Chapter 8 #5
Elloven cleared her throat near his neck. “I meant... the opposite... that you are...”
“A virtuoso of tongue? A wunderkind of pleasure? A master of c—”
“You made your point.” She tried to push them into a faster tempo, but he planted his feet. “This isn’t a slow step, Jesstin. We do need to move.”
“Yes, I know this, El,” he said through gritted teeth.
His hands could swing a broadsword with precision, his legs could run ten miles without rest, and together they could lift twice his body weight.
.. but dancing? Moving in some predetermined rhythm that everyone around him except him knew how to do?
“There really are several women staring at you. Not one is trying to hide it,” Elloven said. “I have half a mind to go say something.”
Jesstin chuckled. He stopped short of telling her he found her outrage adorable. “Don’t.”
“Why not? It’s rude. You’re here with someone. They don’t know our situation.”
“If I kiss you again, will you let it go?”
“Excuse me?”
“It would send a message.”
Elloven scoffed in offense. “It’s just terrible manners is all.”
Jesstin grinned to himself. “Then you should never go back to Mythgarde. That’s all you’ll see in most of the taverns, women and men throwing looks across the room, seeing which ones get returned. Many of them are already spoken for. Some even come with their spouses.”
“That’s rather strange, no?”
“A matter of perspective. They know what they want and where to get it.”
“And you profit, so everyone wins?” she asked, teasing.
“Something like that.”
Elloven went quiet for a moment. “All those women in your tavern ‘throwing looks,’ and you’ve never been tempted?”
“When did I say I’ve never been tempted?” Jesstin retorted. “I’m still a man, Elloven.”
“Only, it seems an odd choice for a man determined to preserve his celibacy to surround himself with nothing but temptation.”
“Temptation keeps a man strong,” he said, close to her ear. “Restraint is like a muscle. Gets stronger with practice.”
“I admire your restraint then. Most men have neither the restraint nor the character to ignore their primal urges.”
“And I appreciate your concern,” he said blithely, “but it’s not quite the drought you’re implying.”
“Right, right. I forgot about your sybaritic throne.”
“When patrons see their proprietor partaking in the offerings, they’re more apt to indulge in their own,” he answered, still grinning. “I can also see to my own needs, you know.”
“Oh boy, I asked for that, didn’t I?” Her nervous giggle was endearing.
“We can talk about my sex famine, but self-pleasure is a bridge too far?”
“Curses, Jesstin, I’m sorry I asked!”
He made a pondering hmm. “I wonder if it feels as good in the Infinitum as it does in our world. I should put it to the test...”
She pinched his arm. “Now you’re teasing me.”
“I was teasing you the whole time.” He drew close to her ear again. “That doesn’t mean I was lying.”
She pulled away from his body, but her hand was still laced in his. She spun, her fingers moving inside his hand through her pivots—one, two, three—grinning more with each revolution.
“Even watching you is making me dizzy,” he said but adjusted his hold to allow for smoother turns. The lanterns lit the glow in her cheeks, which disappeared and reappeared as she whirled. She seemed so young and free and full of light.
The song ended, and she stumbled sideways with a look that said oops.
“What did I say?” Jesstin’s grin didn’t flag at all as he guided her with one arm back to their table. When she scrunched her nose and glared up at him like he was her father spoiling all her fun, he said, “You can take that look back. I just did for you what I’d never do for anyone else.”
“I danced. You looked like a rabbit who stumbled into a deer hunt and wondered whether it would be the last mistake he ever made.”
“What an explicit insult,” he said. “What rabbits do you know that are nearly eighty inches tall?”
“I hear bears can be that tall.”
Jesstin spread his arms and craned back. “You’re looking at one.”
Elloven’s eyes rolled. “Here I was getting jealous of all these beautiful women staring, when all it would take is two minutes of them listening to you to shatter the illusion.”
“You’re not jealous of them,” he stated.
“No? Why’s that?”
Jesstin leaned in. “Because I’m not here with them.”
Her playful expression folded. She looked down. “Is this real? Are you really here?” Elloven’s eyes welled. “You won’t be gone when the light rises?”
“I’m really, really here, Elloven.” An instinct as old as the world made him reach for her again, but he abandoned it, same as he’d abandoned the more primitive one when he’d kissed her in the inn.
“I don’t understand why you’d do all of this for me.”
I’d do anything for you. “I wish I could explain it to you.”
“Explain the kisses then. Am I to assume they meant nothing?”
Jesstin swallowed and answered with courage. “They meant everything.” He’d let emotion lead their reunion, and it had been as reckless as anything he’d done. Impulse and restraint couldn’t coexist. “Everything.”
Elloven flushed bright. “Don’t worry, I’d never ask you to break your code for me. Though I suppose you did it for Lexsea.”
“I didn’t,” Jesstin said forcefully. He was glad she’d brought it up, so he could correct his lie. “I’d never let that bitch anywhere near me. I needed to...”
“You needed to what? Hurt me?”
He breathed deep. “I needed you to hate me.”
Elloven looked away. “With Taven, Castien, Fabrien... I knew who they were and what I was to them. They could break me in many ways, but not my heart. They couldn’t break what was never theirs.”
The implication went unspoken, but that only made him feel it more deeply. “You deserve someone who will never be so careless with something so precious.” His voice caught on the last word. “And I’ll get you out of here, El, so you can find your happiness.”
“You make so many bold statements, Jess, but all I want from you is something so much simpler.”
“What’s that?”
“I only want you to talk to me. Truthfully.” She crossed her hands over her heart. “You protect me more with the truth than you ever could with secrets. I can handle it, whatever it is. Do you think a weaker woman would have survived what I’ve been through?”
His betrayal would follow her for the rest of her days. He didn’t know what to do, other than protect her until it was safe for her to hate him. “I may not know every detail,” Jesstin said, “but I understand enough to know what you went through would have broken most men.”
“I’ve never talked about it. It all lives here.
” She tapped her head. “And here.” Her stomach.
“And sometimes here.” Her heart. “Terror festers more when starved, and sometimes it feels like it’s rotting me from the inside out, and I wonder how no one else can see it or smell it or taste it.
I go back and forth about which was worse: killing five men or letting myself be their victim for so long.
It all started with Taven, and I was just so young; I never learned to protect myself until it was too late. ”
She wasn’t looking for his vengeance, but not killing Taven was a mistake he wouldn’t make twice. “No, Elloven, you’re not owning their crimes for them.”
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” she said with a joyless grin.
Jesstin tightened, waiting for his anger to pass. “You can talk to me. You never have to, but you can.”
She said nothing for so long, it seemed to be an unfortunate end to their little interlude. He made eye contact with a group waiting for their table, but then she did speak.
“It’s a mistake to assume abuse is about desire or lust. Men like Fabrien, Castien, they have no trouble finding women eager for a turn in their bed, but there’s no challenge in it.
The act isn’t enough to satisfy a monster.
There’s no pleasure for them unless they’ve inflicted pain.
For them, the only way to receive is to take.
The deeper Fabrien’s cruelty, the more amorous he was.
The greater my trauma, the greater his lust. His friends were the same, most of them.
A couple only went along with his antics because they wanted to remain in his favor.
One even said to me that he felt sorry for me.
An hour later, he had me on my stomach while the rest watched.
” She looked up. “Do you know I hated him the most? At least the others were firm in their convictions.”
Jesstin wanted to throw up. He had plenty to say about men like them, but she needed to speak.
“Do you know how I ended up at the Reliquary?”
“Sort of,” he said cautiously. Whatever she said next would require more of his restraint. “Rumors.”
“Taven started visiting my bedchamber when I was fourteen. He didn’t force himself on me, and he was never violent, but I didn’t choose it either.
He decided who we were going to be. He decided how it would go.
He decided how big or small our world was.
My father was gone by then. My mother’s addictions were in their early days, but they were stronger than her from the start.
Taven was the unofficial master of the house, and in the pressure to keep him happy, to keep the peace, I learned to be whoever he needed me to be.
I would have married him had Mathias not intervened. ”
“Mathias is the one who had you sent away?” Jesstin hadn’t heard that.
“His deputies used to collect our rent, but one day, he came by the house himself. He said he wanted to check in on Esme, on the state of things, and his concern seemed genuine. But when he saw the way Taven hovered over me, an unmarried girl barely of age, as steward it was his duty to intervene. And so I was sent to the Reliquary as an abbess to ‘work through my shame.’ Taven, of course, had no shame to work through.”