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Lursa learns hers is a House of shadow when she sits to dinner and there are Romulans at the table.
Her mother is bedridden, sick and recovering slowly after the arduous birth of their youngest: a girl. They name her B’Etor after her mother’s grandmother. Lursa spends every free moment she has at her mother’s side, watching her sleep and wake and nurse and sleep once more, reciting poetry she learned in school to recite at her mother’s bedside.
Duras pokes at the fat of the baby girl’s cheek. The nursemaid is holding her. They’d been forced to cleanse themselves before they entered the room.
“Strong one,” the nursemaid says, smiling down at the babbling child. “She has not stopped talking since she came to us.”
“Will mother wake soon?” Lursa asks. Her mother is pale, her hands folded at her stomach. Her eyes are closed.
“Not now,” the nursemaid says. “Come back after your meal. I will tell you if she is awake then.”
They leave, Duras trailing her as they walk down the corridor. He is grumbling, as usual.
“Stop whining,” Lursa says. “You are fortunate Father wants to have you at this dinner at all.”
“Quiet,” he says, "Father only wants you there because his guest has a daughter.”
Lursa turns to shove him, snickering when he stumbles over his own feet.
“He will not need me, then,” Lursa says, “you are girl enough for the both of us.”
Her father presents them to her guest with a booming voice: the eldest children of the House of Duras. Lursa is seated next to the Romulan girl at the table. Duras is next to her father.
Lursa learned at school the week before that the Romulan is inherently duplicitous—the girl has a long, ridiculous name and a worse haircut, lopped off at the neck and black as her eyes. She introduces herself with one name to Lursa and then answers to another when her father calls to her.
They spend the evening together. The girl—A’ilmna, which is enough of a mouthful to give one a headache—is fond of hand games as Lursa is, and quick to learn and teach them. They play a few after their fathers have gone to drink and talk of business, claps and whistles and rhymes in quick succession that the Imperial translator skips and glitches over. A’ilmna only laughs when it does, and Lursa suspects she is slurring her speech and changing the words to hear the machine buffer.
They leave after several hours. Lursa returns to her mother’s bedside and finds her awake. Tells her of the girl when her mother asks. Tells her of what she was told in school.
Her mother sighs, cradling the baby. “There is truth in that—but there is truth in what you saw tonight, as well. Did the girl seem dishonourable?”
“Maybe,” Lursa says, frowning. “No.”
“Right,” her mother says, and leaves it at that.
There are those who hate her House, those who hate Romulans, hate what they cannot control. They fear what can be decided at dinner, in the privacy of her father’s home, without witnesses.
Sometimes, Lursa learns, shadow is necessary.
The House of Duras has served the Empire at the front lines for eight generations. They have also left the Imperial Forces after a few tours to use their experiences to run their own ships, captain their own fleets. Lursa decides to follow tradition.
She shows talent with navigation at the Imperial Academy and is assigned a role at the helm of a Bird-of-Prey with a raid-hungry captain. He has a penchant for throwing himself into battles with ships larger than theirs, which is just as well—Lursa is talented, and she does not plan to stay for long.
The General Chan shows up at her door soaking wet and inconvenient, as he tends to. Lursa scoffs and steps aside to allow him entry, in spite of the hour and her better judgement.
“You should not have come,” she says, walking to her rooms.
Chan strips himself of his armor as he follows. “You are not alone, then,” he says, curious.
She pushes open the doors and watches his chest rise and fall with a sigh of relief as he seats himself on her bed. The walk from the entrance to the doors is a long one. From the main entrance to her bedroom, longer.
“I am,” she says.
Chan always shows up unannounced and leaves half of his things in her home as if to claim the space. Lursa watches as he removes the ties from his hair, takes the sigils from his sash and sets them on her furniture. She will put them into a box by the door before he leaves.
“Then, I have come at the perfect time.”
“You are beginning to annoy me,” Lursa says. Peels off her boots, anyway. The storm is pelting at her windows.
“Here I was, thinking that I was missed,” Chan says. “I carved your name into the body of the last life I took.”
It is romantic. It is most likely a lie, but that is what she comes to expect—he lies to her, speaks promises into her ears that she does not want him to fulfill, and she to him, pretending she is not entertaining herself to relieve boredom, stress. Taking him to bed because she took him once the evening after a battle with blood pounding in her ears, years ago, and it would be too inconvenient to find another between all her work when Chan will eventually appear if she only bides her time. He is good enough company, nice to look at, the not-very-respectable son of a good House.
Lursa herself is—well, she does what is necessary. Chan waits at her bedside as if she is the only thing he wants. She opens the door when he appears, which is enough for him to return.
This is no true mating attempt, so she forgoes throwing anything at him—he is not good at evading, anyway—and kisses him without preamble.
The candles at her bedside are out before they are done.