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.
One in ten, Dathor had said. He had said they could use it. But they did not have much to do with the formation of the way the world was to be organized in the wake of the revolution, in fact. They stayed to themselves and kept to the Peak. But it came to pass anyway. There was a whole new generation of half orc, half elf children, many of them the sons and daughters of noble elf women and their orc husbands. The country could not go back to the way it had been.
Some things were inevitable.
Eventually, the alliance between Dathor and Celedin needed some sort of resolution. Dathor and Celedin began to debate it over breakfast in the morning, gesturing with spoonfuls of honeyed grain mush.
They both agreed that they wished to be the steward of Foxglove Peak.
They both agreed that they would fight the other over it.
They both agreed that the could not bear to see the other presiding over the place.
Aerhril was probably pregnant, but she had not said anything yet. She had not bled in six weeks, and she was in full support of Dathor being the steward, of being at his side,of passing this place on to their children. And at this point, she had to note that Celedin was still not doing any manual labor of any kind.
She wasn’t doing much more than making tea and grain mush (her tea-making skills had improved).
Hafindel was helping, but Hafindel could hardly be considered a servant at this point anymore. She did not take orders and came and went as she pleased.
If Aerhril had noticed the way that Hafindel sometimes looked at Celedin or the fact that the woman was sometimes seen coming or going from Celedin’s chambers, well, she had not mentioned it. Aerhril thought that Celedin would be ruthless with Hafindel, anyway, for she wasn’t of the right class, and there was no way he would lower himself to marry a former maid. She did not see it all ending very well.
“We’ll fight,” said Dathor.
“Not fair,” said Celedin. “I’m no match for you in a fight. Let’s duel. With pistols.”
