19
NOW, THE ORC army was gone and things settled into a wary routine at Foxglove Peak. Aerhril spent each night sleeping next to Dathor in the old steward’s bed.
She sometimes thought of how she used to wish for this, the ability to sleep next to him without sneaking around, when they were younger, how here it was, everything she’d ever wanted, and yet, it was all wrong.
He did not touch her, and she did not touch him. They circled, taunting each other here and there, each interaction bringing back the bittersweet feelings she still held for him, the ones she could not quite extinguish.
Hafindel had not left yet, but she was ready to go and could go at any time. Each time that Aerhril saw her, she knew this could be the last time she did, that soon enough, Hafindel would slip away. Every time she parted ways from the other woman, she felt that like a dart to the center of her.
The women stayed to their small room for the first week. Some of them did go willingly to orcs in the keep, who had claimed rooms for themselves, beds. But it was very few.
After a week, she was able to convince Dathor that another room must be given to these women, who were all lying practically on top of each other on the cold stone floor.
He resisted, saying that he had made promises and if he went back on them, he would look soft and weak, and she said that they already were frightened of him, that a bit of softness might not go awry.
Each day was the same.
They woke in the morning and they went to the kitchen.
They had to make their own breakfast, because there was no one else there to do it for them, but the grain mush itself was not difficult, requiring only boiling water and grain.
They would boil a great pot of it for the entire day.
As long as it was eaten before nightfall, it was in no danger of going bad.
Then they spent the day playing card games or reading books. They had use of the library in the Peak, which was not extensive but was serviceable.
They ate luncheon and the afternoon was spent in much the same way. The children seemed to have taken it all in stride. The women were mostly subdued.
Aerhril checked on Celedin at least twice a day. She brought him food, too. Hafindel had been doing it, but since Hafindel would be leaving at any moment, they had deemed it wise that Aerhril take over the duties.
Celedin’s neck was healing, though his voice seemed permanently ravaged and whispery. She brought him books to read and a pack of cards if he wished to play solitary games with himself. She offered to play with him sometimes when she looked in on him.
He always said no. She suspected he wasn’t reading the books either.
He seemed different, beaten in a way she had never seen him beaten.
“Is he fucking you?” he asked her at one point.
“No,” she said coldly.
“You’d welcome him.”
“I would not,” she said.
He simply looked at her for some time, and when he spoke again, he had seemingly taken up another subject. “When we were boys,” he said, “we’d play together outside amongst the wildflowers.”
“I remember how it was that you ‘played,’ Celedin,” she muttered.
“No, this was before you,” he said in that grasping voice of his, harsh but barely substantial.
“We were very young, so young that it was permissible that we might cry when we skinned our knees. He had a mother, and she would cuddle him and run her fingers through his black hair and whisper into his forehead that he would be all right. She would whisper, ‘Hush, hush, my sweet boy.’ And when I cried, my father would say, ‘Toughen up.’ My father would say, ‘I’ll give you something to cry about.’”
“You were jealous,” she realized.
“I didn’t want to be Dathor,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You wanted someone to love you.”
“That’s not for me,” he said, tilting his head to the side and looking her over. “I am not a being that anyone loves.”
She licked her lips. “Well, you… you could make it a bit easier for the rest of us if you weren’t so awful, you know?”
He nodded, then winced as it tugged at his not-quite-healed neck.
He sagged into the wall. He was seated on the small bed up here in this small room.
He looked up at the window overhead. “I don’t suppose it will matter to you, but I am sorry, Aerhril.
I’m sorry for the way I’ve been with you.
I’m sorry for so many things. It’s funny, when you think you are dying, the way everything flattens out and the worst parts of you rise up to the surface. ”
She was not sure what to say to this. She did not forgive him. There was too much to forgive. But she did wonder at it all, at whether any of them could truly be termed good.
Perhaps there could not be goodness in as harsh a landscape as this. Perhaps there could only be brutality and beauty, warring with each other, feeding each other.
Was Celedin truly worse than the rest of them? Or did she and Dathor just paint him as the villain so that they could see themselves as the heroes?
“I am sorry, too, Celedin,” she said finally. “I know that your life has been quite difficult in many ways.”
“I know I…” His voice was a scrape. “When you arrived, you were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to touch it, your beauty, I wanted…”
“Celedin—”
“I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to touch anything gently. I touched but I hurt you. It was all I knew.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I forgive you.” Maybe she even did. Maybe it wasn’t even a lie, something said to placate him, to shut him up.
“I knew you’d never touch me willingly,” he said. “I knew I had to have you by force. But he… he has you by force, and you still go to him willingly. What is it about him?”
“I am not going to him willingly,” she said. “I hate him. He hates me.”
“He’s just as bad as me, in the end, Aerhril. You and I both know it. Why do you choose him?”
So, now, she pitied Celedin. When she came to look in on him, there was this well of it, a vast ocean of how sorry she felt for him.
She could see it all now, see every moment of his life, how he had reached out for love and been turned away at every turn.
She could see that the way he reached out for love was flawed and destined to fail, but she could also see that every time he was denied and scorned, he grew worse.
She could see all of it.
She pitied him.
She knew that somehow, her love for Dathor had been first rooted in pity, but it wasn’t the same. She and Dathor had been allies, and she and Celedin…
Well, they could be allies now, she supposed. She and Celedin could ally themselves against the orcs, but what good would that do, because he was useless.
She had pitied Dathor, but he had been so very strong, also. She had also admired him.
Love was complicated, was it not?
She could never love Celedin.
But she wished, for his sake, that someone could.