10
CELEDIN GOT INTO an argument with his father about wanting to go to school in the fall like everyone else did.
He raged that he was much older than everyone else because it was taking him twice as long to graduate because he only went for half a year.
He said that all of his school chums were leaving him behind and he was forced to attend classes with the younger boys and he hated it, that he was already considered some country idiot, some hayseed, and that it was worse because of being forced to stay and work the harvest.
The steward did not take well to defiance.
At first the steward simply said no. Then the steward yelled back that Celedin’s duty was to the Peak, to his position as the next steward, and that he must rearrange his priorities.
“You are there making friends with city boys, all those nae Oir dandies, undoubtedly,” he said.
“You are growing soft. I should yank you out of that school entirely.”
But when this did not silence Celedin, the steward struck him.
Celedin slunk out of his father’s study, his face pale, his lip bleeding, his eyes wide and horrified.
He picked a fight with Dathor later. It was about something ridiculous.
He went out to the stables and said that Dathor had not saddled his horse correctly and Dathor would have none of it, and then Celedin shrieked that Dathor must respect him because he was his better.
He was the next steward of the keep and he was an elf, and Dathor was of mixed blood and a bastard and sullen at that.
It was all an excuse to hit Dathor.
But Dathor hit back, and Dathor was stronger than Celedin. He let the elf rain blows down on him and then he balled up one burly orc fist and slammed an uppercut into Celedin’s chin, which sent the elf flying through the air to land hard on his back on the mud outside of the stables.
Dathor stood over him. “We’re not children anymore,” he said. “Let’s try to behave like it?” And then he walked off.
Celedin came back.
It was late, hours after dinner, when twilight was stealing over the rows of waving grasses and wildflowers and the cliffs and the hills around Foxglove Keep.
He came back with two knives, small knives that he hid inside his sleeves, and he did not announce his attack, he simply leaped on Dathor and slashed and stabbed.
Dathor fought him off—would have, anyway, but Celedin shrieked at the driver who was getting ready to go home to his wife to hold the orc’s arms, and when the driver hesitated, Celedrin said, “Do not forget I will be the steward of this place, and I will be your master when my father is gone.”
Dathor had both of them to fight, then, and Celedin had knives, and it was grunts and sweat and blood flying in the air and she ran to get the steward, who came and put an end to it all.
He yanked Celedin off Dathor and sent the driver home. He took his son by the collar and said that he was a sorry excuse for an elf, that he simply enjoyed hurting things that were weaker than him and he hurled Celedin down on the ground and took his knives and put one under his chin.
“I wish you had not killed your mother coming out of her,” said the steward. “If you had not, perhaps I could have gotten a better son on her the next time. And if I had a better son, I could have smothered you to death one night and never regretted the loss of you.”
Celedin went entirely limp on the ground, gazing up at his father. Tears leaked out of his eyes.
The steward seemed to realize he’d gone too far. He stood up, running a hand through his long dark hair, his elvish features illuminated in the light of the rising moon. “Ah, I do not mean it, you know I do not. You vex me so.”
He had meant it, though, and everyone could tell that, everyone who had witnessed it.
One thing that Aerhril didn’t understand back then, however, was that people could mean things in the moment and then not mean them in the next. People thought that one moment was more real or true than another, but all the moments were equal.
When you loved a person, you hated them in some moments, too. It was the way love worked. Love teetered back and forth, an extreme emotion so intense that it must sometimes be something equally intense and negative, because nothing good could be eternal, nothing could be only good.
Celedin thought, though, that this was the truth of his father, that this was what he was underneath it all, that this momentary ugliness was straining to get out over a veneer his father smoothed over it each day.
Celedin was worse after that.
He ran off, wiping at his tears, and the steward called his name and then went after him, contrite.
The driver was gone.
It was only Dathor, standing in the near darkness, hair in his face, panting, shirt cut here and there, bloody in so very many places.
She went to him.
He put his hand on her cheek. Gentle. He traced the outline of her jaw and he looked at her with his stormy eyes and there was nothing but despair all over him. “Aerhril.”
“You need bandaging,” she said. “You’re bleeding all over. Let me see to you.”
“You’ll leave,” he said. “Less than six months now until you’re sixteen. My uncle will die. And then Celedin will kill me.”
“No,” she said. “No, I cannot bear that. I will not let you die.”
“He’ll pay however many men he needs to hold me down and then he’ll cut my throat.”
“No.”
And then he put his mouth on hers, and he tasted like copper and salt and his lips were desperate against hers, and she broke away and said, “Not here, someone will see,” and took him to his room above the stables.
But up there, he only moaned, “I don’t care, I don’t care, none of it matters.” And he pulled her against him and parted her lips with his own and stroked his tongue against hers and she had never felt anything like that, like his mouth against her own, like the tingling sweetness of his tongue.
She gasped and sighed and tried to entangle herself. “You’re bleeding,” she breathed. “You’re bleeding and you need tending.”
“Fine,” he said and he stripped off his bloody shirt like it was nothing, and she supposed she’d seen him without it before.
But now, they were so, so close and she still had the imprint of him on her lips and he was all bare and hulking and standing over her, and he smelled like temptation and lust, and she was shaking all over.
She put her fingertips on him, right below his collarbone. She dragged them down over his pectoral muscles.
He shut his eyes and let out one of his groans.
She pulled her fingers away, clenching them into a fist. She moaned, but it was a moan of regret, a moan of worry, because he had always been the one who made sure to hold back, and she could see he was untethered. He didn’t care about anything right now.
She darted across the room to find his wash basin and a towel. The wash basin was only half full. She tutted over his not having any care for washing. “I must go and fill this from the bucket downstairs, I see.”
He was undoing the laces of his breeches.
“What are you doing?”
“He stabbed my leg,” he said, lifting his chin, a challenge. “You’ll have to clean that wound, too. You said you’d tend to me.”
She let out another moan and came across the room, water sloshing out of the wash basin.
He pushed his breeches down and he wasn’t wearing anything under them and she gasped at the sight of him, because none of the male members she had ever seen were quite that large.
And it was stiff. It was sticking straight out, thick, the head of it swollen, glistening in the light from his fire.
She could not stop staring at it. “Where’s the wound on your leg?”
He let out a laugh and collapsed down on his bed, totally naked. She saw it, then, the place on his leg where he was bloody. She set the wash basin down. She knelt in front of him.
He let out another groan.
She picked up the towel, dipped it in the water and began to wash the blood from the places he’d been slashed and stabbed.
It stung, he gasped and winced. But the stiff part of him stayed stiff. Maybe it got stiffer and bigger, she couldn’t say. She didn’t touch it, but she looked at it. On her knees like this, she was eye level with it.
“I’m a bad man,” he said at one point, his voice labored. “We should cover up my cock.”
“Cock,” she repeated. She’d heard that word. “It’s beautiful.”
He laughed, but it was an affectionate laugh. “You shouldn’t be on your knees for me, fair elf. It’s obscene.”
“Is it?” she said, dabbing at another of his cuts. “Most of these are shallow, but this one…” She dabbed at it, too. It was on his arm. “It needs binding, and so do a few more. I should go find some fabric—”
“There are rags in the trunk outside the door,” he said. “But don’t go anywhere.”
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“Stay,” he said, reaching out to pick up a lock of her hair, fingering her light-colored curls.
“I thought it was obscene for me to be on my knees like this,” she breathed.
He only hummed, running his thumb and forefinger over her curls.
She went back to looking at his cock and dabbing at the places he was bleeding.
He stroked her face again, letting out labored breaths, as if he was exerting himself even though he was sitting entirely still.
He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “You are perfection, do you know that? How could something like you, something so light and lovely and beautiful, how could you touch me?”
“Should I… touch?” She was staring directly at his cock.
He let out a hoarse grunt. “Get the rags.”
She bit down on her lip, gazing at his cock.
“Now, Aerhril.” His voice was still hoarse.
“Yes,” she said. “Because you are bleeding.”
He reached over and tugged on the coverlet on his bed. He tossed it over his crotch, and she let out a little sound, as if she was disappointed that he’d covered himself. He groaned again.
She got up and went to seek the trunk. She came back with clean rags and she set about tying one of the strips of fabric around his arm.