"I wouldn't call us friends." Vedette said simply.
She would not have called him a friend. That of course didn't mean that she didn't like Captain Ulbarich, but she had so few friends. She did her best not to make them. Friends complicated things in the same way that love complicated things. Not that she spent her youth like that, no, she'd been friends with everyone then. Before the breaking. Her only real friend, if she did not count Koe as Koe had been something else entirely, was Ithacles. That friendship had a whole set of complications. He was a Prince and she was a Captain. He was a half elf and she was a dragon. Then the whole, man and woman thing and everything that complicated that there.
Too many close calls to name.
"Not that he wouldn't make a good friend, Onainat." Vedette lifted her eyes then away from her glass. "We were soldiers, Captains. There's a certain camaraderie there, but hardly any of us Captains were friends. Too much competition between them and we're all off running different missions or guarding other things. For myself, I was always somewhere out of Faustben or around the castle. And Ulbarich had his men to look after." Vedette shrugged.
"But then Prince Ithacles was around, it's not like we had a chance to shake hands and laugh about this battle or that battle. Not to mention you saw the mood I put him in." Vedette looked back at her glass.
"Even if it were on friendlier terms I probably would have waited to greet Ulbarich until after Ithacles left. He does like to be the center of attention unless his sister is around." His sister was such a hag.
Vedette had made so many mistakes in leaving Ithacles. Not that she'd ever take what she did back. There was no way to put a price on the gift she'd been given in seeing Koe again, and being with him again. The spot was still sore, she didn't want to think of him right now. What she'd done was abandon her post, even if the cause mattered enough to her, it was still abandoning. The problem was explaining such things to Ithacles. Apologizing for them. Hoping for the best when it just didn't seem bright any longer.
The other problem, of course, was that she was stubborn and so was Ithacles. She hardly wanted to apologize again, and he likely didn't want to forgive her.