Cat and Mouse-Valens and Piper

I’m very excited for today’s post because we’re going to be talking about the cat and mouse dynamic between Piper and Valens! Obviously, spoilers ahead for Songs of Stone if you haven’t read it yet!

The concept for their relationship appeared to me early on when I was thinking about a Pied Piper retelling. When I was thinking about a fairytale so centered on a villain that I knew would be my heroine, the cat and mouse dynamic was just too perfect.

In case you don’t know what that means, the cat and mouse idiom means: a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes.  

One classic example is the Batman and Catwoman relationship where there is a hero trying to catch a villain and they’re kind of toying with each other as one constantly pursues the other and the other keeps escaping. When I was developing Piper and when I decided to make the male lead a prince, I knew I wanted the story to involve him trying to catch Piper which was perfect for leaning into this dynamic.

I love the cat and mouse dynamic because it allows for a lot of fun scenarios and banter back and forth between the two of them. But there is a challenge to this dynamic mostly involving the fact that, at least in a world without superheroes and secret identities where they have the chance to interact elsewhere, the majority of their interactions happen when one is chasing and trying to catch the other.

I knew this was going to mean that Piper and Valens weren’t going to have as much time together on the page as some of the other couples have like in Mirrors of Ice, Beasts of Beauty and Cinders of Glass. In those books, the couple spends a lot of time together, on and off the page as they’re stuck together, or working together.

As the series stands, right now, the exception to that is Stalks of Gold where Aurelia and Sandor actually only have 15 scenes together throughout the whole book. They are a couple that is mostly separated with only brief periods of interaction between them while they’re constantly trying to find each other again.

But the reason why that worked for Stalks of Gold where it wouldn’t have for the other three is because Stalks of Gold starts off with both characters already having a relatively long history together that happens before the book and off page. The other couples don’t meet until the start of their books.

Aurelia and Sandor are childhood friends with unspoken feelings for each other and their developing romance is interrupted by the villains and rekindled and deepened during their brief interactions, but the foundations were already there.

Songs of Stone is different because I have a couple with limited interaction with each other without having any of the long, shared history since they meet for the first time during this book. If you can’t tell already, I favor particularly slow, slow, burn romances and complex plots. So I set myself up for quite a conundrum with a book that had a cat and mouse romantic dynamic as well as an intense plot that involves the characters when they’re not together that also took up quite a bit of words.

So I knew this couple was going to be a little bit different given I wasn’t going to have the same amount of words to develop them from enemies to lovers as I have for the other books. Now I’m not a big fan of the insta-love trope. I tend to favor the slow burn romance and a long development of affection.

Now, I still wouldn’t call Piper and Valens insta-love, mostly because I don’t think I’m capable of writing it, but they’re probably as close to insta-love as I’ll ever get. I knew these two were going to need a very powerful connection that developed relatively quickly in order to take their relationship from enemies to lovers with no previous history and a very limited amount of time together.

Which changed how I develop their characters, specifically deciding to give them something to bond over that no one else in their lives shared with them or could even understand. That understanding was very important for both of them. Because it meant that even though they didn’t know each other very well and were on opposing sides, they understood each other in a way that most people in their lives didn’t.

That made their connection very powerful and allowed for a developing romance without it being insta-love. It was more insta-connection because of that trait. Piper and Valens both share a deep sense of wanderlust, as well as a few other things to bond over, but it mostly comes back and centers on that idea of wanting to travel and not feeling at home in one place.

They just got each other, and it was actually a lot of fun to write. It meant I really had to make their moments count and make the times they weren’t together show how the other had already tangled themselves in the other’s life.

Of course, they did still have their differences. Piper’s cynicism battled against Valens’ idealism throughout the whole book and their relationship. But at the end of the day, they just fit together really well and they knew it pretty quickly, they may just not have wanted to acknowledge it!

The cat and mouse dynamic also meant the times they were together were so much fun. I loved the section after Piper returns to Wiva with Hjalmar and is constantly scrambling to do things to try to throw Valens off her trail, pretending to faint, pretending to lose her memories, etc. The rooftop chase scene was another favorite of mine, just the epitome of the cat and mouse dynamic for me. A literal chase scene, lots of banter, worrying about the other’s safety as they’re still fighting and trying to catch/escape.

Next time we’ll be talking about my second favorite relationship in the book, Sandy and Piper!