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It has been twenty days since our first date.
It takes us both at least two hours to unpack every item of clothing. Eventually, Althia finds an ensemble to wear on our outing today.
She chooses a pale pink dress with a long skirt that falls to the ground gracefully. The dress is slightly form-fitting, and I would hardly call it modest because it shows off the curves and lines of her body perfectly.
Then she places a large, wide-brimmed pink hat on her hair, which she coiled into an elegant chignon at the nape of her neck.
“Are you ready?” I ask her and hold out my arm. She looks at me slightly anxiously and takes my arm as we walk out of the room.
“What about all the wrappings?” she asks me, and the anxiety in her voice is obvious. “Shouldn’t we pick those up?”
“The zagfers will handle it when they come to clean the rooms,” I assure her.
A carriage is waiting for us outside my family’s home, and I help her into it. As soon as we’re both settled, the carriage pulls away from the estate and toward the center of Pyrthos.
I received my latest payment from the King after having worked feverishly on several paintings over the last two months.
And I have used a good chunk of that money on today’s outing.
Most of the expense came from hiring an entire restaurant for the day.
“Balkan’s Light is one of my favorite restaurants in Pyrthos. They have the best food around and a stunning view of the entire city.”
Balkan’s Light stands on the crest of a hill and is a two-story building with a terrace. Beautiful rirzed herbs and bluefrost flowers are arranged on every table. There are several pots of zabilla, a succulent plant with pink and green petals grown in Tlouz, on smaller tables.
Althia gasps at the beauty of it, and this earns a smile from the dark elf who is the proprietor of the place, a dark elf noblewoman named Charis.
Charis is one of the few dark elves I know who has given up her life of nobility to run a restaurant and who also doesn’t have anything bad to say about me being with a human.
It has been twenty days since my first date with Althia. And I learned a lot about her on that day.
I learned that she needs to be treated gently and with the utmost care. I learned that her life has been incredibly difficult.
And I also learned that she is afraid of my kind, of dark elves, especially female dark elves.
I have always known how vicious the females of my kind could be, but I only really learned the truth of it through Althia’s eyes.
No one gets to hurt her but me.
The thought is stubborn and disturbing, but I know I will never hurt her beyond what she asks for.
And part of me believes that Althia likes pain as much as I do.
Ten.
It has been ten days since my parents gave up.
We are seated in the middle of the terrace, and a warm, sweet breeze is blowing in from the west.
Charis brings over some cocktails and a tasting menu for us, before the main course.
“This is all so delicious. But you really didn’t have to do this. I know you have paintings to work on,” Althia says softly.
“I need to take a break,” I tell her with a shrug. “My wrists are quite painful. And besides, I want to spend as much time with you as I can.”
“Thank you,” she tells me, and the sincerity in her voice warms my blood.
A sudden vision of Althia in restraints, writhing on a bed beneath me while I cut open her skin as I pleasure her, threatens to overwhelm me.
