He came directly to her and said they must walk together. She had never seen him look so serious.
“What’s wrong?” she said to him. “Something’s happened.”
“I’ve done something,” he said. “Something awful. You’re going to hate me. But in the end, I suppose, it’s not really different than what you are going to do to me on your wedding night, which is only days away, so…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have gotten Nathre with child,” he said. “I think I should marry her. I know you won’t like it, but I can’t leave her that way. She could be disgraced, and Elrion might throw her out—I don’t think so, but he might blame her, and it’s not her fault. I obviously talked her into it.”
Aerhril was still walking, but she was not breathing. She could not breathe. She just kept walking, staring straight ahead.
“Say something.”
She didn’t.
He took her by the arm and stopped her movement.
She turned and looked at him. “How long?” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“How long have you been fucking her?”
“It’s not like that. It was just once.”
“Was it the night you came and said we had to relinquish each other?” she demanded.
He nodded, looking miserable.
She wanted to cry, but then she didn’t want him to see her crying. Instead, she hit him. She punched him directly in the middle of his chest.
He absorbed it, standing there, head bowed.
She hit him again. And again. She punched and punched and punched—
He stopped her hands. “You don’t get to do that to me.”
“You deserve it.”
“I don’t care. They hit me, but not you. Please.”
Now, she was ashamed of herself. She let her hands fall at her sides.
They were quiet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I regret it.”
“That is all well and good, but it changes nothing.”
“You must be sympathetic to her position. She is all on her own, and she is frightened, and she worries that you will blame her, but I have to explain to you—”
“Oh, stop it,” she said. “I’m not going to feel sorry for that whore of an orc woman who clearly threw herself at you.”
“It really wasn’t that way. It was my fault. You must blame me, and not her, and you certainly cannot blame the babe. Please, Aerhril, for my sake, you will try to feel soft towards my child?”
She did not want Dathor to have children with another woman! “You’re going to marry her?” She felt sick to her stomach, really and literally ill, and she actually gagged.
“Don’t,” he said.
