18 #2
To be fair, he was happy to try all manner of ways of licking her, too.
He had reported to her that he was fairly sure the sensitive part of her was called her clitoris, that he had heard the maids talking about clits before, and that must be what it was.
He liked to croon to it, urge it. Get nice and swollen for me, that’s a good little clit.
Does this little clit like that? I think it does.
But even thinking about such things now was making her a little bothered. Her dress felt tight. It felt heavy between her legs.
She could not complain about their closeness or their mutual pleasure, that was the truth of it. It was what she lived for.
She gazed up at him in the window there, and he pointedly turned away, the curtains swishing closed in his wake. Well, that was a problem to solve later, she decided as she climbed into the carriage.
Celedin sat on one side with the steward, both in top hats and pressed suits, their silk ties splashes of color under their throats. She and Flaihir sat on the other side of the carriage.
It took only twenty-five minutes to go straight to Thelandel Chapel.
It was called a chapel because it had once belonged to the clergy of the old religion.
During the wars with the Valaedor, they had desecrated a number of chapels, saying that the silvans reliance on the old religion was all superstition.
When the wars ended, the old religion was outlawed for a time, and all of the chapels were given over to envivtains and barlins, some stewards too, perhaps even some lucky wardens.
Eventually, the laws forbidding the practice of the religion were repealed, but the chapels never went back to the clergy.
Indeed, the clergy of the old religion was not what it had once been.
Nowadays, the clergy all traveled to the south to go to the schools, because that was the only way to be ordained.
Now, the clergy was as skeptical of the gods as any progressive-minded elf.
Now, the clergy talked of tradition and ceremony, of the importance of ritual and the effect on the psyche.
They rarely talked of the gods as if they had any real power.
Aerhril did not know if she believed. As a girl, of course, everyone was taught that the gods existed, but the stories of the gods were told alongside all manner of other fanciful tales, stories that were clearly just made-up stories to amuse children. Were the gods the same thing?
Well, no god had ever answered her prayer, she supposed.
Even so, there was something to be said for the chants around the bonfires at the harvest or the processionals through the streets in the spring, music playing, elves dancing.
There was a power to it, something she had felt in the marrow of her bones, something that made her feel tied to this land, to this sky, to these rocks and trees.
She did not know if she believed in the gods, but she believed in something.
The dance was peopled with the typical families of the area.
The Warden nae Gilsin and his family, the steward from Falls Keep and his family, and the merchants who lived in town along with their wives and grown children.
It was a lively gathering of at least forty people, and the music was cheery and upbeat, strings and a piano, the dance having already begun.
She was introduced to Elrion nae Nilriane and he was tall and dark and pleasing.
He was older, likely somewhere in his early thirties, she thought.
He had been married once and his wife had died in a fever, leaving him behind a small little girl, but he had no male child, no heir.
He must be looking for a wife again, and he would want someone young and fresh, capable of giving him sons.
Of course, every other girl in the entire barlinship seemed to have the same idea. There were all sorts of girls around him, simpering and asking him all manner of questions.
She decided she could not be so obvious. “What part of the Vale did you live in during your wardship?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Ah, yes, you are from the south,” he said. “I was located in Ailbarlogh. I hear you are from Renegahan.”
“Yes, but my family used to vacation in Cirlahir,” she said. “It is a beautiful country, well, when you can get a chance to see past the carriages and crowded streets to get a peek at the water, that is.”
He chuckled. “Yes, nothing like the Silvarenna, in the Vale.”
“Nothing like it at all,” she said. “I am to stay, of course. I have accepted the hand of the steward-to-be, Celedin nae Lathien.”
“Yes, so I hear,” said Elrion. “My congratulations. He is a lucky man.”
And she went off to dance her obligatory dance with Celedin, who complained the entire time, but she had to admit he was a fine dancer. He executed the moves with grace and polish, and she thought of trying to be in a room like this with Dathor.
Dathor didn’t know any dances at all. She could not picture him in a suit with a silk tie, sipping at a goblet of wine punch or lemonade. She could not picture him coiffed or tamed. It would not suit him.
If she were with him, she would have to give this up.
After the dance with Celedin, she waited for Elrion to seek her out, and when he did not, she debated whether she could speak to him again, whether she should make herself more available, knowing it was entirely the wrong thing to do.
If she had not enticed him already, she would have to try again, but she could not make herself seem desperate or everything would be ruined.
But then, he did find her, and he asked for a dance, and she agreed, smiling.
“I hear there is an orc at Foxglove Peak,” he said as they circled each other, palm to palm, and then switched directions.
“He is the steward’s nephew,” she said. “Half orc, truly.”
“How fascinating,” said Elrion. “I have three orcs in my employ, you see, all of them orphans that I have taken in over the years. It has become a bit more troubling in these past years, with the High King so rabid to cast them all out.”
That was right at the beginning, of course. Findas had been on the throne for only a few years. He was still testing his power to send the orcs back to Arzakh.
“Yes, I think it would be.”
“The guards will often take the parents and force them into the pass, but the children will be hidden away, and they are left behind. It’s a nasty business, really. I do not hold with it.”
“No, neither do I,” she said. “I cannot see why we must treat orcs as if they are lesser than us.”
“Indeed not. They are simply another sort of people,” he said. “They are different, but not inferior.”
“I quite agree,” she said, feeling somewhat enraptured. This was going better than she might have ever expected.
“I should like to meet your orc,” he said.
“Do you think he would be willing to speak to me? And perhaps he would like to visit with mine. They were all so young when they were abandoned that they know so little of their own traditions and ways. They try to piece things together, but they have only patchy memories. Perhaps he could fill things in.”
“Oh, he’s never lived with the orcs. His mother was an elf and she was impregnated by an orc, that is all.”
“Ah, what a tragic thing,” said Elrion with a sigh.
“I think that sort of nasty business is due to the way we treat them, though. They are violent because we greet them with violence, yes?” He considered.
“Of course, I suppose there’s quite enough of interspecies violence, elf men being cruel to their own women.
One needs not be treated poorly to do cruel things. It seems to simply be in us somewhere.”
She eyed him, nodding. “That’s quite something to think of, sir.”
“Forgive me. You are a soft and sweet young woman from the Vale. In the Vale, I was taught that we can quite rise above our humble origins, shed our connection to the land like a snake sheds its skin. But I was raised here, and I know that we are not simply rational creatures. We are expressions of the gods, of the tumult of the natural world itself. Nature is brutal at times. Beautiful at times. Sweet and gentle at times.”
“True,” she agreed. “It is all these things, and to deny that it can be its opposite is only to diminish the sheer power of it.”
“You think so?”
“One cannot live here and hear the wind tear at the walls of Foxglove Peak, watch the sun struggle into the sky after a storm, and not know that there is something.” She was saying it again. Not gods, perhaps, but some force beyond her, outside of her, bigger than her.
“Yes,” he said. “It is what they are all missing in the Vale.”
“Yes,” she said.
“But we, here, in the Silvarenna, we have more deficits than they. They have far more than we do. We are poorer for the lack, I think.”
“If only we could all see that,” she said. “So much of the time is spend sneering at the other side.”
“Quite,” he said, looking at her with an astonished expression on his face. “You cannot know the times I have said much the same thing. We have a perspective as wards. One would think it would help the country heal and connect, but more often than not, no one hears us.”
“It can be trying,” she said.
“We must talk soon,” he said. “I shall come to visit. Meet your orc, make friends with your husband-to-be, all of that. I should like to have someone to speak to, someone who understands.”
She beamed at him.
She could not have asked it to go any better.
She had chosen exactly the right man, she knew. It would not be easy, and it would take time, but she thought she could make this man fall ruinously in love with her.
Everything she needed to make it so was there.
WITH THE STEWARD gone at the dance that night, it was easier than ever to sneak around. Dathor climbed over the sleeping form of Nardion and made his way up the stairs. He stood in the shadows of her room and waited for her.
When she came through the door, giggling with her maid, he stayed where he was, hidden until her gaze alighted on him.