38
BUT THE ALLIANCE between them held for some time.
Weeks stretched out with the archers on the turrets, with Dathor and Celedin both living in the keep, neither sleeping in the steward’s chambers, but Celedin in his old quarters and Dathor sharing her bed.
Weeks in which Dathor faithfully spent his seed in her every night, and weeks in which she thought for certain she was not going to bleed…
But then she did.
The orcs came to attack, but they were pushed back, and each time they were, they took longer to regroup and try again, and then eventually, they did not come back at all, and Dathor went out after them and confirmed they were all marching together south, likely going to join up with some other portion of the orc army.
These were weeks that seemed to feel like things had settled into something comfortable, almost familiar.
They had few servants left, and there were archers to see to, and Aerhril had learned to make grain mush, and so she was in the kitchen with what remained of the staff. All of the women who’d been held by the orcs had left, scattering themselves immediately, going to their homes.
Dathor was in the stables, in the barns, heaving bales of hay without his shirt on, and she found herself watching him, watching the sweat drip off his chin, gazing at his long black hair pulled into a tight braid that whipped around while he worked, and it was similar to the way it had been when they were both younger, except that now, she could touch him.
Now, she did touch him. Now, she slept pressed into his warm, firm body every night.
Celedin was there, too, pointedly not doing any manual labor, but also rather used to them both, to the point where he did not make faces when Dathor pulled her into his lap, where she caught him smiling once when he watched Dathor kissing the crown of her head, where he punctuated everything with a sarcastic rasp but did nothing else to change things.
She was not sure when the alliance between Dathor and Celedin would end.
She was not sure she wanted it to.
But they could not simply ignore the wide world around them, even if their home seemed like a place of safety and comfort for all three of them.
News of High King Findas’s demise reached them as it reached every part of the kingdom. The king had been killed by one of his own private guards, so it had been Iahir after all, Aerhril supposed.
But no one knew what had become of the guard. Iahir was missing.
Hafindel returned with news she had seen the orc army cut their way through Renegahan, that in the wake of Findas’s demise, everything had fallen to pieces and there had been no organized resistance.
The orcs had invaded the elves’s chapels and the palaces and the hall where parliament met. They had burned everything.
When Aerhril heard it, she could not help but sob at the news. She was not pleased, even as she knew she’d had her hand in it. It was Dathor’s plan, it was what they had predicted.
She and Dathor quarreled that night. He shouted that she would always and forever be nothing more than an elf, that her longheld prejudices would never be eradicated.
She declared that he was the embodiment of such prejudices, that he was everything that she’d ever been taught to fear that orcs were. That he was brutal and savage and that he had no care for any kind of order, that he only wished to destroy. That the army of his people was doing that exact thing.
He slammed her against a wall and sneered into her face that she liked it, that it made her wet to take his savage seed, to be split open by his brutally-sized cock, that she didn’t mind it at all as long as he was within her power, her servant, her toy.
She sobbed and screamed that he must let her go, that if he hurt her, that if he put his hands on her, he was no better than Celedin or the steward.
He took her by the shoulders and he squeezed her so tight that she shrieked.
And then they were both crying, both of them.
He let go of her and locked himself up in a room and his voice broke on the other side of the door as he gasped out that she did not love him, that she would never see him as worthy of her, that he was some fetish of hers, some exciting sexual adventure, but not truly a husband, not really an equal.
And she sank to the floor and rested her forehead against the door and her tears fell like rain, and she denied it all, even though…
what? Was she to say she did not like how huge and strong he was?
That she did not like the size of his orc member?
That she was not attracted to the orc elements of him?
He liked her elfin features, her small body, her smooth, pale skin. He liked the way they were together, the sheer oppositeness of them, and she knew he did.
But she did not say that.
They cried on either side of the door, until he came out and wrapped her up in his arms, and they kissed and kissed.
She tangled her hands up in his hair and she held onto him for dear life and she whispered to him that he was the other half of her, that she had been but half a person when he was gone from her, that she did not care what it was between them, that she refused to give him up, that they belonged together.
They made love, and he urged her the way he always did, asking her to take his seed, his orc seed, and she hesitated, her throat too tight, and did not say the word “orc,” and…
But the next night it was much the same, and she said the word that time, and he groaned into her ear that she was sweet and small and soft and that he was sullying her pretty elf quim with his thick orc cock.
They would repeat it, again and again, the same argument, the same fears, and then return to the same behavior under the sheets, though it was never quite as explosive as that first time they broached the subject together.
When they raged, she often thought it was not the two of them raging, but the world at large raging at each other, the conflict between their peoples working its way through their bodies, something bigger than them having its way with them both.
At any rate, the orcs did not stay in the capital.
They were not sure if Gathren was used as a hostage to control the orc High Chieftain as she had offered herself up to do, because no one had heard news of Gathren, just as Iahir’s whereabouts were still unknown.
What was known was that the orcs sat down to a negotiation with a contingent of elves, one of which was Marthlis, and that the new government was negotiated, ruled by a council of Cirdan elves and Valaedor elves in addition to orcs as well.
There was no one ruler, supposedly, just a group of representatives, like a parliament.
These had been appointed, but they were supposed to be elected in the future.
Elrion was pleased.
She and Celedin had gone to visit Elrion and to collect her sister, but when they arrived, she discovered that Elrion had formed some sort of attachment to her sister and wished to marry her.
The age difference between Elrion and Raclahad was even worse than the age difference had been between herself and this man, not to mention that Raclahad was even younger than Aerhril had been when she had agreed to the marriage.
There was also the fact that Evriane, his daughter, was older than her sister.
It was disgusting, and Aerhril told him she thought so.
But when she offered Raclahad the option of coming back to Foxglove Peak and tried to explain that she and Dathor were in love, Raclahad was having none of it. She confided that there was a chance that she was carrying Elrion’s child.
Elrion was barely even sorry about it. “The world went mad,” he said. “My orcs betrayed me. I thought we were all going to die. Nothing mattered anymore.”
“Not an excuse to violate my very young sister,” she snapped in his face.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose there was some veneer over my eyes, some way that I used to view myself. I used to think I was a good man, but I’ve come to realize all of it was pretense. Anyway, I love her.”
“You don’t love her like an equal,” she said. “You love her like a child, a child you also are apparently fucking.”
“I love her like a woman,” he said, glaring at her.
“Right, and women aren’t equal to you, but little doll-things you play with and look at and think are pretty and then stick your cock into occasionally. I suppose I should have already known this about you!”
“Don’t come back if this is how you plan to speak to me,” he said. “And anyway, that orc of yours certainly thinks of you as something he uses, and you can’t tell me otherwise.”
Dathor did not.
Or…
Well, maybe sometimes he did, but he didn’t always think that, and he mostly thought that when they were naked together, which was different in some way, because their shared arousal was its own sort of equalizing element, and besides, she sometimes thought of him as beneath her, and the convolutions of whatever it was with her and Dathor, they evened out.
She did not hear from her mother again.
She wrote letters to the last place her mother had sent her letters from, but there was no response. It had been that way before the revolution, anyway.
And the new government, with the council and no leader, it did not last the winter.
It was overthrown and taken over by some silvan general, who established himself not as the king but as the Prime Custodian of the realm. That only lasted four months before he was calling himself an emperor and going across the seas to fight the dragons and the dwarves.
Lothnehil as a country was left in shambles, and it would take decades to sort itself out.
But when it did, there would never be the same sort of demarcations there had been, and the orcs would never be treated the way they were, and the land would be dotted with elf women who had taken orcs as husbands.