She could not say she did not like hearing such things from this man. He was so entirely different than Dathor. He was so controlled and so proper and when he said he admired her, when he complimented her, it was different.
Obviously, Dathor wanted her. He was an orc who lived like a servant and she was a blond fair elf.
Somehow, it meant more to think she had attracted Elrion. Somehow, it gratified her in a way that pleased her, that fed her vanity in a way that her connection to Dathor didn’t.
She must always feel vaguely ashamed of the way she wanted Dathor, after all. He was beneath her. He was an orc. It was this base and almost bestial attraction between them.
This, with Elrion, it was so clean and good and noble. It was elevated in a certain way.
Maybe there was no… passion, but passion wasn’t everything.
She vowed then and there that she would preserve this, not only because it would better her situation and Dathor’s, but because some part of her soul was soothed by this joining. Elrion bettered her, and she wanted to be bettered.
Of course, she didn’t preserve it at all.
She ruined it.
Because there was no way to better her, not truly. Becausedeep in her soul, even if it was not obvious, she was as much a raging beast as Dathor was.
23
NOW, WITH RACLAHADsafely away, Aerhril felt as if she could breathe better for the first time in a long time. She went to Celedin and told him the news, that Elrion knew, that he was going to get the word to elves in the Vale, that they were saved.
Celedin smiled for the first time since he’d been shoved in this room. He leaned against the wall, his legs spread out on the bed—she wondered if it was driving him mad not being able to stretch out his legs when he slept but now they were stretched out because he was sitting up—and he mused over how long a letter would take to get sent, when they might know something. “Of course, they will not come directly to free the castles the orcs have taken,” he said. “At first, they must meet the forces directly. That will take time. It could be six weeks, two months, even longer, before they get to us.”
“Yes, it will take time,” she said.
She left Celedin and went to tell Hafindel the news, that Hafindel would not need to leave the keep after all, that Elrion had the news, that he would tell everyone.
But she could not find Hafindel anywhere, and she was frightened to ask anyone if they had seen her, because she was meant to be the person who kept Hafindel’s absence a secret.
She looked all over, hoping against hope to find her maid and friend, but she found her nowhere, and she had toconclude that Hafindel had gone, that she had gone to spread the word on her own, and that Aerhril had not been in time to stop her from a needless mission, one too dangerous to have undertaken.
At dinner, she felt very alone, her sister gone, Hafindel gone, only surrounded by the cowering elf women.
She thought of what would happen with the forces from Valaedor, when they got here, in six weeks or two months, or whenever it was, as Celedin had predicted. The elves would kill the orcs, all of the orcs, the brigade holding this keep, and they would…
She swallowed. Hard.
They would kill Dathor.
She began to wonder what she wasdoing.
She did not want Dathor dead. She had never wanted that. She could not want that. Even if only because of the way he had comforted her, all those years ago, in the night when she had nightmares, or the way he had protected her from Celedin. Even just that, even leaving aside the way he had wanted her and she had wanted him, and the way that it felt when his hands were on her bare skin, or his mouth was on her jaw, or his cock was…
Even leaving that aside, she did not want himdead.
And he was back now. Her Dathor was back.
She had long thought he would come back, and then despaired of it, and then given up all hope entirely, and then resigned herself to this life with Celedin, a stewardess, a proper elf wife.
But this was never the life she had wanted. She had always wanted a life with Dathor.
Perhaps she should not still want a life with him. He had betrayed her and gotten Nathre with child, and he had raped her in front of an audience, and these were not the only sins he had committed, not even close to the only sins he had committed.
But she had always wanted there to be some way for them to be together.
She had known this, in her heart of hearts, for some time.
