Page 63 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

“No,” said Iahir. He stopped pacing and looked down at her. “Let me do it, then. If I don’t come back, then you can try to kill the dragon, but I want to try to talk with it. Let me do that for you.” He was feeling rather good about this. If it went well, he could get her mother back. If it went badly, it was a noble sacrifice, and that warmed him. He would like to nobly sacrifice himself for the woman he loved, he found.

“That’s idiotic,” she scoffed.

“Well, you lose nothing,” he said. “I shall leave you my coin here, and anyway, after you kill the dragon, you can take all those riches—”

“I lose nothing? Are you listening to yourself? I don’t want you go and kill yourself, Iahir.”

“I won’t,” he said. “Probably.” He swallowed. “Maybe I can kiss you before I go, though? Just in case I do die. I think that would be romantic.”

“And now you say that,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I do not even understand you.”

“I want to please you, Gathren,” he said, quite serious. “I want to do things for you. I want to make your life better in some way. I want to be useful to you. I want—”

“Oh, stop it, really. I am going to think you truly are in love with me.”

“Obviously, I am!”

“You are not,” she said.

“Well, I am,” he said. “But you are not actually in love with me. Or… you might have feelings for me, but you don’t welcome them, which means that you’re not really in love with me.”

“You’re right, I’m not in love with you. I think I hate you instead, in fact. I think I despise you.”

“Fine,” he said. “So, you won’t care if I get myself killed, then.”

“I am not letting you go off and do a bunch of pointless heroics,” she said. “Also, I don’t need you to rescue my mother. I can do that myself. You are not useful to me, my lord, not at all, and the only way you become useful to me is if I lower myself to give you some space to be useful.”

He thought about that. “That may be the way of it between men and women, always.”

She rolled her eyes. “How about this? You talk to the dragon, you distract the dragon, and I sneak in while the dragon is busy with you.”

“Well, the dragon is going to know you’re out there, and he’s going to be looking for you.”

“What if you say I’m badly burned and out of commission?” said Gathren.

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a half-bad idea.”

GATHREN HUDDLED IN the darkness, out of sight, as Iahir called into the cavern entrance.

“Oh, dragon! Let’s talk, you and I,” he yelled. “You have already dispatched my partner, and I find I’m strangely relieved about that, because it means I don’t have to share the treasure. Something about being here, it casts a spell of greed on me, and now I must have everything in your hoard. Surely there is some way I can win it from you, like the stories, some riddle I can answer, some task I can perform.”

But there was nothing from inside the cavern, nothing at all.

Iahir waited and then tried again. “I think you owe me, dragon. You infected me with this greed, after all! Also, you killed the female orc, and I think you should at least apologize to me about that. Even though maybe you did me a favor. But even so, that’s your fault. If I had never come here, I would never have been this greedy.”

A voice came from within. “Thou hast contracted no greed, elf. What greed thou feelst in thy chest, it has come from only thy own soul.”

Iahir smiled. “Come closer, dragon. Let me see you.”

“All creatures have the desire to blame others for their own sins,” said the dragon. “But thou elves are more adept at it than nearly any other creature.”

“Let us speak,” said Iahir. “Come out and show yourself. We will talk and make an agreement between ourselves.”

“Thou thinkest to lure me to my death. Dost thou think me a fool?”

“I will lay down my weapons,” cried Iahir, taking off his belt with his sword and knives on it.

Gathren did not think that was wise, but she could say nothing, not unless she wanted to give herself away.