20. Chapter 19 Svenn
Chapter 19 Svenn
“ I still don’t get it,” I tell Rhianelle, stroking her back idly.
It’s been more than a week since I’ve sealed the bond, and I have been enjoying the clarity that comes with it. As promised, I’ve taken her back to Windhaven. My wife is now sitting in my lap in front of the coffee table.
“It’s like this. Let me show you,” she instructs, taking the brush from my hand. I watch her silently as she concentrates on the paper. Her hair is braided, revealing the smooth skin of her neck. I push the hunger carving my insides and wrap a possessive arm around her.
Last night before she went to bed, I told her that the calligraphy of the elven letterings was too difficult to master. Rhianelle, being the helpful good girl she is, settles on my lap to practice them with me this morning.
It’s a lie, of course. Balthazar is perfectly fluent with the language in speech and in writing.
I’ll lie. I’ll cheat. I’ll kill for her.
The feeling of having her close to me is so much better than any of the images the bond fills in my head. “Show that to me again,” I request, craving her attention and affection.
She obliges, guiding my hand and the brush on the paper. Her touch is gentle and warm, leaving a permanent imprint on my soul, if I even have one. This physical interaction fulfills our newly constructed bargain, so it’s not entirely dishonest. The world makes sense when I have her in my arms. I make sure to perform the next stroke correctly so my poor grasp of the scripts doesn’t seem too irredeemable to her.
“You’re getting good at this,” she mutters, her lilac eyes sparkling in awe. She rewards me with a piece of whatever is on her breakfast plate.
I briefly glance at the roasted pheasant she has on her fork before taking it all in my mouth. A small price to pay for having her with me.
Her face always blooms with triumph whenever she succeeds in delivering me food.
“Svenn?”
Yes, sweetness.
“The council session might run long today…” she trails, fiddling with the hem of her dress instead of looking into my eyes. “Do you mind if I hold you for a moment longer?”
My heart roars to life at the question but I keep my voice even. “Sure thing, Nel.”
A contented sigh slips out of her as she curls further into my embrace. “I’m glad we made the deal. The bond is not nearly as loud as before.”
“Go on. Take whatever you need,” I whisper against her ear, and I can almost feel her shudder.
The words must have done something to Rhianelle because she becomes emboldened. Her fingers trail across my chest, willing and measured. I like that she is unafraid of me. Less afraid.
For some reason, Rhianelle is always careful when she’s touching me, always asking permission. I wish she would tell me why.
It’s understandable she would put up a barrier between us, considering all the messed up things I did to her. Still, I want the walls between us gone. I can tear through them easily enough, but I would prefer her letting me in.
She almost runs her hand on my lower abdomen. I can see it in her eyes that she wants to—she’s dying to do it.
But she stops herself from going further.
“Was that too much?” she asks timidly, her eyes wide and innocent.
“It’s not enough,” I grunt. Nothing is ever enough when it comes to her. I take her delicate hand and glide her palm over every ridge of my frame until it reaches the thin line leading to where exactly I want her to be. I want to let her know that there’s no part of my body that is off-limits to her.
She withdraws her hand, looking adorably embarrassed. “Nothing sexual, remember?”
I raise my brows. “This is coming from a girl who uses me as an armchair every chance she gets.”
“Only because you threaten to scare off my squirrels!” she cries out, her cheeks flushing.
Did I?
I may have done that. But I don’t want to tease her too much today. I’m trying to win back her trust.
“I have to go now,” she mutters, peeling herself from my arms.
“You have time,” I say, towing her towards me again. I want to make sure she gets her breakfast this morning.
“I can’t let the Aeonians’ messenger arrive earlier than me. It’s protocol,” she says ruefully.
“Didn’t the bastard make you wait yesterday?” Anger pummels into me, thudding against my skull. He made her stand in that room for four fucking hours. For a moment I reconsider taking her away again so she wouldn’t have to suffer this burden entrusted upon her.
I have to constantly remind myself that this is the freedom Rhianelle desires. I guess I will have to respect that.
For now.
I remain calm as I lean in to whisper to her ear. “Tell them there’s a hungry vampire in the tower who wants to slaughter every soul in that room. Tell them you’re late because you’re feeding me so I won’t kill them. That will shut them up.”
Her face blanches at the threat but she recovers quickly.
“I am feeding you,” she says, lancing a piece of a hard-boiled egg with her fork and offering it to me. I take a bite without fuss.
She gives me a shy smile and blushes. I adore the light shade red that colors her cheeks when she does that.
Rhianelle quickly finishes the last few bites of her meal and turns to me for one last hug. She soaks in every bit of warmth I can offer to calm her bond. It takes everything in me to fight the urge to carry her to the bed and make her forget that the world exists.
I want more of this. More of us. Stay with me, Nel, I want to say to her. But the words can’t seem to form in my mouth.
After a while she begin to pull away again. “Svenn…”
I breathe her in for a moment, but I know I have to let go. Rhianelle slips away from me and puts on her High Elf mask of elegance. It kills me whenever I watch her walk gracefully like a wound-up doll, fully knowing that she’s in pain throughout the whole act. Not just physically. Rage spikes up inside of me in mighty waves.
“Don’t forget to practice on your overturn and downstroke,” she says, patting the brush case on the table. The girl is blissfully unaware of the silent wrath coursing through my blood, that she is seconds away from being stolen to the castle again.
But like her, I masked the madness and keep a calm exterior. “I will.”
It goes against every instinct of mine to let her go. Something behind my ribcage crashes and dies the moment she disappears out of the door. It’s quickly revived when her silver hair suddenly peeks at the threshold once again and I find two violet eyes staring at me.
Rhianelle gives me a rare look of uncertainty, her bottom lip trembling. “Will you be here when I get back?”
She asks this often, even if my answer is always the same.
Yes.
I give her a curt nod.
The simple gesture brings the brightest smile to her face. “I’ll stop by Lord Wesley’s library and get us more books.”
Us.
The word coming from her lips does strange things to my heart. Just like that I feel almost human again.
“I’ll see you soon, Svenn.” Rhianelle does one of her terrible winks, where she blinks both eyes.
I’m so fucked.
A knot of discomfort tightens in my gut at her absence, and I close my eyes. I wait until her light footstep and heartbeat fade into the distance before opening them again. Her delicate, maddening scent of water lilies lingers in the room, messing with my head.
I feel so fucking useless.
Things would be less complicated if Rhianelle’s request would be to simply slay the orc rebels, but the girl is trying to stop a war. My skill set is the opposite of what she needs right now.
But there is something else I can do for her. A heavy breath leaves my chest.
I will have to hunt for that annoying knight.
I drag my reluctant feet across town in search of Red. Unlike Eyepatch or the Tall One, I will never find him guarding his queen near the council chambers. The circulating whispers around him from the people in court are mostly unpleasant. It is said that he is a lazy Alderalf’s son that became Rhianelle’s knight by reprehensible means.
After fuck knows how long I come across him lurking underneath a tree at the edge of town, the hood of his crimson cloak is up and forward.
“Oh, it’s you.” Red raises his hand in a merry greeting.
He’s too comfortable around me. I’m losing my touch.
As always, the knight reeks of blood. He has killed another one of his targets this morning. I wonder if Eyepatch and the Tall One suspect him of the killings. As much as I hate the bastard, I don’t rat him out.
“You seem happy today,” Red remarks, his face irreverent and cheerful. “Did something good happen between you and Rhianelle?”
I don’t answer his question to preserve my brain cells.
“Can you make this?” I ask flatly, handing him a sheepskin scroll.
Red studies the print silently, curiosity flickering in his expression. I have no coins or treasure to offer him. I can simply threaten the guy, but perfection never rises from coercion. I need the bastard at his best. My sweet Nel deserves it.
He finally glances over at me, searching for a possibility I may be fucking with him.
“As a trade, I will tell you the nature of your hunter in the woods,” I add before he can refuse my offer.
“You can do that?” he asks, the surprise written across his face.
I nod to the stupid question.
I remove my coat and the pieces of clothing that might not be able to survive my partial shift.
Blood rushes to Red’s face and he clears his throat. “Look—look man, you’re Rhianelle’s husband… and frankly I’m not interested in starting any affair or any romantic fling at the moment.”
This dumbass… I remind myself repeatedly not to gut him.
Deadly claws erupt to replace my hands and my senses heighten. Bile rises to my throat and I cringe from the acrid taste of it. A cracking sound fills the air as my head is thrown back when my body contorts and my skin rips open.
I focus on the two sapphire eyes peering at us from behind the leaves. The animal is nothing but a dark void at first, but as my shift progresses, I finally see the spirit that lies beneath the charcoal fur.
Interesting…
The wolf is aware of my prying, and its lips part slightly, exposing oversized canines.
I whip my head towards Red and for the first time since I met him, true fear crosses the knight’s features. His hand rests on the pommel of his sword out of pure instinct. I take pity on his hardworking heart and decide he should not die before completing his task.
“What the fuck was that?” he bursts and exhales.
“I needed to shift for the sight,” I mutter, gradually switching back into my mortal disguise.
“For the love of Kvatosh, can you warn me before you do it?” He cringes backward, his body shivering with disgust. “That is the most hideous fucking thing I have ever seen. I’m going to have nightmares for weeks—no, decades.”
Red drops to his knees to the ground and starts chanting an elven prayer. He shakes his head and sighs dramatically the moment he is done. “Fuck, that was ugly.”
He said that already. This overreaction is starting to piss me off.
“Don’t ever show that to my queen,” he mutters before rising to full height. “I’m starting to get used to your presence. It’d be a damn shame if she were to send you away.”
A growl rolls from my throat at the ungrateful bastard and his unbidden advice. But I make a mental note never to shift into this form in front of Rhianelle.
Go now, I tell the beast sharply to fully revert back.
I never learn this one’s name because he doesn’t speak. The others nicknamed him as Wendy, a mockery of some of the names the humans had given him. They all turn quiet in his presence, most are scared, some just don’t give a damn, but all of them wholly agree that Wendy is a malevolent beast of pure chaos and destruction. Unlike Coinneach, or Cyntefin, this one doesn’t possess a single perk to charm Rhianelle. He is a monster in every sense of the word, one of the Fallen from Hel, the Harvester of Souls.
We can’t frighten our little fawn, I reason with him.
Wendy grumbles as he retreats into the dark recesses of my soul, but he understands.
“Your stalker is an elf,” I tell the knight flatly. “I don’t know why he is bound in that lupine shape.”
Red tilts his head to the side with a mild daze. His eyes immediately hunt for the creature in the woods.
The wolf bares his teeth at him, his fur bristling.
“He’s an elf, you say?” he asks, smirking like a cat. The surprise on his expression has now been completely replaced by a widening grin. There’s a maniacal look on his face that makes me actually pity the wolf.
The knight makes a soft calling sound, the same way Rhianelle would summon the stray cats around the courtyard. “Come here, boy.”
His watcher in the dark snarls at him before vanishing into the trees.
Red gives the parchment another look before lifting his eyes to meet mine. “You know… I would have made this without a trade. It’s for my queen, is it?”
I nod slowly.
His eyes soften before they become unreadable.
“Come with me. We need good wood for this thing. The best.” He makes his way in a measured pace towards the road that leads to Windhaven’s central market. I have time to kill, so I trail behind the bastard silently.
Fine shops, galleries, and eateries line the street of Alaeris. Trees along the street have been sculpted to form a shaded archway over the path. Several patrolling guards in enameled armor take notice of my presence, their frown easing when they glimpse Red by my side.
Alaeris is bustling like any other market I’ve been to in the continent. Except the elves use gold and silver here, a stark contrast from the market in Avalon and Myrkeim. The fae, dwarves, and orcs have their own currencies, but they value deal exchange more than anything.
A smile kicks up the corner of my mouth when I recall the sneaky elven girl who tried to make a deal with me last week like a fae.
Fuck, it’s barely noon and I miss her already. I wish I could spend the day with Nel instead of Red. I smother the painful hunger in my chest and focus on the sights, sounds, and smells around me.
I do enjoy the controlled calm in the elven shopping district. There are no merchants calling to passersby to barter, no vendors trying to make a shady bargain with their customers, no revelers and performers attempting dangerous acrobatics to show off their skills, no singing minstrels. People move and clear a path for us to tread down the street.
“Will you chill the fuck out? You’re scaring everyone,” Red mutters, sounding a little exasperated.
I have been trying, I almost bite back.
I swear to the devil that I have tried for the past week, masking my presence and essence the way Bas did to fit with humankind. It’s about as awkward as a wolf trying to blend in with a herd of sheep.
At least, it was good enough for the Lord of this city to tell Rhianelle that he allowed me to move around freely now. Not that I ever cared or needed his permission. But Nel was so happy with the development. The overjoyed look on her face when she broke the news to me… I’ve decided I want to see more of it.
Red guides me down the road past the upper-class part of town towards the riverfront, where hawkers and traveling merchants line the barracks along the harbor.
“Sweet Kvatosh!” he yelps in disbelief before lurching towards the alley’s end without waiting for me.
I eventually catch up with the knight and the traveling trader that caught his attention.
My focus is immediately drawn to the seller instead of her goods. Her wrinkled skin reminds me of a dried prune and her eyes and hair are silver with age. She must at least be a century old. I order myself not to stare. It is rare to find another human in elven territory. Aelfheim is more closed off compared to the fae and orcs who often took mortal mates from the human realm.
She waves her hand over the bottles of potions and ornaments on the cart in front of her. “Come and have a look, young man.”
I scoff in my head at the idea of this woman calling me a young man. I am older than her grandfather.
Red braces both hands on the wooden wagon. “I need nothing here but your coach.”
The old lady pauses as if the request is not only irrelevant but impertinent.
“I give you three bags of gold for it,” he says with an easy grin.
She weighs his offering with skepticism on her face. I do the same thing. I know nothing of the value of currency in their kingdom, but if I wasn’t fully certain that Red is an idiot before, I am now. He’s overpaying her for a tree we can find anywhere.
“It’s not for sale,” the old lady says flatly. There is something mysterious and secretive about her that I can’t quite put a finger on.
“Everything has a price. Name yours,” the knight insists.
The woman shakes her head. “You can’t pay my price.”
I can’t tell if she is trying to haggle to hike up the value of her wagon or if she really doesn’t want him to have the old thing.
“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it,” Red urges.
A wisp of amusement fills me as I watch him being swindled by the peddler. It hardly offers the same entertainment as killing him, but this will have to do. Perhaps this is just karmic justice, a way for the universe to pay him back for all his fuckery.
“Please…This person is important to me,” he begs desperately.
Her gaze narrows, searching for his eyes. “It’s for your girl?”
“Yes,” he says carelessly. Red overhears my low growl and quickly amends his answer.
He clicks his tongue and points towards me with his thumb. “I meant his girl.”
The old woman’s wise eyes flick to me at his gesture. “Are the three of you in a relationship?”
“He wishes,” the knight replies.
I want to fucking end him.
Red turns his pleading eyes on the woman again. “Please, I’ll give you anything you want.”
He empties his baldric and places his elegant sword along with the dwarven-made breastplate on the table. Rhianelle’s chosen knight is dumber than I thought.
“You’re trading good metal for wood?” I finally ask when his foolishness becomes too unbearable to watch.
I find two sets of eyes staring back at me as if I just muttered something blasphemous in a holy temple.
Her silver eyes sharpen on me. “Not just any wood, young man.”
“It’s a piece of a tree from Astefar,” Red declares.
“Astefar?” I echo.
The old woman casts me a disbelieving look. “You’ve never heard of the Forbidden Forest?”
Red clears his throat. “Forgive him. He’s not from here.”
She gazes long into my eyes, long enough to make me uncomfortable. Her voice carries a strange, soothing lilt when she speaks. “When the elves first arrived to this continent, untamed beasts and gods dwelled in the woods. The first Elven King, Casimir the fool—”
“Casimir the Brave,” Red dutifully redresses as he inspects the wheels of the cart.
“—fought against their unearthly forces with his inquisition. Their battle lasted for thousands of years, and legions of elves fell to the bloodthirsty dark gods. Through endless slaughter, the king painfully learned that chaos and malice can never be destroyed. To avoid further catastrophe and doom to his people, Casimir contained the malevolent beings and sealed them in what is now called, Astefar,” she finishes, then adds, “No elf has ever trespassed that forbidden forest and lived to tell the tale.”
“Except for a girl,” Red mutters underneath his breath too low for her mortal ears to hear.
But I think the old lady heard him all the same because she is now staring down at him. The knight is too ignorant to notice he is being silently assessed by the old woman.
I finally recognize that this is no ordinary woman. Something different prowls beneath that skin. Something lethal and dangerous.
“Please, please, please, I will trade anything for this,” Red whines again.
“Anything?” she asks. “It may cost you.”
There’s a strange gleam in her eyes, the kind that belongs to witches and devils.
Red holds that deadly stare, unrelenting and unafraid.
“Anything,” he confirms. The bastard is an inch away from bargaining his first-born to whatever the hell this old woman is.
She gives him a saccharine smile. “You can have it in exchange for… a shade of green from your left eye.”
A chill sings in my blood over her words.
The woman raises her hand to the knight to complete the deal, the earlier sweetness in her features morphing into something lupine.
I recognize a trickster when I see one.
“Don’t do it,” I tell him sharply.
I feel a strange obligation to protect whatever belongs to Rhianelle, including the silly strays she collected.
Fucker ignores me and shakes the lady’s hand.
The air pulses and crackles to the point of making it difficult to inhale a single breath.
“It is done.” The lady releases the knight’s hand.
It’s subtle but I feel the strange shift, like something clicking into place.
“This will be an early Nameday present for my sweet queen,” Red chirps with a bright smile. The lady smiles as well, but hers is more serpentine, honed, and deadly.
“Shall we complete the transaction somewhere quiet?” the peddler suggests without missing a beat. “I will have to pack my belonging.”
Red nods in silent agreement and the lady slips to the pulling bar in front of the wagon. The danger I feel emanating from the woman has not yet dissipated, but the form she chose for her guise is pitiful enough that I can’t help but say, “Do you need help with that?”
Now it is my turn to be judged by those swirling silver eyes.
“You cannot turn these wheels, young man,” she finally says, pulling her cart while humming a soft tune.
We trail behind the lady silently like the rats and the piper. This woman could very well be leading us to our doom. She stops once we reach a secluded area at the end of the residential street where there’s barely any people, barely any signs of life for that matter, except for a tall, wide branched elm tree.
I cross my arms and lean back against the tree. My eyes are trained on the strange lady as she moves her trinkets and bottles from the wagon into a sack when Red suddenly whispers to me, “Do you want me to carve sixty-nine at the bottom or anything?”
Balthazar’s pendant is quick to translate the nuances and euphemisms of this new age. A low snarl reverberates out of my throat.
“It’s her age.” Red rolls his eyes, unfazed by the threat. “But yes, sixty-nine is a good number.”
What the hell is this fucker talking about?
“Rhianelle was born at the beginning of the Age of Conquest,” I correct him.
“Umm yeah… temple years don’t count,” he says without looking at me.
I know that.
Unlike the savage fae who are born with their gifts, the elves have to collect their blessings from the temples of their seventy-seven deities. Time moves differently in the realms of the gods. What is a single second in the real world can either be a blink of an eye or sometimes a hundred years in their domain, depending on the god’s whims.
Even if the time Nel served at the God of Healing’s monastery is excluded, she is at least several hundred years old.
“She only spent a year in the temple of Anastarros,” I remind the knight.
He laughs lightly. “That’s not her Prime God.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“Her Prime is the Un.” He shrugs.
The forgotten gods?
There’s barely a page about them in the books. Nel is guarded and won’t talk to me about these things. As much as I hate it, I have to rely on this fucker for crumbs of information about my own wife. It’s my own damn fault she’s pushing me away. I will have to give her space.
Because I want every piece of her.
“By the way, keep this to yourself. This is not in public records.” Red trails his gaze on the old seller with casual grace, making certain she doesn’t overhear our conversation.
“Then why do you have this information?” I ask.
“Remember when I said Rhianelle tried to murder me?” he drawls, checking on his nails momentarily. “I dug up her past so I can kill her first.”
A vicious snarl rips from my throat.
“Calm down, we had a trial and this was a while ago,” he says without feeling. “Look, this is just a wild guess, all right? I think Rainer and her family lied about her age. She’s not even a High Elf.”
Another shock shudders through me.
After a few hundred years in their long lives, the elves will decide where to utilize their speciality best. Some will ascend to become a warrior like the knight beside me, or the healing Hlaryan elves, or the magic-wielding Mhlaryan elves, or the inventive Tluryan elves, or in Rhianelle’s case, an Alderalf and the Queen of Aelfheim.
But Red is saying that Nel has not even ascended yet.
He glimpses the confusion in my face and takes pity on me. “I don’t know much, but let me tell you a story. There is a famous legend that started in the beginning of the war in the Age of Conquest, a myth told by the folks from the village of Feywildra in the poor region of Elowen. It’s a poor countryside nearest to the borders of Astefar. They told a tale of a feral elf girl who lived in the woods. In some collections, she is a silver-haired ghost who is always hungry, in others she is a kind spirit, leading lost travelers from being hunted by the beasts of the forest.”
I can’t keep a breath down as I listen to him.
“The timing of those lores started around the same time the previous queen left Rhianelle in the custody of the horrible Governor of Elowen when she was five,” Red goes on, his eyes dimming with something like sorrow. “If my presumption is right, Astefar is the domain of the Un and Rhianelle has spent all that time in the realms of the gods as we did in our temple.”
I want to dismiss his stupid theory, but whatever he says matches with the pieces of memory I drank from her. I picture the little girl, abandoned in the woods to fend for herself. An avalanche of feeling goes through me at the story.
“I don’t press her much about this since it’s her family’s secret, but Rhianelle once told me she was only eighteen at the time she was crowned. It’s been fifty-one years since she sat on that throne. So yes, she turns sixty-nine this year,” he finishes in dismissal.
The old lady suddenly reappears right in front of us. If I were mortal, my heart might have actually halted from the spook. I didn’t hear her move… she’s almost as silent as my Nel. “You can have the cart now. I’ll just be right here packing my stuff if you need anything.”
“Thank you!” Red claps his hands together, giving me another startle. He walks over to the cart with a wide grin on his face.
“I remember having the best time of my life before my ascension,” he resumes his musings. “I call it my soul-searching years. My poor elfling queen never got that.”
I feel momentarily gutted by the knowledge. My Nel didn’t even get the fun years like this fucker did. I want to pry more information from the knight.
No, that’s not what I really want.
I want Nel.
I want—I need to see her now. I need to touch her and hold her in my arms. I need to kiss her and hear her voice.
I’ll storm the stupid council chambers and—but Nel wouldn’t want that.
I made a promise and I will honor our deal.
So, I force myself to sit on the bench underneath the tree and watch Red work. I consider this as my penance for stealing Nel last week. He dismantles the cart carefully to create my commission. I don’t bother him with talk to let him concentrate. It may not be obvious to a mortal’s eyesight, but his eye colors are mismatched now.
“Still worried for me, vampire?” Red angles his head, his blonde hair, glimmering in the sunlight.
I say nothing.
“I would have bargained half my life span if that was the price,” he says with an unbothered calm.
The guy is careless but no one can doubt his loyalty to his queen. I might let him live after all.
I look at the letterings he carved. “What is that?”
“Her date of birth,” Red answers simply, blowing the sawdust into the wind.
The seventh day of the fall on the eleventh year in the Age of Conquest.
Balthazar’s pendant is quick to translate that to the human calendar and my breathing falters. Unease and dread begin filling the damned thing beating in my chest.
“That date… is the day Rhianelle was born?” I stammer with disbelief.
“Yeah.”
His simple answer cleaves me in two. My body goes statue-still, every system paralyzing as I lean my back against the tree.
It’s too much of a coincidence.
Sometimes I wonder if there was something more powerful at play when Rhianelle stumbled into my prison in that dark dungeon.
Garett is too focussed on his art to notice my sudden distraught, but the peddler catches it instantly and settles beside me. “Does the date mean something to you, young man?”
“It does.”
I remember that cold, dark night when the sky was starless and my soul was shattered into fucking ruins. I could no longer bear my insufferable existence, the filth, the devastation…
I want an end.
“Perhaps it’s kismet then,” the old woman suggests with a knowing look on her face.
I tamp down a laugh. There’s no such thing.
“I don’t believe in fate,” I tell her straight.
Her silver eyes glint like molten metal. “A shame then. Because she believes in you.”