Chapter 27
ARLET
Another day passes, and I am left alone.
Vann does not come, and a part of me is grateful.
Facing the possibility of his death has made me absolutely sure that I cannot let that happen.
Even still, I watch the swarms of elven guards surround the palace from my window, they group together outside of my door, and I wonder where the Enduar is for the whole day, until it is time to sleep.
The early morning hours of my wedding are quiet. Foreign. I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. It is dark.
I slip in and out of sleep. Not wanting to wake up and face reality.
The bed is too soft, the linens too fine. I press my hand to my chest as I used to do often, as if to touch the Fuegorra.
My palm goes there out of habit. Skin meets skin and finds only the faintest warmth. It’s gone. It’s gone—my old life is gone.
My hand slides up farther, toward my throat. A zing charges through me as my fingers brush the velvet and jewels, and I flinch away. Last night, I tried to take it off and was promptly shocked.
Please, I pray. Let this wedding go over well. Let me bear a child.
I can feel judgment from Cursed One. I know that she disapproves of calling upon gods and of Arion.
Please, just leave me alone for a while, I beg her.
Very well, comes her sulky reply.
I close my eyes and count breaths.
If I think too long about the ceremony, my mind becomes a shallow bowl for dread, and dread is greedy. So I let the bowl tip and pour its contents into the oldest cavern within me—memory. I question if even my memories are safe…but I have nothing to prove otherwise. At least they are mine.
I try to avoid thinking of Vann, as I can still feel conflicted. On the one hand, I felt such joy and relief at seeing him, but on the other, I still feel the sting and bite of his lies. I wanted him to choose me, and he couldn’t.
But it seems every memory of the last year and a half of my life connects to him, like how every thread weaves through the others.
For the first time in a long while, I think of a tapestry I was working on before I left Enduvida.
My fingers have been so idle these last months.
After weeks of oils, butters, scrubbing, and trimming, my nails are long and the skin is soft.
But they were rough when I was weaving.
I remember how such an act used to bring me joy.
How it expressed the deepest parts of me.
The last thing I worked on was a beautiful piece that started out as a reflection of how happy I was in Enduvida compared to in Zlosa.
Then it morphed into something more—something that tells the story of the different men in my life and how those relationships shaped me.
At the time, it felt liberating to work through what had happened with Daniel and then Joso, weft and row by weft and row. My eyes go wide when I recall the blood-red fibers that began to appear after I’d been cursed to come here to Shvathemar.
Arion. I’d started to weave my experience with Arion.
Biting my lip, I wonder now if I’d put too much focus on the men around me. And, as a result, if I’d given them too much power.
I see how I have grown and changed and flourished by myself.
I wince. Perhaps I am not blossoming in this place. But I had known adventure. It takes no time at all for my mind to conjure the breathtaking beauty of the Sisterhood’s Enclave, with its magical trees, bent and twisted into fine homes. Or the thrilling excitement of Dragonsreach, of flying.
That memory brings me to Seraph. She was beautiful and golden and noble.
My heart aches. Did she feel pain when we were separated? She left her nest of broken eggs just to help me.
I wished I could go back to those moments.
And then, when Vann’s memory prods me gently, ready to take center stage once again, I do not resist. I let the memories come. The careful way he used to take up space near me. The quiet thrill of his fingers and his attention.
Hostia puta, he healed part of me that I didn’t think anyone could heal.
As I lie there in the dark, cold morning hours, tears form in the corners of my eyes and slip down my temples into my hair.
The goddess gave him to me, and yet it seems that some other divine, cosmic force has decided we should be apart. He was not strong enough to tell me the truth, even though I was ready to give him all.
Pair that with the Elf King…
We were doomed by the fabric of destiny.
“Arlet,” his memory whispers in my ear, making the tears come faster.
I know this moment—not because I’ve revisited it often, but because it is burned into my very soul.
We were in Dragonsreach, and I’d been given a wine that made my blood heat and my core pulse.
I’d asked him to touch me. Begged him to help release me from the heat and make me come.
His hand hovered over my flesh, not touching, but reverent. “If you still want what you wanted last night, I will be the warmth of the sun on a winter morning, the kind you didn’t realize you were missing until it touches your skin.”
Odd, the tenderness that can live in a man who wields a cleaver like a promise. Odder still, the way my body learned his voice faster than it learned his hands.
When I think of Arion’s kiss, my body goes cold. I don’t want his force and control. I want Vann’s heat. Even if he hurt me then, I have been so lonely these weeks. Perhaps I can survive being married to Arion if I can live with the memory of my—of Vann.
I rub my thighs together, and the friction feels like heaven. Tonight, Arion will take that place, but right now, my body is still my own.
I hesitate. I can stop here and save myself some pain. But then I shift my thighs again and know I cannot.
When I picture Vann now, I don’t place us in caves or on terraces or under the shivering, watchful trees. I bring him into this gilded room. He does not knock. He never has to in the rooms that belong to me.
I imagine the door closes without sound, and one of my hands travels across my chest, making its way down my navel.
I close my eyes, and picture Vann walking the length of the room slowly. I do not sit up. I do not run to him.
He sits on the side of the bed next to me. Then he touches my cheekbone with three fingertips. The heat of his palm follows, rough and consuming. I like the scratch of it.
“Arlet,” he says. “I am sorry for what I did, but I am here now.”
In the fantasy, I don’t speak right away. I memorize. I take his smell first—like stone and spice. Then the sound of his apology, the particular way he breathes at the start of a sentence when he doubts he deserves to say it.
“I am getting married today,” I respond.
“You don’t have to,” he says. “We can escape. I need you to show me where the throne room is and then we can leave this place forever.”
I take a deep breath. He’s just as I remember from the ball. There’s no way I can leave with him—as angry as I was with him, I don’t want him to die.
“No.” The word leaves my lips and spreads through the air.
“I know I ruined everything, but Mrath will kill Arion. You can—” His voice breaks. “You can come home with me. Enduvida will be safe.”
So instead, I change the course of the conversation. “I have chosen to marry Arion. I don’t know if Mrath will kill him or not—he’s powerful. I don’t want anything to happen to Enduvida, and that is my choice. I just—I just wanted to have this one last time,” I tell him in the fantasy.
He huffs in the dark room. There is winter in that sound, and a kind of spring. He reminds me of new life. His power made me sink into him, trust him. It had once felt so good.
“I just want to feel good,” I say.
That seems to break him apart. His stiff posture changes and he comes closer to me on the bed.
“Then we will make a good ending.”
It is not urgent, the way I imagine placing my hand over his.
It is not desperate, the way his mouth finds the place the collar hasn’t bruised.
This is not about hunger. It is about remembering the brief times we shared and how free I felt with him.
I recall the slope of his shoulders under my fingers, and the way his forearm moves under skin when he braces, how the muscles of his arms and pecs come together.
When his mouth reaches the hollow where my stone used to sing, something tight loosens, slow as a knot finally agreeing to come undone.
I realize with an odd calm that the only thing in my life that has ever been easy was trusting him.
I miss the relief of being seen and found acceptable by someone who could set entire cities on fire.
My imagination has run too far. This was supposed to be about release, but all I can do is find comfort?
He pulls back, gently touching the area between my breasts. “You know that you are dying without this,” he murmurs.
I frown. I am the one who controls this fantasy. This wasn’t what I wanted. I want to come. I want release.
“I’m just hungry. Now fuck me before it is time to get ready,” I demand through the knot in my throat.
I imagine his mouth sealed shut, and then with my own hand, I begin at the apex of my thighs. I am wet, infuriatingly so. And needy. The sensation in my lower belly is coaxed just to the point of climax with a few circles of my clit.
“Why?” I grit out, whispering into the empty space. I couldn’t even wait for him to join me. “Why do you have to do this to me?”
I imagine him above me, kissing me once more, replacing my hand with his.
And then his hand replaces mine. The points of contact where Vann’s attention had the ability to become reverence. If I cry a little, it is not for loss. It is for the brief scandal of being whole once again hours before I give myself to the king.
When my release crests, it is not thunder. It is thaw. The edges of me soften. The world that had been braced unclenches. If there is a sound in the room, it’s the sound rivers make under ice when they finally wake up after a long winter.