He squeezed, tighter…
And then let go of her.
“Dathor, please,” she said through her tears. “Please, I love you.”
“I hate you,” he said and turned away and stalked out of the room.
She ran to the door after him, calling his name. She would have gone after him, pursued him down the steps of the keep, but Celedin was there, pushing her back inside her room.
She gasped up at him and he slapped her across the face, a quick crack that lit up her jaw with pain and she staggered backwards.
Celedin slammed the door shut, took her by the arm, andpushed her back into the door. “Sorry about the slap. I simply wanted to calm you down.”
She gaped at him, not calm at all, but now too frightened to make noise.
“So,” said Celedin, “what have you let him do to you?”
She shook her head, truly incapable of speaking.
Celedin tilted his head to one side. “I suppose I’ve noticed the way you look at him. I’ve noticed the way you both look at each other.”
She shook her head again, shook it very quickly back and forth.
“Father has some ideas, and I don’t like them,” said Celedin, backing away from her.
She stayed with her back to the door, afraid to move.
Celedin crossed the room to drag his long, elegant fingers over her bedside table. “Father thinks that we will use your skills to our profit. He says we can rent a house in Notharlien, where no one knows you. You will go to dances and you will seduce the man who is the richest, and you will get him to pay your bride price, and we will be rid of you that way.”
“No.” She managed one syllable.
Celedin looked up. “I tried to explain to him that there was no being rid of you because you are mine.”
She bit down on her bottom lip.
“I have wanted to possess you since the moment I saw you,” said Celedin. “And the idea that you’ve already been sullied by Dathor, well…” He shrugged. “It doesn’t change things, not truly. Perhaps, however, it means I can be freer with you.”
What did that mean?
Celedin crossed the room to her and he touched her face, touched the place where he’d slapped her. “Such delicate skin, reddened here from where I struck you,” he breathed, and he sounded aroused by the thought of that. “How sullied are you, Aerhril?”
“No, I’m not, I’m not. I’m intact. I swear to you, I am a maiden. I have never been breached.”
“So well-versed in the meanings of it all, are you?” He gave her a nasty smile. “Who taught you what it means to be breached?”
She shut her eyes.
“Dathor?”
She cringed from him.
“What else did he teach you?” said Celedin. “What sort of filthy things did that orc make you do to him?”
She said nothing.
Celedin’s breath was hot against her eyebrow. His hands spanned her waist.
She opened her eyes. “No,” she said in a tiny voice.
