“He does?” Elrion was disgusted. “What sort of people are they?” He shook his head. “As if you could eat much at all. As if seeing you in a pretty gown could be anything other than pleasure. I want you out of therenow.”
“I want out of there, too,” she said.
“I will not pretend that you are anything other than a prize, my lady,” he said. “If they cannot see it, they are blind and idiotic.”
This warmed her, she had to say.
Eventually, she was sent back to Foxglove Peak. She did not know when Elrion would come to call upon Celedin to formally ask for her hand and to make his offer to him. She could only wait.
Flaihir was happy to see her back, and she confessed that everything had gone better than they could have predicted.
Flaihir was worried about his knowing that she was penniless, however. “That makes you the desperate one, not him,” she said.
“Yes, I suppose I know that,” she agreed. “I do not think I will be able to control him in the way that I had hoped. But perhaps it will be all right, because he is so grounded and older and wealthy and good and so cultured and intelligent and—”
“Oh, dear, you have fallen in love with him,” said Flaihir, laughing.
“How does one not fall in love with a man like that, especially when he is coming to rescue you from this place?”
Flaihir smiled at her. “My work here is quite done. I have served you well, I think, better than many of the girls I am hired to make ready for marriage and ladyship. From nowon, I shall ask myself if I can top this, if I can see a way to make a girl’s life as better as I have made yours.”
And Aerhril laughed and felt pleased and happy.
Of course, Dathor was neither pleased nor happy.
He did not come to see her when she came back from the Chapel. He was not there to greet her, and he did not sneak into her bedchamber, and he ignored her when she tried to get his attention, because she had written a note they should meet at the cavern that night.
Eventually, she had to sneak out to the stables, but when she got there, Nardion was not sleeping in front of the door and she walked right in.
“He’s sick,” said Dathor. “Too sick to come in to work, a very bad fever, I hear. If he didn’t drink so much, he probably would not be bearing the brunt of it so badly, but his body is weak. He will be gone for another week at least, I think.”
“And you could have come to me,” she said. She had been home for nearly a week at this point. “But you did not.”
“Why, what is the point?” He folded his arms over his chest. “I have reports that you are marrying him, that you hang on his every word with a dreamy little expression on your face, that you look at him in a way that indicates you hunger for him.”
“What?” she said. “Who is saying this?”
“Oh, all of them,” he said. “Nathre, Igbar, Taktre. They are all watching the two of you together. He has told them that my presence will be requested, that he will request to buy my price along with yours, when he comes to purchase us like slaves.”
She drew back. “I can see why you would think it that way—”
“You’ll be a slave, too. He’ll make use of your body and he’ll force you to have his children, and I can tell you don’t wish this one dead anymore. So, why am I coming along, hmm? Just so that you can rub my nose in it?”
She squared her shoulders. “I’m not going to be a slave,and neither are you. You will be paid wages, just as the orcs are there, and they are happy, are they not? You will be amongst your own kind. Is it not better than it is here?”
“But you will belong to him?” He raised his eyebrows. “Is that right?”
“It is not as if I can marry you, Dathor,” she said quietly. “And I don’t want him dead, no, but it doesn’t mean things must entirely end between us either. You and I can be—”
“This is more of your scheming. You bring me along, your loyal manservant, ready to go down on my knees and lick your cunt whenever you wish—”
“I am the one on my knees much more often than you,” she said, glaring at him.
“Well, not anymore,” he said. “Because I’m not taking his leftovers. So, you choose that, you have that.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” she said. “You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. You will be happier there. Perhaps it isn’t going to be perfect, but nothingisperfect, Dathor. We cannot have anything else.”
“I am not coming along,” he said.
