22
“YOU DID WHAT?” Dathor was in the sitting room at Foxglove Peak and he likely should not have been. “You left her there after she had been kicked in the head by a horse?”
“Well, it didn’t seem wise to move her,” said Flaihir, who looked pale and panicked. “He has sent for a doctor. She will be well cared for, I think, and I certainly could not drape her over a horse and bring her back here.”
“I will go and carry her,” said Dathor. “I can bear her without any trouble, I am sure of it.”
“You most certainly will not,” said the steward. “We are not sending an orc to collect the future stewardess.”
“Well, who else can you send to collect her?” said Dathor.
“We are not going to collect her,” said the steward.
“She likely should not be moved. And with a head injury…” There was a long pause.
“Well, we must hope for the best but prepare for the worst. An injury like this could mean that she never wakes, or that she wakes a simpleton or that she wakes with no memory. It is all very delicate. We will leave her where she is until we can safely move her.”
Dathor was full of fresh panic.
He went to the Chapel without permission that night, and he found out from Igbar that she had not regained consciousness, that she had been lying asleep for hours. He wanted nothing more than to sit himself down at the foot of her bed and wait for her to wake, but, of course, he could not do that.
Igbar talked to him of his herbs. He said that he had been studying with old lady Nilhin in the wood and also, for some time before, with an elderly orc in the Vale, who had imparted to him a number of remedies for all manner of maladies.
He wished to be able to help people with their illnesses, he said, and he wanted to preserve the old ways and also resurrect the folk wisdom of the orcs.
Dathor was quiet, listening, not wanting to tell Igbar that this was all folly because what Aerhril needed was a doctor, one who had studied medicine in school and who knew the science of healing.
Of course, he knew it would be cruel to say this to Igbar, who would never be allowed to study medicine and become a doctor, and that frustrated him, too.
He was obliged to go back to the Peak and wait.
When he returned, he got a tongue-lashing from the steward for going to ask after her, but the steward seemed worried, too. Celedin was also in a temper. He went to the Chapel to visit the following day, but she still had not awakened.
They were all quite relieved when word came that she had regained consciousness the following day. She did have some amnesia, but only a bit. She had no memory of the entire day, of going to Thelandel Chapel, of agreeing to go ride on horseback. Otherwise, she was weak, but not damaged.
Dathor waited for word of how they would bring her back.
But a letter came from Elrion saying that he thought she should stay in bed and rest and not be moved for some time, perhaps a week, and the steward seemed to think this was wise, though Celedin did not and Dathor did not either.
They went together to Thelandel Chapel, and Celedin was sharp with Elrion and rude to his small daughter who was picking flowers and making them into crowns, and they were both sent away.
When Dathor came back, late one evening, after dark, he snuck around the place, looking in windows, and it was Nathre who came out after him.
“I saw you,” she said. “What are you doing here? Is it for word of her?”
“Aye,” he said. “I only wanted to see her. I want to see with my own eyes that she is all right, I suppose.”
Nathre nodded. “Yes, she is very pretty. And an elf. A blond elf. Everyone thinks she is pretty. Everyone is in love with her. But I think she is peevish when she is in pain, and I think she is sharp to the servants if they do not fetch things for her quickly enough.”
That sounded like Aerhril all right. But he was glad to hear it. “If she is sharp and peevish, she is all right,” he murmured. “I am glad to know.”
“She can’t love you back, of course,” said Nathre to him, a challenge.
He ran a hand through his hair. “No, I know. Obviously.” He looked the female orc over, his gaze assessing.
He thought again that she was pleasantly shaped, that he was curious what her body would look like uncovered, that he found her curves intriguing.
He could actually fuck an orc woman, no worries about getting her with some half-breed child.
He wouldn’t have to worry about being so gentle, either, he supposed.
A woman like Nathre would be sturdy enough to accommodate him.
She preened under his gaze, giving him a little smile.
He was embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“For ogling me,” she said. “You’re hardly the first man to do so. All the elf men who see me seem to get stuck looking at my bosom.”
“You’re… nicely put together,” he said.
She snorted.
“Sorry, I suppose I should not have said—”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “You are sort of impossibly handsome yourself. You’re somehow so smooth and so rough at the same time. And your eyes.” She stepped closer.
He swallowed. “I am sorry. I should not have done or said any of—”
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “What do I want with your apologies?”
He let out a breath. He stammered out his goodbyes and left her there.
IT WAS QUITE a rude awakening for Aerhril to be actually very seriously injured in Elrion’s house, because she was frightened and uprooted and all alone, and she did not think she made a good impression at first, sobbing too much, ringing for servants and making impossible requests, asking after Dathor of all people.
But then Celedin came and he was horrible, and everything started to go better after that.
Elrion came into her chamber and sat down at the edge of her bed. “I have just spoken to your husband-to-be.”
“Oh?” she said. Her head hurt constantly, and it was worse than when her ankle had been hurt. There was something about the throbbing in her head that threatened to encroach upon her very sanity. Talking was not the easiest thing to do. The fewer words she used, the better.
“He said he was upset over your illness and that should excuse his behavior,” said Elrion. “But he jeered at Evriane’s flower crowns, and she is but a little girl. It made her burst into tears.”
Aerhril had only met Evriane briefly, at the beginnings and ends of visits.
Her impression of her was that she was a shy and quiet little girl, sweet and pretty.
She thought of Celedin jeering at her and perhaps it made her think of Celedin’s treatment of her when they were both children.
“How dare he?” she fumed. “Why must he be so very abominable all of the time?”
“Is he?” said Elrion. “Is he so very abominable all of the time?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he pressed on.
“Because he also demanded of me that he be allowed to see you, and when I said that I must see to my crying daughter first, he told me you belonged to him, that you were his, and that he had a right to see you any time he wished, and that I had no right to keep you here away from him.”
“Oh, he did?” She hunched up her shoulders. “Yes, it sounds like him.”
“This is the way he behaves regularly, then, you are saying? Not simply because he is worried about you? He is not in a bad temper only because your health is precarious?”
“Oh, he loves to see me suffer,” she said.
Elrion nodded. “I see.”
Then she repented of having said it. “Oh, I don’t know if I should characterize him that way.
Truly, he is not entirely awful every moment of every day.
Sometimes he can be good, like when he…” But then she couldn’t think of any times at all that Celedin had been good, actually.
She supposed that she felt sorry for him sometimes, because the steward was cruel to him, but she didn’t think that actually meant he had done anything good, only that he was pitiable.
“I see,” said Elrion, in a deeper voice, a voice of sympathy and concern.
She sagged into the pillow, looking up at the ceiling.
And then it was simply quiet.
“Why have you agreed to marry him, then?” he asked eventually.
She looked at him and she did not wish to tell him, for when this had been a ruse, and she was only to have hurt her ankle, nothing serious, then she was not supposed to tell him about how she didn’t have any money, because this might make him suspicious.
But she could not conceal it now. She saw no way to do so.
“My father can no longer support me at home,” she said.
“When Celedin offered for me, my parents were overjoyed because they do not have the money to keep me with them. My father’s investments turned sour or something of that nature. ”
“Yes, investments have a way of doing that,” said Elrion, nodding.
“It is not like land, which one can depend upon. That is why I am here, trying to invest in something lasting, though the man who owns this land has no desire to sell it to me, for the same reason. He knows that land is something you can depend upon. He cannot afford to keep it, though, and must rent it out.” He shook his head.
“Sorry. Why am I babbling about this when you are here, telling me your sorrows and troubles? You must think me a terrible man.”
“I do not,” she said. “I think quite the opposite. You are a very good man. A brave man who went to protests and marched with orcs. A man who takes care of orphans. A man who dreams of better democracy and the ends of kings. You are… I am in awe of you, sir.”
He sat up straight at this, smiling at her. “Truly?”
“I would not lie to you.”
“I had thought there was something in the way you were with me, but you are engaged to be married, and you are a bit younger than me, and I had put it down to my own imagination, but I feel confident to tell you now, Aerhril, that I have been an admirer of you since our first dance.”
She smiled. “Well, but now you cannot admire much of me with this bandage on my head.” She had seen herself in a handheld mirror.
She had a black eye and her face looked practically misshapen.
The doctor had tutted at her that her pretty features had not been touched and she should not worry, everything would go back as it had been, but he had also thought her foolish for caring and she had seen that.
“I do, in fact,” he said, smiling. “I have seen how you hold up in the face of pain.”
Not well, she thought. I’ve been a bit of a terror.
“And anyway, I do not think you should be forced to stay there. I do not think you should marry that man. If you are at all amenable, allow me to attempt to convince you to become my wife instead.”
And after all that, it was so easy. All she’d had to do was get kicked in the head by a horse. “You honor me, sir.”
“I would buy your bride price, of course. I would do whatever was necessary.”
“I need Dathor,” she said. “I cannot leave him under that roof.”
“No, of course,” he said, nodding. “I cannot think Nathre would mind that either.” He chuckled.
She felt shot full of a lightning bolt of jealousy. But she did not let it show, or maybe no expression could be read on her ruined and bandaged face, anyway. “I would be quite pleased to be your wife, sir.”
He smiled at her, his face lit up in pleasure.
“I must not say that I am pleased you have been kicked in the head by a horse, my lady, but… well… this is all working out so very well.” He scooted up the bed and took one of her hands in his.
“After my Alichil died, I despaired. I thought I should never love again, that I should never have an heir, that I should simply wane alone for the rest of my days. I had no notion that life could change in such exciting and wondrous ways. I could never have predicted you. You make me feel alive in a way I had thought long gone.”
She could not say she did not like hearing such things from this man. He was so entirely different than Dathor. He was so controlled and so proper and when he said he admired her, when he complimented her, it was different.
Obviously, Dathor wanted her. He was an orc who lived like a servant and she was a blond fair elf.
Somehow, it meant more to think she had attracted Elrion. Somehow, it gratified her in a way that pleased her, that fed her vanity in a way that her connection to Dathor didn’t.
She must always feel vaguely ashamed of the way she wanted Dathor, after all. He was beneath her. He was an orc. It was this base and almost bestial attraction between them.
This, with Elrion, it was so clean and good and noble. It was elevated in a certain way.
Maybe there was no… passion, but passion wasn’t everything.
She vowed then and there that she would preserve this, not only because it would better her situation and Dathor’s, but because some part of her soul was soothed by this joining. Elrion bettered her, and she wanted to be bettered.
Of course, she didn’t preserve it at all.
She ruined it.
Because there was no way to better her, not truly. Because deep in her soul, even if it was not obvious, she was as much a raging beast as Dathor was.