“Wait,” he breathed. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? “You want me to murder your husband?”
“No,” she said. “I have just said he will be old and will die because of that. I may be able to do it myself, you know.”
He turned away from her, shaking his head. “You’re a fiend, then, are you not?”
“If I am a fiend, then so are you,” she said. “Do you have some other idea?”
He turned back around. “If we’re going to kill someone, why not Celedin?”
“Because in that scenario, I have to have Celedin’s heir first, and that means I have to… with Celedin, and—”
“But in this scenario, you have to be with some other elf lord, so what is the difference?”
“The difference is that the other elf lord I will be able to influence and mold and convince to do my bidding, and you are going to help me figure out how to make sure I can do that.”
“Because you can also influence and mold me?” he said, his nostrils flaring. “I’ll share with you how it is you’re moving me about like a puppet, is that it? So, then you cango and control some other poor sod of a man?”
“No, with us it is real. I want him to believe it’s real, and you can help me understand what makes men feel that way.”
“No,” he said. “No, I won’t be part of this.”
“No?” she said.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
“Because you’re jealous?” she said. “Now you’re jealous and being pigheaded and not helping me, when all these months when my ankle was not healed, you simply submitted to it all and accepted that I belonged to Celedin? Now?”
“It’s different,” he said. It was different, but he wasn’t sure why he had given up so easily, and he did not wish to give up anymore.
“I think you want me to be with Celedin. I think you are insecure, and you know that I will never love him, but you worry I might actually fall in love with someone else.”
He shook his head. That was not it.
“I think you know that you are horrible, and that no self-respecting woman would fall for you, anyway,” she said.
Why was he in love with this woman? He gazed at her and he could not fathom it anymore. When had it started? What had triggered it? It was because she had been kind to him when they were children. He knew it was because of that. But she had always taken him for granted, considered herself above him, and she was always and forever using him, and… “The farm across the channel,” he said. “What if we try to run away together again and get our own land?”
“We don’t know if we can do that.”
“If I can find out we can, will you drop this scheme?”
“What about cooking?”
“If I can solve that problem, too, will you come with me? Will you run away with me and start a life with me, the two of us as equals, not me as your perpetual servant?”
“What about children?” she said.
He buried his face in his hands.
“What if I want to have your children?” she whispered.
He dragged his hands down his face. “We can’t do that if you are married to an elf lord.”
“Do you want to?” she said. “Do you want to get me with child and see me round and heavy with your babe? Do you?”
Shadows of the forest save him, he did.
He went to her and roughly pulled her into his arms.
