“It was his daughter whom I fell in love with. She was very young when I began my apprenticeship, and a very annoying little chit of a thing. She would drive her father and me crazy with her incessant whining about wanting to ‘help.’ He finally apprenticed her to a woman in the village, and we had some peace. I didn’t pay any attention to her after that, until one day we’re sitting near the fire and up walks this goddess, bearing food.”

I kept my face neutral at the word “goddess,” reminding myself that I’d asked for this. And I already knew the story couldn’t end well.

“It was his daughter, of course, all grown up. I fell in love with her almost immediately. She was everything I wanted at the time. Keep in mind that I was as young as she was, in many ways, at least for my people. I was…” Here Anyan paused, pursing his lips as he thought about how to describe his youthful self.

“I was a lot like Ryu, actually. Which I think explains what happened between us, later. I was so ambitious. Already I was itching to make something more of myself, and by that point I was tired of always being with humans. There were so many things happening. The colonists were encroaching on our human tribe. There was talk of revolution amongst the colonists, themselves. And there were powerful Alfar throughout the continent, conquering all of the small, native territories and piecing together the huge ones we have now.

“As for the girl, she was everything a man like I was then could want. She was sweet, and kind, and gentle, and had been well trained to be a wife. She wanted nothing more than to serve, and she expected her husband to leave her for long periods of time.”

I think I must have made a strangled sound, because Anyan looked up to grin at me.

“I warned you,” he said. “But keep in mind this was lifetimes ago. I was a different man, then.

“Anyway, I took her as my wife, marrying her as her tribe’s tradition called for. I loved her so much, and I vowed to protect her and her people. And between my parents and me, we did try. The colonists came, and we fought like demons. But when my parents were eventually killed—first my father, then my mother—we knew we were lost. The tribe moved on.”

“Oh Anyan, I’m so sorry to hear about your parents.”

He patted my leg, his smile sad. “Thank you, but it was a long time ago. And they died as warriors, which was all they’d ever wanted, really. They were an older generation, used to fighting. I can’t imagine how they would have survived in today’s world, had they made it.”

“Still, I’m sorry. But I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Anyan gave me another gentle pat, before picking up where he’d left off.

“The tribe went west, but I was given another opportunity. Rumors of my abilities as a warrior had spread, and I was approached by the Alfar who would eventually create the Territory we live in, now. He wanted me to fight for him. At first I was reluctant, but he was so persuasive and he told me everything I wanted to hear. How I would lead, how I would finally be amongst my peers, about how I could become a real power in his kingdom.

“I let him sway me, and eventually I took my wife and moved into the interim Compound he’d created. It was only then I realized my devil’s bargain. I was treated like a god, especially as I grew more skilled as warrior and, more important, as a spy. But my wife was treated like dirt, and only then did I learn of the newly arrived Alfar’s contempt of humans, brought with them from the Old World. The Alfar that had always led us were close to the humans, and we all relied on one another. There was mutual respect. But the new Alfar brought none of that with them.

“Somehow, however, I was able to tell myself that everything was fine. My wife never complained, and I let myself believe it was because she was okay, even though I knew it was really because she was taught to bear suffering in silence. Looking back, I realize she had to have been miserable. But I ignored what should have been obvious, because I was happy and I was getting what I wanted.”

Anyan’s voice was soft, but I could hear his pain. He may not have talked about this issue often, but he’d obviously done a ton of pretty intense soul searching over the years.

“Everything came to a head in our newly forged Territory. We were under attack from the neighboring Alfar monarch, who was trying to do the same thing we were doing. They wanted our land; we wanted theirs. I was made into a general. I was so proud of myself and I loved being in command. I really felt like I was a part of something important, and I believed all of my Leader’s claims that he loved me, too, as his best soldier. That’s when my wife became pregnant.

“You know how hard it is for us to conceive, and my wife and I had been trying for years. She was over thirty by this time, a very old age considering the times. We’d given up on having children by then. So we were both surprised by the baby.”

I felt my heart palpitate. Anyan had children? Why had he never told me?

Then I put together the fact I’d never heard about any children with the idea that this story didn’t end well, and my heart sank. I was definitely going to be crying by the time this was over.

“I was ecstatic, and so was she. Children were as rare then as they are now, and we assumed everyone would be over the moon for us. But everyone seemed curiously distant about our good news. It was only later I understood they weren’t happy about her being human. As a general, a leader within our Territory, I was supposed to lead by example, and knocking up humans wasn’t on the agenda. That I loved her and that she was my wife didn’t matter—all that mattered was that she was human.

“Of course I only understood this later. At the time, I just thought everyone was jealous of our fertility. She definitely must have known what would happen, though, which is why I hate myself for leaving her.

“But we were at war. So as much as I wanted to be with my wife, I also wanted to be with my warriors. No, that’s a lie. As much as I wish I could claim I wanted to be with my wife as much as I wanted to be on the battlefield, the fact was that I wanted to fight more. I was so caught up in the power and the glory. I’d try to get back to my wife as much as I could, but she spent most of the pregnancy alone. Every time I’d see her, she’d have gotten so much bigger. And yet when I was with her, I wanted to get back to my leader, my war.

“She was very heavily pregnant when it all came to a head. I’d been home with her when we got word that everything was falling in place for a mission we’d been working on—an assassination, basically. We could end all the fighting, take the lands, and create our new world order, that sort of thing. As I prepared to leave that time, my wife asked me to stay.

“That was the only time she asked for anything, in our entire marriage. She asked me to stay. She didn’t beg, she just asked. Of course I told her no, and she didn’t even argue…” Anyan’s voice broke as he said that, just for a second, and my heart broke with it. I waited patiently as he regained control.

“So I went to battle, and we won. We won everything. The other monarch was dead, and we had his territory. We owned the East, just as we’d dreamed.”

“Is this the battle that the cartoon in your bathroom is about?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice bitter. “It was a very important moment for our people.”

“And your wife?”

“She was dead when I came home, carried in on the shoulders of my warriors. She was dead, as was my son.” His voice was stone, but I could see pain in every lineament of his body, his face.

“How?” I asked. The one place a human woman giving birth at that time should have been safe was with the Alfar and their healers.

“They let her die,” he said. “I learned then that every time I left, my wife was basically entirely ignored. She’d be given food if she went to the kitchens herself, but that was it. She took out her own chamber pots, cleaned her own rooms, and was entirely alone every time I was gone from her. I thought these people were my friends, my family, and they did that to my wife.”

Even after all this time, his face had gone white with anger.

“When she went into labor, she was entirely alone. And she died alone, as did my son. Almost anyone in that Compound could have saved them without even lifting a finger, but no one did.”

“Why?” I asked, completely baffled. I could understand Alfars hating humans and halflings, as I’d been on the receiving end of such prejudice myself. But why had they thought Anyan would have been fine with what they did?

“For all the reasons I learned to loathe them,” he said. “Because they live one way of life and can’t imagine any others. And because they can’t imagine any other ways of living, they can’t accept other ways of living. So if they didn’t respect humans, of course I didn’t respect humans. If they didn’t think halflings should exist, they assumed I didn’t really care about my human wife or our baby.

“But I did care. It was only because I was so heartbroken and exhausted that I didn’t go on a murderous rampage when I found them lying in our bed. It was soaked with dried blood. She looked like she died in agony…”