Ella’s answer was met with a stilted, shivering silence — and then with a heavy, sagging relief of that big body behind her, almost powerful enough to be her own.
There was a moment’s heavy breathing, whether his or hers, she wasn’t certain — and then a quiet, almost unbearably soft kiss to Ella’s exposed neck, to where his teeth had scraped against it. “Good lass,” his voice whispered, wavering in the silence. “Brave lass.”
But then he backed abruptly away, his strong warmth vanishing from her all at once. And for an inexplicable, twisting instant, Ella blinked at its loss, almost wanting to follow it — but then she bit her lip, and shook her head, hard. Natt waskidnappingher. And he’d just threatened — very viscerally — tokillher if she refused.
So she didn’t move, didn’t speak, and for a moment, neither did Natt — but then his big body seemed to twitch, and he strode across the room, toward the table beside her bed. And as Ella blinked, he reached for the half-burned candlestick that had been sitting there, and with a sparking flick of his black claws, suddenly it was burning, fluttering with a steady flame.
And at the sight of that, the shock of recognition seemed to flare all at once in Ella’s scrambled thoughts. The memories of him doing that in the woods, lighting fire to nearly anything with just a snap of his claws — including, once, accidentally, to his own hair. And Ella had laughed until her sides had ached, until the devious bastard had grasped for her own long braid, and held it up gently, almost reverently, in those beautiful black claws.
It had been a threat, enough to make Ella’s laughter fade into stillness — but all the same, it hadn’t been a true threat at all, because she’d known he would never hurt her. And of course he hadn’t, and instead he’d brought the end of her braid to his face, and inhaled it, and given her a slow, rueful smile.
Ella belatedly squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to block the memory away — but somehow, there was enough truth in it, enough strength in it, to propel her shaky legs toward the dressing-chamber. Toward the wardrobe, where she began carding through her many beautiful, frivolous frocks, searching for something warm. For travel.
She could almost feel Natt’s astonished stillness, watching her across the room — but then, to her surprise, he was there,here, standing close in the dressing-chamber beside her. Starting from the other side, trailing his claw slow and careful along the rows of silk and gauze and lace.
“Are these all you have, lass?” he asked, quiet, tentative, almost an offering in the candlelight. “Where are the kinds of frocks you once wore?”
He meant back when they’d run in the forest — had he been thinking of that too? — and Ella found herself shrugging, her face gone oddly hot as she thought of those old, sensible garments of sturdy cotton and wool. “They’re gone. I don’t need those kinds of clothes anymore.”
There was an instant’s silence, a likely fatal clench of Natt’s clawed hand against a chemise of delicate lace. “Why do you not?” he demanded. “What keeps you warm when you are out of this house?”
Ella gave another uncomfortable shrug, a grimace at the rows of dresses before her. “I don’t go out anymore,” she said. “Not really. I mean, the servants do all the gardening and shopping, I travel by heated carriage, and the sun and wind are really quite terrible for one’s hair and skin, especially when one wishes to wed alord, like Papa wanted, so —“
Far too late she clamped her mouth shut — why in the gods’ names was she saying such things, to anorc, who was currently in the act ofkidnappingher — but it was too late, because the orc’s brows had already snapped together with clear confusion. “It grieved me to hear of your father, lass, and I am sorry you have had to bear this pain. But” — his voice hardened — “did you not oft roam and ride and play together with your father also? Why should he wish you to lose this joy, after his death?”
The memories flared across Ella’s thoughts, too bright and vivid, and still painfully bittersweet. You deserve this, my girl, he would say, with such warmth and pride on his weathered face. I know it’s hard, but your mother’s got the right of it, you’ll see. Best to do what she says, so you’ll fit right in. Just imagine, my own daughter, a real fine lady.
Ella fixed her blinking eyes to the row of lovely fabrics and lace, and drew in air. “He wanted this future for me, more than all else,” she said, her voice only slightly hitching. “He wanted me to make him proud. Tobelong.”
But Natt only growled, a burr of deep disapproval in his throat. “So tobelong, you must no longer speak?” he snapped. “Or walk? Or run? Or climb? You must no longer meet with your ownforest? What folly is this, woman?”
And before Ella could think, or react, Natt had grasped for her arm, shoved up the sleeve of her sleeping-shift, and then turned her arm over, once, twice, almost as if truly seeing it, for the first time. And then he placed it carefully back down by her side, his lip curling with unmistakable distaste. “You have been made weak, to please these foolish men,” he said flatly. “This should not be, lass.”
Ella couldn’t seem to find a response for that — it was absurd, truly, that Natt was standing here passing judgement when he was the one who’d just threatened tokillher — but then he yanked something out from behind all her clothes, something her distant great-aunt Maura had sent her as a gift. A hideous, baggy, tweedy suit-dress, entirely practical, and so deeply unfashionable as to be actually offensive to Ella’s eyes.
“Absolutely not,” Ella snapped. “I willnotwear that thing in public, Irefuse—“
But then, without warning, Natt’s hand reached out, and grasped for a chunk of her hair. And as Ella’s heart seemed to lurch to her throat, his other hand snapped its claws, making them spark in the dim light.
So hehadbeen thinking of that, too. And itwasa threat, but still not quite, trapping Ella whole in this tangled, twisted instant. And if he brought her hair to his face, if he smiled at her like he had back then, even the very thought made her almost want to weep —
But he only dropped her hair again, and thrust out the ugly dress toward her. And curse her, but Ella mutely took it, and pulled it on over her sleeping-shift while he watched. And when he made a turn-around motion with his claw, she even obeyed, twitching at the surreal, ridiculous feeling of an orc, fastening up herdress, and when had Natt learned such things, had he been doing this with other women, all these years?
Once he’d finally finished, and Ella had stiffly turned back around, it was to the discovery that he was now holding out a pair of short, ratty woollen stockings, and — Ella groaned — a pair of ancient, hideous leather riding-boots. But he only thrust them toward her, the stubbornness all too clear in his black eyes, so Ella gave an exasperated sigh, and obediently took them, and knelt to tug them on.
When she rose again, Natt had stepped back to frown at her, his eyes sweeping up and down — and then he stalked away, and went to snatch up the heavy sheepskin from the foot of her bed. And then he came back, swinging it over her shoulders before reaching behind him to yank out a thick silken sash from one of her frocks. And with a hard puncture of his claw, he’d threaded the sash through the sheepskin, and then tied it close around her throat, almost as if it were a cloak.
“Good,” he said, with a curt nod. “Now, you shall write this letter.”
Ella couldn’t help a roll of her eyes at him, but he only stared straight back, and jerked his head toward her writing-desk. So she sighed again, and went to sit at the desk, and pulled out a quill and ink, and a fresh sheet of paper.
But here, again, the reality of this, of what she was doing right now, seemed to rise bright and chaotic in her thoughts — and there was the urge, sudden and compulsive, to simply write the truth. She couldn’t remember if Natt had been able to read, back then — she herself had never been much of a scholar, so she’d never brought books around — and likelier than not he couldn’t read, and she could simply say, I’ve been stolen away by an orc, I shall leave some kind of trail, please come rescue me at once —
“Now, woman,” interrupted Natt’s hard voice. “And should you seek to leave hints in this letter, I shall see this, and make you write it all again. You shall write it just as if you would, if it were truth. In your own hand, and your own voice.”
Damn the bastard, but there was no other choice, so while Natt watched over her shoulder, Ella carefully wrote the letter. Telling her mother about Alfred’s last-minute offer, his insistence, his unwillingness to be parted from her for another whole month. Even — Ella winced, but wrote it anyway — how Alfred had insisted on her bringing very few clothes and goods, so he could have the pleasure of providing new clothes and trinkets for her, at her new home.
“This is good,” Natt said firmly, tapping his claw at that particular line, once the ink had dried. “If this man were in truth a good man, who felt as he should about a prize such as you, this is just what he should do.”
