“I will convince him?” she said. “With you? I don’t think the sight of us together is going to make him particularly pleased.”
“Oh, does he know? About us?”
“Why do you think he called off the engagement?”
“Well, because he knew that you sent his beloved orc foundling across the pass,” he said. “I did not realize he had any notion of you and me.”
“I had to explain it to him. He would not stop harping on why. He said that if he understood why, perhaps he could forgive me or ‘correct’ me, make me over into his proper wife.”
He smirked. “I would have liked to see his face.”
She sat up in the bed. “It was the worst day of my life.”
“Oh, was it?”
“Well, one of them, anyway. I seem to have had a number of very bad days in my life, actually.”
He held her gaze. “You don’t think it will work, then? You don’t think you can convince him? You used to be quite able to sway him.”
“Yes, because he thought he could rescue me. But once he knew I was so thoroughly tainted, I was past the point of rescue.”
“What did you tell him I did to you?” Dathor was chuckling.
“Oh, I denied everything, of course.”
“So, he thought the worst. He thought I fucked you?”
She sighed. “And there you are, so proud of the idea of it.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m here because I want to.”
“Oh, is that how you choose to broach the subject? ‘Hello, Aerhril, I want you to go and convince your ex-fiancé to help us create an impossible alliance. Will you lift your nightdress for me?’”
He smirked. “Well? Will you?”
She groaned, flopping down, pulling the covers up over her head.
He pulled them back down, but gently. He bent down to kiss her.
She tangled her hands in his long black hair. “Dathor, you do not deserve this from me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you forced yourself on me and I can’t simply allow the man who raped me to be… you are not the hero of this story. You are not good.”
“No, but neither are you the heroine. Neither are you good,” he said. “Besides, you want me. And I want you. And I can do it much better than what I did in the chapel.” He was tugging on her covers, gently pulling on them.
She clutched them for a moment, and then sighed andgave way.
The blankets slid down to uncover her long, white shift.
He lay a large, thick hand on her belly. He dragged it up over her nightdress and let it settle between her breasts. “I used to think, when I was lying awake at night in Arzakh, about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did. Lay there and stroked yourself and imagined—”
“You thought of me?”
She groaned. “You were likely over there bedding orc women.”
