“I quite agree,” she said, feeling somewhat enraptured. This was going better than she might have ever expected.
“I should like to meet your orc,” he said. “Do you think he would be willing to speak to me? And perhaps he would like to visit with mine. They were all so young when they were abandoned that they know so little of their own traditions and ways. They try to piece things together, but they have only patchy memories. Perhaps he could fill things in.”
“Oh, he’s never lived with the orcs. His mother was an elf and she was impregnated by an orc, that is all.”
“Ah, what a tragic thing,” said Elrion with a sigh. “I think that sort of nasty business is due to the way we treat them, though. They are violent because we greet them with violence, yes?” He considered. “Of course, I suppose there’s quite enough of interspecies violence, elf men being cruel to their own women. One needs not be treated poorly to do cruel things. It seems to simply be in us somewhere.”
She eyed him, nodding. “That’s quite something to think of, sir.”
“Forgive me. You are a soft and sweet young woman from the Vale. In the Vale, I was taught that we can quite rise above our humble origins, shed our connection to theland like a snake sheds its skin. But I was raised here, and I know that we are not simply rational creatures. We are expressions of the gods, of the tumult of the natural world itself. Nature is brutal at times. Beautiful at times. Sweet and gentle at times.”
“True,” she agreed. “It is all these things, and to deny that it can be its opposite is only to diminish the sheer power of it.”
“You think so?”
“One cannot live here and hear the wind tear at the walls of Foxglove Peak, watch the sun struggle into the sky after a storm, and not know that there is something.” She was saying it again. Not gods, perhaps, but some force beyond her, outside of her, bigger than her.
“Yes,” he said. “It is what they are all missing in the Vale.”
“Yes,” she said.
“But we, here, in the Silvarenna, we have more deficits than they. They have far more than we do. We are poorer for the lack, I think.”
“If only we could all see that,” she said. “So much of the time is spend sneering at the other side.”
“Quite,” he said, looking at her with an astonished expression on his face. “You cannot know the times I have said much the same thing. We have a perspective as wards. One would think it would help the country heal and connect, but more often than not, no one hears us.”
“It can be trying,” she said.
“We must talk soon,” he said. “I shall come to visit. Meet your orc, make friends with your husband-to-be, all of that. I should like to have someone to speak to, someone who understands.”
She beamed at him.
She could not have asked it to go any better.
She had chosen exactly the right man, she knew. It would not be easy, and it would take time, but she thought she could make this man fall ruinously in love with her.
Everything she needed to make it so was there.
WITH THE STEWARDgone at the dance that night, it was easier than ever to sneak around. Dathor climbed over the sleeping form of Nardion and made his way up the stairs. He stood in the shadows of her room and waited for her.
When she came through the door, giggling with her maid, he stayed where he was, hidden until her gaze alighted on him.
She went still. Looking right at him, she dismissed the maid, saying she would be able to get out of the dress herself.
“Oh, no, you will need my help, I am sure of it—”
“I will need no assistance,” Aerhril cut the woman off. “Leave me, if you please.”
The maid left, curtsying, looking down, never seeing him.
When the door was shut, Aerhril closed the distance between them. “We did not have plans to see each other tonight.”
“We did not,” he agreed. “Look at you, all fancy and put together. Look at your hair.” He dragged his gaze down and then up and then down again. She did look stunningly beautiful like this, too beautiful for him, something that was entirely out of his grasp.
“Thank you,” she said, turning around. “Will you help me with my buttons?”
He sucked in a breath through his nose and began to work at them. “Why didn’t you tell me about the dance?”
