11. Strangeness
Strangeness
Istared at the rock. It was very much a rock, and not a rock-like organism that someone might conceivably eat. It was a very nice rock, a round piece of dark stone about the size of my pinkie nail, all shot through with pinkish quartz, but it was still a gods-damn rock.
“Um…” I said.
“If you lived here for a long time, you’d eventually accumulate enough dust and grit in your food to make a physical connection with the stone,” Alluin said helpfully. “In lieu of centuries of meals here, you can forge a connection like this.”
I swallowed, my ears dropping. “That seems…” I didn’t know what it seemed. Weird, definitely, but also somewhat like cheating. I dragged my eyes up to Alluin’s encouraging smile. “I mean, it’s a rock. Won’t I just, uh…shit it out?”
His lips twitched. “No, actually. Not this rock, if you take it from my hand and eat it before it touches anything other than your skin. It’ll dissolve and become part of you.
We’re offering it to you. Me and Droesh.
” When I still didn’t move, Alluin’s expression wavered and his hand dropped a fraction.
“You don’t have to,” he said in a hesitant tone.
“I know it’s strange. If you’re going to be my heir, though, Droesh needs to accept you, and while I think it will trust my judgment, it would be easier if it can get to know you, ah, more closely. ”
“From the inside out?” I asked, giving him a pained expression.
“It doesn’t have to be a pebble,” Alluin said in a mild tone of voice. “As I’m deeply connected to Droesh, you could eat a piece of me, instead—”
“Rock it is!” I said, snatching the small stone out of his hand and tossing it back.
Alluin burst out laughing. I had to swallow several times to get the damn thing down, and even afterwards I could feel the sensation of it lodged in my throat.
“Ugh,” I said, letting my tongue loll out like a panting dog. “Rocks aren’t made for eating.”
“I did say you could have eaten some of me instead of some of Droesh,” Alluin said brightly. He swam backwards away from me, kicking lazily through the water.
“I’m not a cannibal, Lu,” I said, mock-sneering at him when he only laughed again.
“You don’t have to sound so appalled at the thought of tasting me,” he crooned back. “Some men find my flavor quite to their liking.”
I boggled at him for a moment before the implication sunk in. “Lu!” I yelped, turning crimson. “Are you saying I could have— have—” Holy gods, I couldn’t even get the words out. Thank fuck for icy streams that kept my body from having any other reaction to the thought.
“Sucked me off instead of eating a rock?” Alluin said in his most innocent voice.
Somehow I blushed even harder. “Yes!”
“No,” he said, giving me a smirky look. “I was implying it, though, precisely to see you turn that color. You’re blushing like a rose. Haven’t you ever been propositioned before?”
“Ass,” I muttered, pressing the backs of my hands against my cheeks to cool them.
Lu grinned at me again. “I’m going to try to get us some fish. Mind making us a fire?”
“I’ll even try to find some good sticks to sharpen for spitting them,” I grumbled back.
He heaved himself up out of the water onto the natural dam, water sluicing off of his bare skin. “Sounds good,” he said, irrepressibly cheerful. “Wish me luck.”
By the time Alluin had managed to catch enough fish for a reasonable meal, it was getting towards four in the afternoon, and once we’d actually cooked and eaten them, it was early evening.
The weather was fine, though, so it wasn’t like we needed to even make camp.
We doused our embers, scattered the ring of stones I’d used to contain the fire, and headed deeper into Droesh.
As dusk fell, the beasts of the wilderness started voicing their night-calls.
Alongside the more usual creatures, I caught the distant calls of a paetanna and the deep booming woofs of a giant ground-shrike.
Nothing sounded close enough to worry about, but there were plenty of predators that didn’t announce their territorial claims with the falling of night, and I was relieved when Alluin led us to a secluded lea to camp.
Lying there in our shared bedroll, with the sweep of stars overhead and Alluin halfway on top of me in his favorite position for cuddling, I didn’t feel any different.
I was lying on Droesh with a piece of it in me and had Alluin lying on me with a piece of him in me, but I still felt like me.
Just…me. Zhiolas Ulahana, soldier and feckless nobody, a man who’d never been born to step into the world of deep magic and high society that Alluin was steeped in.
I didn’t belong here. I knew I didn’t. I wasn’t the sort of person who was given ancient treasures to protect and tend. If it hadn’t been for Alluin, I would never have dared to do something like this—but Alluin had asked me to do this for him, had practically begged me for it, and so here I was.
“Lu?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Mm,” came the reply, heavy with sleep.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “Do you think it…likes me?”
“Mm?” he asked, a questioning noise.
“Droesh,” I rasped. “Do you… I mean, does it… Will it like me?”
Alluin huffed a sleepy laugh. “It will,” he said easily, his certainty absolute.
I swallowed again. “How do you know?”
“Because I know you and I know Droesh,” he murmured. One of his hands slid up to cup my neck, his thumb sweeping slowly along my pulse, caressing the place where his soul and mine joined together. “It’ll surely love you, as you’ll surely love it. Give it time, shaeulo.”
“I’m frightened,” I admitted, because it was the timeless night and because Alluin was touching me with such tender affection.
He stilled. “Of me?”
“Never,” I said, my voice going rough.
Lu relaxed again, cuddling closer, his head on my shoulder and his warm body a solid press against my side, his thigh crossing mine and his hair tickling my collarbone. “Of Droesh?” he asked softly.
“Maybe,” I replied, my voice as soft as his. I rested my cheek against his curls. “Not because of what it is or what it is to you, but because of how easily I could fuck this up.”
“Have a little faith.” Alluin nuzzled up against my face, tilting his head so that his forehead brushed against my jaw. “You’re more than you imagine yourself to be.”
I gnawed on my lip, anxiety still eating at me. “Lu?” I asked again.
“Mm?”
He sounded so contented. Like there was nowhere else he wanted to be, and like there were no troubles weighing down his shoulders. I hated being the one to break that happiness.
Still, though. Going into something like this with misgivings could only be a disaster.
I took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you ever make Nyland your heir? If you loved him so much? Why me?”
Alluin gave me a gentle squeeze. “He’s Nylandis Kaeyha,” he murmured in a sleepy voice, untroubled by my question.
“He and I were the knot that bound our two clans and our two lands. He wanted and expected to remain apart from Droesh, but even without that, he never truly…” Lu trailed off, the words going soft and sad.
“I wanted him to love it. I wanted it so badly. But he…didn’t.
He grew up in the wildlands, just as I did, but he has been ever eager to leave them behind. ”
I reached over myself and settled my hand on his side. Lu made a low sound of pleasure when my fingers slid under his shirt, running along his warm skin. My heart ached for him. All those centuries. “He didn’t deserve you,” I said in a rough whisper.
“He didn’t deserve Droesh, and I intend that he’ll never have any claim on it,” Alluin said, the words going dreamy.
“I was so alone even when he lived in my house and shared my bed, but I’m not alone anymore.
You see me, Zhi. You stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me in this world, against all comers and despite all odds.
” He curled up closer to me. “I know it’s a lot to ask.
If you want to be released from your promise to learn my history and walk my land and taste my blood, I’ll release you, but I—”
“Absolutely not,” I said, scowling.
Alluin froze, going completely still in surprise.
I huffed out a sharp breath through my nose. “We’re doing this. I ate a rock for you. Don’t go wobbly-kneed on me now.”
He made a quiet sound and relaxed again. His thumb brushed along my throat. “I don’t intend to hold you to promises you don’t want to keep,” Lu said, barely voicing the words. “I want you to want this.”
You’re so good to me, I thought to him, my throat going thick and my heart beating harder. “I want this,” I said. “I’m just… I don’t know. Scared. Overwhelmed.”
“That’s alright,” Alluin said, his body going soft and boneless against mine. “It’s scary and overwhelming. But I’m here and you’re here, so it’ll be alright, right?”
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth at the utter faith in those words. “Yeah,” I murmured back. “It’ll surely be alright.”
We spent the next three weeks roaming Droesh.
I’d obsessively read everything I could get my hands on related to Alluin, so I was already aware of the vastness of the wildlands he owned, but it was one thing to see it on a map and another to actually walk it.
Alluin took me to the places his family had made their homes tens of thousands of years ago—many silted in or buried under forests that hadn’t been there when he’d been young—and to one of the valleys where the wild horses had once wintered.
“But no longer?” I asked, looking at him as he looked wistfully off into the middle distance, remembering a time long past.
He shrugged like it didn’t matter to him, though it clearly did. “They were hunted out millennia ago.”
I nudged his shoulder with mine. “So why don’t you buy a seed herd and restock them?” I asked in an innocent voice. “You’re wealthy enough to import primitive horses. I know they’re not common, but they still exist. At least one of the marquesses has them in his menagerie. I’ve seen them.”
Alluin blinked, looking like he’d never considered the idea. “Maybe I will,” he said, starting to smile.
He told me a lot of stories about the land and about his family, but it wasn’t as if I was trotting along behind him like a schoolboy, all ears and eagerness.
For all that Lu was ancient and connected to the land, he’d never really been one to care much about plants, or even the smaller animals that called the land their home.
He’d been a hunter from the start, and a hunter he remained, the leader of the biggest gods-damn hunting band in Stag Court: the First Army.
So Lu had to put up with me chatting his ear off about all the interesting plants, insects, and birds we encountered, and my many attempts to get him to dredge up his memories of how certain trees had gotten where they were and which plants his clan had used as their primary forage.
He didn’t seem to be annoyed with the questions, though.
If anything, he seemed happier and more at peace with every day we spent in Droesh, moving through the forest like he’d been living there for every year of his very long life.
At last, two days before we were due to meet our hired coach to start the long trip back to Lyraniorn, Alluin took me to the mouth of the greatest of the caves that could be found in Droesh.
Fog drifted over it, the humidity of the summer air chilled by the breath of the cave, and the ground was thick with mosses and ferns.
An ancient, gnarled beech tree grew on the very edge of the cave entrance, holding the earth and stone together. I could hear a low thrum coming from it.
“They’re still there,” Alluin said, a faint smile warming his expression. When I looked over at him with a raised brow, he pointed up into the branches. His smile broadened. “The bees,” he said. “See that dark bole? That’s the hive entrance.”
I peered up. Sure enough, now that I knew where to look, I could see the sunlit forms of bees darting in and out of the opening in the tree.
“Think it’s the same hive?” I asked, watching them.
“Who can say? I’m just glad there’s bees at all,” Alluin said with a laugh. He laced his fingers through mine and watched the bees with me in silence, that smile never leaving his face.
Droesh is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, I thought, contentment settling into me.
From the flowers to the trees, from the twittering songs of the birds to the humming of bees, the land was vivid and alive, a wild place that deserved to be kept and protected.
Being here, standing with Alluin on the verge of the sunlit and earth-dark places, was an incredible honor.
I didn’t deserve a single second of it, and I was never going to give it up.
After a long time, Alluin gave my hand a squeeze. “Still willing?” he asked, looking over at me.
I met his eyes, nervousness frissoning across my skin but my heart still steady. “Still willing,” I said.
“Alright, then,” he said, returning his gaze to the bees. In the dappled sunlight beneath the canopy of the trees, his hazel eyes looked mossy-green, the gold tempered by the shade. “Tonight’s the night.”
“Whatever you want, Lu,” I said, still looking at him.