'm asking is that I love you and I have loved you and I am done with the version of this where I have to pretend I don't in any room that has other people in it."

I could feel the tears coming back. Different ones this time. Lighter.

He looked up at me.

"So what's your answer?" he said softly. "Yes or no?"