30
AERHRIL ALWAYS THOUGHT that one of the reasons why Elrion never told anyone about her indiscretions with Dathor was that it made him look bad. For a woman to prefer an orc to an elf, it was quite an insult. He had kept her secret to himself, and she had been grateful.
She had rarely seen him over the ensuing years, since the dissolution of their engagement, but whenever they had interacted, they had never mentioned it.
So, she did not even quite know how to bring it all up, and she wasn’t running as fast as she could because she was trying to think of how to do that.
Dathor had let her off the horse further back. He told her he would give her twenty minutes and then he was starting after her.
She had protested, because twenty minutes was not nearly enough time to get Elrion to feel for her again. By the golden fingers of dawn, she might sit there waiting for him to arrive in the sitting room for twenty minutes.
But as luck would have it, Elrion was right in the hallway as she was let in by a servant. She brushed her hair out of her face and panted loudly as if she’d truly run all the way from the Peak.
“You have to hide me,” she said, going to Elrion. “He’ll be coming after me, I’m certain.”
Elrion backed away, unwilling to touch her, but he was all solicitude. “Come into the sitting room, my lady. I will send for some tea. I’ll not call for your sister. Something tells me this is not for her ears.”
“It is not,” she said. “I am sorry to come to you, to bring his rancor down on you, Elrion. Oh, I did not know where else to go.”
He let her into the sitting room, and she was still trying to get her story straight.
“It’s Dathor, I assume?” said Elrion. “I have heard about what occurred on your wedding day. So, I suppose I can gather what has befallen you.”
She rounded on him. “He hates me.” She swallowed.
“He still… he wants me, but it is a cruel want, Elrion. It is borne of a desire to wish to punish me.” This was true enough to a degree, anyway, so maybe he would believe it.
“I think he always hated me in a way. I think he was drawn to me because he hated that I was higher than him, and his desire was always twisted up in it. But after my actions got Nathre and his unborn babe killed? He wishes only to hurt me.”
Elrion sat down heavily in a chair. “I had not realized that Nathre… Igbar did not say.” His face fell.
Oh, by the yellow hair of the dawn, now she was making Elrion also hate her.
She thrust both of her hands into her hair.
“You, of course, must hate me as well. Why would I come here? Why would I have thought otherwise?” She started for the door.
“I will leave you, sir. I cannot ask you to do anything for me at all.”
He didn’t stop her.
She got the door open and she got out into the hallway.
Well, this was not going to work, and she was very stupid, and—
Dathor was there, pushing past the servants, impossibly huge, his wide chest coming through the hallway, his black hair streaming back, the smile on his face cruel.
He reached her, took her by the shoulder, and she looked at him and tried to communicate that it was not going well, and he pulled her against him.
His voice was a harsh whisper at her ear.
“I am going to push you and I need you to throw yourself as if I have pushed very hard.”
She barely nodded.
Dathor shoved her, not hard, but she acted as if he had.
She fell theatrically through the open door into the sitting room, falling onto the floor and letting out a cry as if he’d hurt her.
Dathor came into the room and slammed the door behind himself.
“Of course she came to you, Elrion. After everything she’s done, she fancies you’ll rescue her.
But I told her no one would. I told her she’s worthless and ruined, and likely carrying a bastard half-orc in her belly, and there is no one who will care what I do to her.
That I am free to amuse myself with punishing her for as long as I like.
I doubt you’ll contradict me.” He sneered down at her.
She swallowed, looking up at him. He was very good at this. If she had not known this was a ruse, she would have believed him. She whimpered. “Please,” she said. “Please, let me go, Dathor.”
“Let you go?” said Dathor, laughing. “Elrion isn’t going to shelter you.” He lifted his gaze to the other man’s. “Are you? You hate her worse than I do. She humiliated you, didn’t she? And you loved Nathre more than I did.”
Elrion was very quiet.
She stole a glance at him.
Elrion was sitting on the other side of the room, plastered into his chair, his lips bloodless. He shook his head, back and forth, over and over. He said nothing.
Dathor sighed. “Well, that is the way he’s always been, after all, Aerhril.” Dathor went to her and tugged her to her feet. He examined her, hands running briskly all over her body, and she could tell he was looking for anything amiss.
She had to fight not to smile at him.
“He cannot rescue you, not if it risks his own reputation or his own safety. He’s… well, it is odd that you ever preferred him to me.”
She looked up at him, stunned, because she never had.
He raised his eyebrows.
Oh, she saw what he wished from her. “I prefer him to you now,” she said. “Now, you are simply horrible. Now, you terrorize me.”
“But you’re mine, little fair elf,” Dathor said, pulling her in close and dragging his tongue over her cheek. “And he doesn’t want you anymore.”
“All right, you don’t have to do that,” blustered Elrion, getting to his feet.
Dathor shrugged at him.
“With your… tongue. That’s disgusting.”
Dathor laughed. “I think it’s probably a good thing you never married this one, after all, Aerhril. I doubt he has it in him to bring a woman to her peak.”
Elrion’s nostrils flared. “Listen, I know why you are here. I know of your orc army, and I have sent news—”
“Oh, that letter?” said Dathor. “Yes, I had to intercept that.” He produced it from his inside jacket pocket, and she had not known he was bringing it. He waved it in Elrion’s face.
Elrion sat back down heavily. He was quiet.
Dathor tucked the letter away. “As it happens, I have need of you, Elrion. I was hoping we could come to an agreement of sorts. I promise not to strangle her to death while I’m using her if you do as I say.
But I see you would let her die to save your own skin.
I should never have expected anything different. ”
Elrion shook his head again, back and forth, but he was silent.
There was a knock on the door. “Tea service, sir?” said the voice from without.
“Do not come in.” Elrion’s voice suddenly had some fire to it.
He got to his feet and strode over to take Aerhril’s hand.
He tugged on her and Dathor let go. Elrion tucked her behind him.
“How about this agreement, orc? You leave her here and stop forcing yourself on her. Agree to that, and I will agree to listen to what your ‘need’ is.”
Dathor smirked. “Give her up? Oh, I don’t think so. You haven’t had her sweet little lips wrapped around the base of your cock, clearly.”
Elrion made a choked noise in the back of his throat.
Aerhril was hotly embarrassed. Why must he be so graphic?
Dathor continued, “But then, Nathre told me that men often ogled her. I wonder if she meant you.”
Elrion drew himself up. “How dare you? Nathre was a young girl, like a daughter to me—”
“She was older than Aerhril was at the time, and you were certainly going to fuck her.”
“The marriage was not about such base things. It was about mutual respect, and about getting her free of that horrible Foxglove Peak.”
“So, you weren’t going to fuck her after you married her?” said Dathor. “If I leave her with you now, is it going to be a requirement that she fuck you? Because I’m very possessive of her. I can’t let anyone else do that, you see?”
“You are the most disgusting wretch of a fiend—”
“She stays with me.” And Dathor reached around with his long arms and his big hands and snatched her away and pulled her in against him, and she could not contain a gasp at their closeness.
He caught her gaze and gave her half a smile before he turned it into a sneer when he looked at Elrion again.
“I can’t imagine you’d care, what am I thinking?
You wanted her free of Foxglove Peak, you say, but you just left her there, with Celedin, and you saw what he was like with her.
And the steward, you interacted enough with my uncle to understand how he treated her as well. You never cared about her.”
“I could not marry her after she had been corrupted by the likes of you,” said Elrion.
“Well, it wasn’t really common knowledge,” said Dathor. “I suppose you would have known, but you just said you weren’t even going to fuck her, so—”
“I did not say—the gods of the shadows drag you to the darkness, Dathor.” Elrion clenched his hands into fists. “What do you want from me?”
“Not much,” said Dathor. “I only wish you to write letters to men that you knew in your youth, men you went to university with, men who might be sympathetic to an alliance with an orc army if it meant that High King Findas was dethroned. I understand you’ve never been much of an admirer of the man yourself. ”
Elrion swallowed. “Aerhril? You told him this?”
“He has ways of getting me to talk,” she breathed.
Dathor smiled a smiled full of teeth, a wolfish smile.
Elrion shuddered. “Just letters?”
“You must let Igbar see them before you send them, of course,” said Dathor.
“Igbar,” breathed Elrion, hand to his chest. “He was to mail the letter. If you intercepted him—”
“Is it a surprise to think that your orc slave wishes to be free?” said Dathor.
“They are not slaves. I pay them,” said Elrion.
“Oh, yes, a pittance of what you pay your elf servants,” said Dathor. “I remember this from when I was to come and live here, with you. I was told all about what it was like to be ‘rescued’ by Elrion nae Nilriane.” He chuckled a nasty chuckle.
“There are precious few men who are sympathetic to the orc cause at all!” said Elrion. “And you will not find them more amenable to you orcs rising above your station—”
“Well, that’s all right,” said Dathor. “Do tell them that we orcs are primitive and idiotic about the way we’re running this little revolt of ours.
Tell them that we’d be easily manipulated to use against Findas, and that they could make use of our brutality and sheer strength for their own benefit. ”
Elrion swallowed. “You are a scheming fiend of an orc. Your elf blood makes you intelligent in some evil way—”
“Yes, because as we all know, orcs are evil,” said Dathor sarcastically. “Thank goodness we’re incredibly stupid, however, so it balances out our terrible, terrible tendencies.”
Elrion’s face fell.
She knew that he did not agree with the idea that any being was born evil. He thought it was all learned, influenced by traumatic experiences in one’s formative years, that sort of thing.
And yet, strangely, he still held these ideas that elves were superior to orcs, or that he was superior to his servants.
She did not understand Elrion. He was a collection of contradictions.
On the other hand, maybe she was, too.
She looked up at Dathor’s face, and she knew that it didn’t matter if nothing in her life made any sense or if her actions didn’t make any sense or if she didn’t properly align with any philosophy or set of ideals. As long as it was her and Dathor, that was all that mattered.
“Fine,” said Elrion. “I’ll write your letters. I know who I can write to. Who should they get in touch with?”
“I’ve thought about that,” said Dathor. “I cannot endanger the orc cause by revealing locations. So, you make a list of the men you will write to, and you tell them to expect communication from me in two weeks’ time.”
Elrion nodded. “And this is all that you require of me.”
“For now,” said Dathor. “We’ll see if that changes. Do we have an agreement?”
“Leave her behind,” said Elrion. “Leave her here with me.”
“She belongs to me,” said Dathor. “I cannot let her go.”
Elrion swallowed. “She doesn’t deserve…” He met her gaze. “I am sorry, Aerhril. I am so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “You keep Raclahad safe, though. You keep my sister safe.”
“I will protect her with my life,” said Elrion.
Dathor tugged on Aerhril, tucking her against his chest, his arm draped around her. “Come little elf toy. I have uses for you yet.”
Something was wrong with her. It made something jerk in her belly to hear Dathor talk of using her.