“There is nothing between us now,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.
“Well, that is not true,” he said. “There will always be something between us.”
She turned back to the window. So many of them, a whole army of them.
“We don’t have time, Aerhril,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”
She shook her head. “They won’t all stay. They have taken Foxglove Peak, but the rest of the army will go on and do this somewhere else, like at Falls Keep. That is what the woman with the small babe said.”
“Really, that woman should not have gotten away.”
She turned to look at him in horror. “What do you mean by that?”
“Aerhril, if you do not come with me willingly, I will take you out of this room by force. I do not have to let you change out of your torn dress or give you several moments locked away alone in your bedchamber. I do not have to do any of those things, and if you do not wish them, then I will not do them.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was going to happen one way or the other. I could not prevent it.”
She stalked across the room to the door. “You used to protect me.”
“I protected you now,” he said.
She was close to him now, and she looked up into his face. “Somewhere along the line, though, you wanted me for your pleasure more than you wanted me safe.”
“That’s not—I didn’tenjoythat.”
She opened the door and went walking down the hallway.
He caught her and seized her arm. “This way. No one will see us going down the back steps.”
AERHRIL FOUND ITjarring to go back into her bedchamber after all of this. She had left things lying out, her combs from tidying her hair, the pot she’d used to blacken her eyelashes and make them visible because her hair was so fair, and all of it reminded her of this morning, when she thought the worst thing that was going to happen to her that day was that she would be married to Celedin.
Celedin is dead,she thought again.
Dathor was outside the door.
“You know I can’t take this dress off by myself!” she called out to him.
The door banged open. “You want me to undress you?”he sneered at her. “Happy to help.”
“I hate you,” she said again, giving him her back. “Unbutton me.”
His thick orc fingers were deft as they moved quickly down the back of her dress.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are they doing this?”
“That was vague, little fair elf. Why is who doing what?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “Why are the orcs invading?”
“Truly? That’s a question?”
“Well, I know that High King Findas is awful, of course.” She did. She had seen the official tracts printed up by the palace, the terrible little drawings of the orc caricatures, the long essays about how the country of Lothnehil needed to be purified and to go back to the old ways.
The old ways meant just elves, no orcs.
The orcs were to be sent back to their own country, across the Rathog Pass, and Lothnehil was to be purged of them. The language used in the tracts was always that the orcs were a blight or a disease or that they were vermin or insects or things of that nature.
