Page 63 of The Alien I Fell in Love with on Walpurgis Night

After a few minutes of silence he says, “Before I met you, I thought I would die alone. Even if I had married, another wouldn’t have touched my soul. But now, I can’t imagine having to say goodbye to you.”

“I find it hard to believe that you didn’t meet anyone you liked, you’re almost fifty.”

“I courted a few women when I first came of age, but it never worked out.”

“Why not?”

“Many reasons. The first being that despite everything looking perfect on paper, in reality there was no spark.”

“And the second reason?”

“Can’t you figure it out?”

“Your mother or sister didn’t like the women?”

“No, quite the opposite.”

“The Empress?”

“Yes, I don’t want to lie to you. The Empress and I have a strange relationship for cousins.”

“Oh,” I say and then ask the question I don’t want to know the answer to, but must ask, “Are you kissing cousins?”

“There was a time before she was married and I was young and foolish. But I swear to you it was only once.”

Maybe incest is okay in the Empire. “Why didn’t you marry her?”

“We are cousins. It’s forbidden. And if I’m being completely honest and I’ve never told anyone this, I think I was drugged. And I’m not just saying that because I wish it never happened. I’m mentioning it because I’ve never really been attracted to her like she is to me. And ever since it happened, I have been blackmailed by what happened. If anyone ever found out, we had been so intimate, I would be ruined.”

“How would they know what really happened? It would be her word against yours. Did she record it?”

“Yes of course it was recorded. I did not agree that I remember, but she’s more powerful than I am.”

“Wouldn’t the Empress be even more shamed?”

“No. She’s a woman. I would be the one held accountable. Under Alliance and galactic law by definition only a man can rape.”

“That’s convenient for Alliance women,” I remark. “What’s changed now? Doesn’t the Empress still have this over you?”

“You have changed me,” he runs his hands through my hair and begins unbraiding it. “I never knew what I was missing before you. And I think over the years, I convinced myself that I liked the way the Empress treated me like her favorite, but that’s because I never really felt the fire of genuinely wanting a woman. And when she took you from me, it changed me forever. That action awoke my inner soul, not only because I knew I must see you again, but also because I could no longer lie to myself about the women in my life. They had gone too far.”

“How is it that women have so much power?”

“The Empire is a matriarchy. They’ve always had the power.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” I say. “I was only there for a few days and look at all the Alliance men in these ships in the galaxy. That to me doesn’t scream ‘matriarchy.’ Earth is a patriarchy and men control all the ships and women couldn’t work or go anywhere for a long time. Some still can’t. So you see how confusing it is? In the Empire, men are on all the ships and the women don’t go anywhere. I would imagine a matriarchy to play out with men at home and women not allowing them to go anywhere because that’s the way it looks on Earth for women.”

“Our histories are different from the beginning. In the Alliance men have always been used for our strength. And we accepted women’s rule freely for millions of years. Everything in our culture is about women. Men are secondary.”

“But you worship the gods, you talk about them all the time.”

“No, that’s what you hear. Your native language is patriarchal. You don’t hear the exact words people are using. You hear what your language has already prescribed.”

“So the gods are actually the goddesses?”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible?”

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