Chapter 17 #2
Elish led us to our room as Ryo brought in our luggage and then showed us to the bathroom and the kitchen before heading outside to answer one of the workers’ questions. Varsalos was in the kitchen pulling honey cakes out of the refrigerator when we entered.
“Come, sit down and rest,” he offered, handing us both a tiny cake on a plate.
We joined him at a small seating area on the balcony behind the kitchen as he gestured to the stone crypt behind the house, beyond where the workers were setting up cloth-covered pavilions and carrying in armloads of flowers, and told me about our relatives that were laid to rest there and about my grandparent’s lives when they had lived on the property.
I watched Lorn out of the corner of my eye as he poked at the cake and took polite but disinterested bites out of it.
When Varsalos turned his head to watch a long pike topped with streamers being raised and settled into the ground, I reached over and grabbed Lorn’s cake off his plate, setting it on mine before my uncle noticed.
I loved honey cakes. Lorn was much more interested in the plate.
“I was sorry to hear about your parents, Sadira,” my uncle said quietly with a sigh, as I stuffed the last bite of honey cake into my mouth, nearly making me choke.
“What—what do you mean?” I stuttered, coughing politely into my fist. I hadn’t spoken to my parents since my mother had sent a spectral messenger two weeks after the solstice.
She’d finished her holiday travels and assumed I would be ready to meet her so we could travel to Othella to stay with the diplomat’s family.
As if I hadn’t already told her that I didn’t want that.
I told her no, under no uncertain terms this time, and she replied that I was humiliating her for rejecting this match, and was no longer allowed to call myself her daughter, that I should never expect so much as another copper coin from them for anything.
Ever. That was the last I’d heard from her—not that we spoke that often to begin with—and I’d never heard back from my father at all after the original message I sent him before leaving school to ask him to intervene for me with my mother.
He just simply hadn’t replied. I hadn’t spoken to him since last summer at the cottage.
Varsalos blinked at me, startled.
“The—” He stopped himself, suddenly uncomfortable, before saying it anyway. “The divorce,” he said, looking around like someone might overhear. The workers were much too far away.
“What?” I practically barked, horribly impolite, but I was shocked. “What do you mean?” I repeated.
“I’m so sorry,” Varsalos muttered. “Did you not—? I had no idea you weren’t aware.”
Lorn was watching our conversation like a ball-throwing match. I would have to fill in the gaps in his understanding later, but I needed more information right now.
“No, but—why? What happened? Are you sure?” I couldn’t even imagine that being true.
Elves rarely ever divorced, especially those who moved in the higher status circles.
Not every marriage was for love, but a couple was stronger and had more status together.
My parents weren’t exactly loving, but they had always presented a united front.
“Caera—” My mother’s name, he paused and swallowed before hesitantly continuing on.
“We share many mutual acquaintances, both from being family and from our positions in the government. There was some… indiscretion,” he supplied with a grimace, “during Caera’s travels it seems, and word got back to Enric about it.
He filed for divorce months ago,” he finished.
“They really didn’t inform you?” He looked baffled.
I shook my head. “They haven’t spoken to me since—” I gestured vaguely at Lorn beside me “—not since we got married.”
Varsalos frowned and nodded slowly. “I’m sorry to hear that, Sadira.”
The next morning, I found my uncle in the kitchen plating his breakfast while Lorn slept.
The wedding wasn’t until tonight, and traveling had been really overwhelming for him yesterday, so I wanted to let him sleep, but I was restless.
There was a spread of pastries and fruits and creams on the kitchen island, along with a platter of sashimi, raw oysters, and kelp rings.
I pointed at the seafood and raised an eyebrow.
“Elish asked Levi what Lorn might like to eat,” he said, referring to his daughter’s fiancé.
“I hope this is okay.” It was more than okay—it was incredibly thoughtful.
I told him so and thanked him for his and Elish’s kindness to us, then joined him at some stools to eat in the kitchen, appreciating the beautiful white and gray marble that made up the kitchen island.
“I spoke to Elish last night,” he said quietly, fingering the rim of his water glass in front of him.
“And I would like to discuss something with you before it gets hectic today, if you have any interest.”
I caught myself raising a finger to point at my chest in question, but of course he meant me, so I nodded, feeling anxious about whatever he could have wanted to discuss.
“You see, there’s a property down in Belas Shores near where you said you are staying, that I believe your family spent a good deal of time at during the summer months while you were growing up.
” My heart panged at the memory of my childhood summer home and how we wouldn’t have any more vacations in it.
I loved that cottage because it symbolized everything that I had ever loved during my childhood: the freedom to be a child, the joy of running outside, the kindness of Cook and my Nan, and most importantly—all the time I spent with Lorn while we were growing up.
He waited for me to nod again, watching my changing expressions as I chewed my bite of pastry before continuing.
“That cottage estate actually belongs to the family trust,” he explained, but I didn’t really know what that meant.
“So I own it just as much as my sister does,” he continued with the tiniest hint of a smirk, and I froze, blinking.
I’d had no idea that my parents hadn’t owned it outright like they did their home in the city.
“That also means that she can’t take it away from you or disinherit you of it, because as the executor of the trust, I’m the one with the final say in that. ”
I was glad I’d swallowed my food because I felt my mouth starting to drop open and snapped it shut with a click. My eyes were wide as saucers, and I had no idea what to say. He seemed to understand that, so he continued.
“The property that the estate resides on is actually multiple different properties that were purchased together as a means of preserving the privacy of the cottage, similar to what was done here,” he explained, gesturing behind him to mean the property around the keep.
“And I would like to gift you—as a wedding gift from the family as a whole—one of those individual properties within the estate.”
My mouth was all the way open now, so I covered it with my hands as I sat listening to him in shock. Lorn and I could live close to the cottage, and he would have access to the cove whenever he wanted. We would get to spend every day in my favorite place in the world, where I was home.
“I would also like to hire you temporarily to reside in the cottage and manage the estate while you finish your education there in Belas Shores, and until you can finish building whatever kind of home you’d like to build on your parcel of the property.”
I sat with my hands over my mouth and burst into messy tears, hardly able to think straight to respond to his proposal.
He didn’t need someone to manage the estate.
It sat empty for months at a time and had never had any problems. He was gifting me the ability to move out of our one-room shack by the docks and giving me a small income to pay our expenses while I finished school.
I’d thought we were completely on our own from now on, with no guidance, no one to help if we went hungry, no one to turn to if anything happened to us, and I had accepted that because it was worth it to be with Lorn if that’s what it took.
But to have this man who looked just like my mother, the one who betrayed me, this man who’d never known me, who had obligation to me only out of duty to his family, step in and offer this lifeline was devastatingly kind and a heartbreaking juxtaposition against the selfish cruelty of my parents, I cried quiet, wretched tears in response.
“Oh. Oh dear. These girls…” He clucked at me as he reached for a tissue and passed it to me. “You lot will be the death of me with those tears, I swear it.” He sounded playfully scandalized, and I tried to wrestle back control of myself as I dabbed at my face. Demurely.
“Sorry,” I managed to get out with a shaking voice.
“No need,” he said with his miniscule elvish smile.
“I raised a daughter of my own through her teen years. I think I can handle a few of your tears, dear one.” He set his hand on my shoulder—a display of extreme affection among older generations of elves.
And make no mistake, he was old. He had been born fifteen years before my mother, and she was in her eighties.
They didn’t look it, of course, with their elven genetics they had perfectly smooth skin and strong bodies and would continue to live for hundreds of years, but they still carried the demeanor of the older generations.
“Thank you,” I told him gratefully. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
I reached out and hugged him tightly, making him grunt in amusement and pat my hair awkwardly. His wife had said their daughter was a hugger, so I was sure he could probably tolerate one from me, too—his niece.
“You have family here, Sadira,” he told me as I released him.
He watched my face to be certain I understood, so I nodded to show him I did.
“Your mother can refuse to have a relationship with you, and that is her choice—albeit a tragic one—but she cannot cut you off from us now that you are of age. You and Lorn are welcome with us. You’re not alone. ”
The wedding was bigger than anything I’d ever witnessed.
I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that there were more than a thousand people gathered to celebrate my cousin—who was lovely, by the way.
She seemed surprisingly shy after the cheerfulness of her mother (whom she resembled very much with her dark hair and small build, although her skin was closer to her father’s shade), but I’m sure it was a lot to have so many people staring at her all day.
But how could you not? Her gown was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, and she was covered in jewels and surrounded by tiny flaming spark fairies all evening.
There were so many people that Lorn had no idea where to look or what to do. The ceremony had been mostly in Old Elvish, so he couldn’t understand what was being said, but he leaned to me and whispered, “This is what normal marriage is?”
This wasn’t the place for a detailed explanation so I just kind of gave a small shrug and a nod to mean, “kind of,” ignoring the fact that he still wasn’t using the correct word for a wedding because I knew what he meant.
Yes, this was a version of what many elvish weddings were, but I’d never seen one quite like this.
“I prefer ours,” he said, taking in the spectacle of it all.
I huffed a quiet laugh. “She probably would have too. This is more for the family,” I whispered.
Had I married the son of the diplomat, my wedding would have been similar, though probably not quite this extravagant, and I would have had little to no say in any of it.
I doubted Elara had asked for this many guests or this grand of an event.
From my few minutes of speaking with her today, she seemed like the type to flourish in more intimate gatherings.
The problem was that, in our society, to not be invited to a celebration like this would be considered a deliberate snub.
Since her father was so well known, and it was well known that he had money and could afford an elaborate event, they would have had to invite practically everyone they’d ever known or done business with to keep the peace.
For the feast, we were seated with my aunt and uncle and the groom’s father—a kindness since we knew no one else.
We sat and listened to their conversation, but I found myself staring wide-eyed at all the different people around us.
Lorn’s expression mirrored my own, and I followed his gaze to a towering bug-man who looked like an enormous moth.
He made his way delicately to a table and took his seat with a giant orc and a tiny sylvan woman, lifting his iridescent wings behind his chair as he did.
There were many, many elves in attendance, some in high-ranking military uniforms, others in fine suits or dresses, but there was a huge portion of non-elves as well.
There were groups of tree-people I knew to be called dryads, and people who looked like humans (though I knew they could not be because full humans will die in our world), and many other races of people dotting the crowds here and there.
All of them moved with confidence as if they knew their welcome here was absolute.
Lorn didn’t stick out at all, and I felt like I could finally breathe.
If it had been my wedding, the one that my mother had planned in her mind when she offered me to the diplomat’s son, the crowd would have been dark-elves to a one.
Instead, these were the people my extended family had chosen to surround themselves with during their lives and business, and I knew…
Lorn and I would truly be able to create a life together, both alone with each other and with our families.