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"It’s not as bad as you make it sound, Mada-, er, Zedya," Lennart said, waving it off as though it was only a minor inconvenience.

"When I was a young man, twenty years ago or so, all I ever had to do was stand where Captain Bassinger told me to, before he became the Commander of the Vale. Once it was my turn to tell the young ones where to stand, I only need to spend a few hours during the day attending to matters so that I can be at My Lady’s side all night. "

"Twenty years you’ve done this," Zedya said, a complicated expression flickering across her face as she watched the sights of the city passing by outside the windows. Their carriage slowed as it navigated through a busy market square. Children from the Clan of Painted Masks darted between stalls, wielding toy whips as they reenacted Heila’s victories.

One small girl had even painted her face with markings meant to look like the Willow Witch’s horns.

"In all that time," Zedya said softly. "You’ve never married. You have no children at home waiting for your return, no lover writing you letters or looking after your home... you’ve given all of those things up so you can remain at Lady Nyrielle’s side."

"The Vale of Mists would have been lost without her long ago," Lennart said with a gentle shake of his head. "Every time she travels, whether it’s to Airgead Mountain and the Southern Step or here across the mountains, it’s because she needs to obtain something for the Vale that will help keep our people safe from the humans and their constant thirst for conquest."

"Some of us have to take up this burden, supporting her while she does so much to care for us," he said, placing a large paw over Zedya’s hand on his shoulder. "I may have given up things that most men would want, but in return, I’ve seen more of the world than almost anyone born in the Vale in more than a century. There are wonders out here that my childhood friends have never seen and could barely understand. It hasn’t been a bad trade. "

"But how much longer can you do it," Zedya said softly, pulling her hand out from under his to trace it along the still tender scar on his face from the battle at the Tangled Tower.

"How many more times will you venture across the mountains with Lady Nyrielle and I?

How many more chances will you have to take a night off in a city like High Fen City? "

"Did Virve tell you?" Lennart asked as he felt like he was starting to understand what Zedya was up to.

"This is likely the last time I’ll ever visit High Fen City," he acknowledged.

"If I survive the coming war, then it will be time to name a successor and retire.

I still have a few good years left in me," he added, flexing a powerful arm that was only slightly softer than it had been five years ago when he entered his thirties.

"But even if Commander Bassinger retires after this war, I won’t be the one to succeed him," he said. "The Vale of Mists is changing now that Lady Ashlynn has joined us. Nothing will be as it was. Lady Nyrielle and her Seneschal can select the new leaders they’ll need after we finish this war. I know it’s different for you," he said, gently taking her hand between his two large paws.

"But this is the way life is for people like me. It might be too late to find a wife and start a family by the time it’s all said and done, but there’s still plenty of time to choose a village, build a cottage while away my days on more idle pursuits," he said.

His voice caught at the end as he tried to imagine being content with ’idle pursuits’ like fishing or keeping a garden, but he was certain that by the time the day arrived, he’d be ready to hang up his claws and enjoy a rest. Assuming the coming war didn’t claim his life before he got there at least. But then, that might not be a bad way for his story to end.

To spend his life in battle after so many years as a soldier.

.. a man couldn’t ask for a better ending than that, could he?

"But is that, is that really what you want?" Zedya asked. Her amethyst eyes studied him intently as she listened to the subtle changes in his heartbeat. At times, it faltered slightly and the arteries in his neck jumped when he realized she’d heard about his upcoming retirement. Other times, when his eyes grew distant, she felt a stillness settle over him as he contemplated a future he wouldn’t put into words.

Even if he wouldn’t say it, she’d known him for far too long to miss the fate that must be running through his mind when he glanced out the window at the radiant, silvery moon hanging in the cloudless night sky.

They both knew that, as a soldier on the frontlines of the coming war, he might not survive to enjoy those ’idle pursuits’ he mentioned and from the way his fur twitched and quickly settled down, the notion didn’t seem entirely uncomfortable to him.

"What if..." she hesitated, briefly uncertain about what she had brought him out tonight to say. He seemed comfortable with the places his life might take him in the end but... that didn’t mean she was comfortable with them. There were some things, however, that were taboo for any person of the Vale of Mists to ever ask a vampire and after so many years, she knew that Lennart would never ask what he shouldn’t.

That meant that if she didn’t broach the topic, no one else ever would.

"What if there was another option?" Zedya asked, staring directly into her bearish friend’s eyes and watching them tremble as his mind began to process what she was saying. "What if... what if it didn’t have to end that way?"