Chapter 12 #2
“You called yourself a bastard. Did you know your mother?” she asked.
A part of him wanted to deflect from the question.
Owain didn’t like to talk about his mother.
Too many fights with Gwayne had taught him to hide that part of himself.
But looking down into those dark eyes, he felt like Orla would understand him.
She had said her mother wasn’t around to teach her magic.
Maybe they were more similar than he would have thought.
“She was around. I lived with her until I was five. Then my father took me to live with him at his estate,” he confessed.
“Why did he take you?” she asked. They had reached their horses but neither of them made a move to mount.
“He had consulted a seer that confirmed I was his true son. After that, he didn’t see it as fit that the son of a king should live in a pleasure house.
” His face burned with the shame of it. He wasn’t embarrassed by his mother’s profession.
She had worked hard to put food on the table for him, and until her death, she was the only person who had ever truly loved him.
But years of being made to feel less than for being the son of a whore was hard to shake.
“Your father was a client of hers.” She said it in that matter-of-fact way that he was growing so fond of. No judgment, just fact.
“Yes, she was his favorite until she fell pregnant with me. Then he wanted nothing to do with her until he confirmed that I was his,” he replied.
“Tell me about her.” No question, a simple command, and he knew he would let this devastatingly beautiful female command him anywhere, so he did.
He told her about how his mother, Drea, had him when she was fairly young for the Elven, only twenty-seven at the time he was born.
Drea was a kind woman, all softness with no hard edge that one would expect for someone who lived such a hard life.
She entered the pleasure house when she was a girl of sixteen.
Her father was an Elven lord, and like Owain, she had been a bastard.
He didn’t know much about his grandmother, and what he did know, he didn’t share.
But he told Orla about how his mother liked to play tricks on him as a boy.
Or the games she would play with him early in the mornings when she had ended her shifts at the pleasure house.
Those were his favorite times of day, when it was just him and his mother spending time together.
When he got to the part about how she died shortly after his thirteenth birthday, his throat became tight and tears pricked at the edge of his eyes.
He remembered that day so vividly. It had felt as if all the love in his world had dried up, and he was left alone in a world with people who would never love him.
That feeling was made even more pronounced at her funeral.
It had been a dreary day with rain pounding down around them making the ground slick with mud.
Owain knew it was his fault, his magic had recently emerged, and he couldn’t control it well, causing erratic changes to the weather around him.
That day, it was even harder than usual.
He supposed he should have felt lucky that King Vernon had let him come at all.
Owain was standing at the front of the large group of people, his father to his right and his brother Aengus to his left.
In the back of the large group, Chrys watched on as well.
His mother’s plain wooden casket passed by them as a procession of people held her up.
Owain watched as they got closer to the hole in the ground in front of him.
He couldn’t bear to look at her casket and to know that the only person in his life who had ever cared for him was dead.
He was only thirteen, his magic only now starting to surface, and he was afraid.
Afraid of what his father would do if he couldn’t control his power fully.
Afraid of what Gwayne would do to him if he ever found out about Owain’s true nature.
But most of all he was afraid that he would never know what it felt like to be loved again.
His father had never loved him; that much was true. At best one could say that the king tolerated Owain. He acknowledged him as his son, but he treated him as a bastard in every sense of the word.
When the casket arrived at the hole, his mother was slowly lowered down into it.
He shook with the effort of not displaying any emotions, but he knew it was futile.
As the Elven priest led the group in a prayer, committing his mother’s body back to Amara, Owain released a sob.
He tried so hard not to cry, to shove down any show of emotion at her loss, but it was no hope.
She was gone and had left him alone in a world where he could never feel safe.
Another sob wracked his body as tears fell from his eyes. Then blinding pain shot through his face as his head snapped to the side while lightning streaked through the cloudy sky. His father had struck him. He looked up to see the dark eyes of King Vernon looking down at him.
“You dare embarrass me, boy,” he hissed as he raised his hand to strike Owain again.
Sadly, this was a common occurrence in Owain’s life since he left his mother’s care.
Weakness was not tolerated by King Vernon, and he saw Owain as weak.
He struck him again, this time across the mouth, and Owain felt his lip split.
He refrained from crying out in pain, knowing that it would only make things worse.
“You weak bastard, crying over a whore. You will not show this weakness again or I will beat it from your very body.”
Owain looked around foolishly, thinking maybe someone would intervene, but he knew it was useless. His father struck him regularly, and two strikes across the face were nothing in comparison to what he did behind closed doors.
That was the last time Owain could remember allowing himself to cry.
Orla reached out and stroked his arm gently, breaking him out of his memories. The touch was so gentle it felt like a whisper, but the feel of her delicate fingers warmed his entire body.
“It must have been so hard to lose her when you were so young.” He nodded, throat thick with unshed tears at the thought of her.
“You must look like her,” she said.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“I’ve met Aengus once before, and well, you know I knew Gwayne. You don’t look like them at all. You must take after her.”
“I do. In a lot of ways, I am my mother’s son.”
The two mounted their horses and took a winding path back towards the stables. They passed more mushrooms that Orla stopped to collect, and they talked about their homelands and the struggles of feeling different in a place that only valued sameness.
Orla told him of her father and his foolishness for falling in love with a nymph. She shared how conflicted she felt about being a nymph, always being lusted after or leered at. Orla even told him about her fears that she would be like her mother, ruled by an inability to feel settled or content.
Owain told Orla about Gwayne’s cruelty and his love for Aengus.
He told her about how he met Chrys and their friendship over the years.
Owain asked Orla about her magic, why she felt comfortable using it in Benin but not in Imsil.
He knew that magic was freer the closer one got to Iridaceae, that it seeped into the land in a way that wasn’t the case in Emmental.
He gave her tips on ways to start to listen to the magic within herself and planned on teaching her how to start controlling it. Owain was many things; a warrior, a lord, a bastard. But for the first time in his adult life, he was also content.
That evening, Owain stood on his balcony and waited to spot Orla in the gardens.
He was surprised that she didn’t show up.
By the time the witching hour hit, he began to pace between the cellarette and the balcony.
He knew it was irrational, he had spent all day with Orla in the forest, and they hadn’t arrived back at the palace until after supper, but he so desperately wanted to see her.
It had been so easy to talk to her. Owain had never felt so light and accepted as he had in the forest with her.
He talked to her about things he rarely ever mentioned to other people.
As he walked back into his rooms from the balcony, his mind wandered back to her; the way she touched him when he told her about his mom, and the way she looked at him when he healed her finger.
He felt his cock stiffen at the thought of tasting her again and how he wanted to taste her in more places. As many places as she would allow.
With Orla’s face swimming in his mind, he reached down to undo his trousers. He pulled out his stiff, aching length, the head already leaking precum at the thought of her taste, and began to stroke himself.
He started off slowly, slicking the precum down his shaft before stroking from root to tip as he thought of the way she smiled and how her skin felt as he ran circles over her palm.
He picked up the pace of his strokes, squeezing his cockhead with each stroke as he imagined kissing her full, sensuous mouth.
The thought made him moan with pleasure.
He wondered how her tongue would feel against his and the sounds she would make if he bit her lower lip.
His balls tightened as his pace increased, hips thrusting to meet his hand, thinking about the way her trousers hugged her sinful curves or the glimpse of her dark nipples that he had seen under her sheer nightgown.
He came with a grunt, Orla’s name on his lips, thinking of how good it would feel to have those curves beneath him.