birthrightgreen | AU for _deadlydance_, set immediately after "The Price"

She snorted. "I'll never be one of them." It was almost a warning. That her mother was a Queen and her....the man who speared her a Warlord Prince didn't matter.

Rainier looked puzzled.

"Did I miss the part where I said you had to be?"

Her smile was slightly dark. "Aren't I supposed to be? High Lord's niece. Cousin to the Warlord Prince of Dhelman. Don't you think I'm expected to be?"

If her smile was dark, his eyes were.

"I think it is more than enough to live up to our own expectations."

She paused slightly at that, nodded. "I always thought so, too."

"But someone else disagreed with you?"

She shrugged slightly. "If they'd just let me come in as 'Surreal'..." She sighed. "But no. They insisted on a surname and...I ended up with an aristo family who keeps insisting I'm one of them." Possibly it was the wine that loosened her tongue, or the flailing need to make him understand. See.

She wasn't like him.

He had to understand that before he started escorting her around town.

"Surreal." Rainier tried to keep the smile from his face. "Speaking as someone who has had the benefit of standing back and watching ou with them? They aren't just intisting they are your family. They are your family."

There was the smile.

"Maybe they're family. But I'm not like them."

She was sticking to that point.

"I'm not like you."

Rainier finished the last of his wine.

"What am I like, then?"

"Aristo." No scorn in the word, but something....different. Apart.

"You're saying that you are not like me." Rainier surmised. "But why would I want to spend time with myself? Dance, with myself?"

She looked at him narrowly, unsure if she was being teased.

He recognized that look. It was time for another question.

"What does the word Aristo mean to you?"

She shrugged slightly. "Money come by in some respectable fashion. Family with entree into society. Growing up with that. Breeding that shows, not tainted by..." Her eyes flitted away. By time on the streets. By never knowing where your next meal would come from. By letting people do...whatever to you. "Ties. It's a different world."

Rainier always admired grace, even off the dance floor. He paused to watch the delicate lift of Surreal's shoulder. And then there was concern. She thought she was tainited?

But the look in her eyes warned him off.

"If I have given ou the impression that I am someone that is overly concerned with pointless frivolities, I'm sorry."

And he wanted her to know that. Society had a place, but not every place. Protocol however? Mattered. The deep-seated need to serve? Called.

He had promised that he wouldn't snarl.

But, tainted?

She tilted her head, watching him. "I didn't say you were overly concerned with pointless frivolity. Nor that aristos are. You run the Blood. Run the Territories. You form Courts and Circles. There are hundreds of Blood who do not have that opportunity considering their birth. Society is where the world is run from."

"I won't lie Surreal. I take pleasure in the world I was born into, but I wasn't born into that pleasure. I had to work for it, to find it. And truthfully I find that countless members of the Aristo class that take their Blood and their birth for granted? For even more than it is worth? I have no respect for that. Who am I to say that those who rule are any more important than those who are ruled."

He poured them both another glass of wine.

"You don't consider yourself Circle?"

She shrugged slightly. "Jaenelle says I am, but I..." She sighed. "I suppose I am. But it's..."

It's not the same, she wanted to scream at him. You don't know.

Possibly it flashed in her eyes, but she glanced down to hide it.

"Your attitude is not one I've seen much among aristos."

"It's not about what Jaenelle says, and you know it. Either you are, or you aren't." There were some things Rainier wouldn't back down from. "She doesn't command that you give her your heart, she simply waits for you to offer it, freely. Because she knows how much more powerful that bond is. And once you do, it doesn't matter if you are sitting, standing, or walking on four legs when you do."

He didn't have to see Surreal's eyes, to feel the heat from them.

"If none of that matters to her, how could it possibly mean something to me."

There was another sip of wine, and a breath.

"Did the lady just imply I have an attitude?"

"Jaenelle has my love and my loyalty," she practically snarled at him. To even imply that she didn't, when she'd given up everything she'd ever dreamed of for her, to serve her...Surreal nearly broke the wine glass. "She's had it since she was barely twelve. I've never said she thought or said..."

She sat back, taking a deep breath. "Just because who and what I was doesn't matter to her doesn't mean others see it the same way, sugar."

"You do."

Rainier saw the stem of the wine glass tremble, and nearly break. Without another thought he vanished it, keeping both Surreal, and the attire he admired so safe from broken glass. In that moment? That fact that she could have a sheild up faster, and stonger than his just as quickly? It didn't matter.

The lady had concluded he an attitude? Fine. He could display it that much more.

"I never said your past did not mean anything." It had obviously shaped her. How could it now. "What I said was that it didn't have to mean everything."

"Tell that to this oh-so-open armed society, sugar."

She stared at the spot where the glass had been, a bit blankly. They'd been so quick to believe the worst of her and of Daemon, without any proof and when they'd decided they couldn't be together and were trying to move on. And now here she was, thinking she could live here, among them.

Her hands were still trembling and she tightenend them into a fist starting to say something else when the waitress arrived with their food.

The look on Rainier's face was enough for the food to be placed on the table, and the waitress to leve, quickly. She'd promised not to snarl, and he would keep that promise.

However, he was considering a good, long growl.

"Do you truthfully want those arms, open or not?"

She lifted her chin, voice eerily calm, perfectly polite as she cut into the steak. "It's them or no one. I made an inadvertent choice when I came here. Allied myself with the Sa Diablos and locked myself into a world where they'll accept me to my face and talk about me behind my back. Or I can retire into seclusion and go mad with boredom."

She shrugged. "I prefer not to be bored. Everything has a price. I'm willing to pay it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

AU for _deadlydance_, set immediately after "The Price"

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