Fierce Heart (Elven Alliance Book 1)

by Tara Grayce

  Farrendel started across one as if it was nothing to stroll across a four-foot-wide branch hundreds of feet in the air with not even a single handrail for balance. Darkness had fallen over the treetop palace, making the space below the branch nothing but black highlighted with a few bubbles of light.

  Essie dug her feet in. She couldn’t walk out there. What if she tripped on her dress or her foot slipped or...she shuddered and wrapped both arms over her stomach.

  Farrendel turned back to her. Silent. Not even a twitch to his eyebrows to let her know what he was thinking.

  She tried to calm her breathing. “I take it there aren’t any clumsy elves? Not that I’m terribly clumsy for a human, but humans do tend to have accidents happen to us, and that branch is awfully small to walk across. My balance isn’t quite like yours.”

  He was probably ruing the day he got himself stuck with such a helpless human female. Essie didn’t want to be helpless or go all shuddery over crossing a branch, but she also didn’t want to fall hundreds of feet to her death on her first night in Estyra.

  Farrendel strode back to her and bent like he planned to pick her up.

  “No, wait!” Essie took a step back. She closed her eyes and let out a trembling breath. She probably should’ve let him carry her. That would’ve been more romantic, right? Being held in his strong, sinewy arms.

  But another part of her need to prove she was strong enough to survive in Estyra. He couldn’t go around carrying her over every little branch and bridge in this treetop city. Besides, there was nothing romantic in having to be carried because she was helpless. It was only romantic if he wanted to carry her and she wanted to be carried in return.

  She opened her eyes and faced him. He was still crouched, eying her with that look again. The look he’d said wasn’t an angry look. Confusion, perhaps? She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense to herself at the moment.

  “Sorry. I just...I can do this. I have to do this. I’m going to be living here, and I have to get used to walking across these branches.” Essie clenched her fists and forced herself to walk forward.

  He stood and held out his arm again. She latched onto his upper arm with both her hands.

  He didn’t adjust her grip or shake her off but set out across the branch once again, this time at a much slower pace.

  He probably felt like he was inching across, but it was still too fast. Essie’s heart pumped harder in her chest. She hung back, forcing her feet to move inch by inch.

  She wobbled, and her heart lurched into her throat. For a moment, the whole world spun, and all she could do was stare down into the darkness below their feet, imagining herself falling, falling, falling...

  His arms were around her, steadying her. One of her hands still gripped his arm, but the other was fisted in his tunic, her knuckles brushing the warmth of his chest. Her nose was level with the symbol she’d painted over his heart.

  For a moment, all she wanted to do was rest her head against his chest and soak in his strength. Pretend that he would someday return the attraction that beat in her chest, an attraction that could turn into love if given the right chance.

  She wanted to know the stories behind his scars. Know why his hair was a different color than his siblings. Have him trust her enough to tell her how and why he got the title Laesornysh. If he would give her the chance, she would come to love him as he was because love was something she could choose, and she would rather choose to love this elven husband of hers than stay loveless and lonely among the people she’d married into.

  Instead, she forced herself to look up. Farrendel was looking down at her. Was there a hint of softening around his mouth and in his eyes?

  He eased back, putting a few inches of space between them. She forced her fingers, one by one, to release his tunic and return to her death grip on his arm.

  “Relax.” Farrendel gently gripped her elbows. “If you are tense, you will fall.”

  Her tension was causing her wobbles. She tried to take in a deep breath. She could do this. She had to do this.

  One step forward. Another.

  She glanced down. Her stomach lurched, the world a breath from spinning again.

  Farrendel squeezed her elbows. “Do not look down.”

  Don’t look down. She dragged her gaze back up to him. His silver-blue eyes were fixed on her, as if asking her to trust him.

  He took a step back, walking backwards along the branch with the sure-footed grace of a cat.

  Did she trust him? She couldn’t be sure. He’d been gentle—kind even—with her so far. But he’d barely spoken with her. She didn’t really know him. After all, he’d gotten the name Laesornysh, and it hadn’t been for being kind and gentle with his enemies.

  Was she his enemy? His friend? Or just some scared puppy he would take home and award with few gestures of affection now and then.

  Until he proved her wrong, she had to trust him. She held his gaze and took another step forward.

  She didn’t look down. She didn’t look away. Instead, she focused on his eyes as he led her across the branch.

  He halted. “We are here.”

  Essie blinked and glanced around. They were no longer standing on the branch but on a porch-like platform in front of an arching doorway to a wooden structure nestled onto a split in the branches. Twigs and branches arched into the beams and roof for the house.

  Farrendel pushed the door open and spoke a word in elvish. Light flared inside, filling the space with a warm, white-yellow glow.

  Essie stepped inside. Unlike the grand hall and the room she’d been taken to in the main part of the palace with grand, soaring branch ceilings above and gold gilding in the woodwork, this space was cozy. Cupboards filled one wall while large, plush cushions filled one corner, inviting even if they were on the floor. Three doors were cut into the wall across from the door they’d come in. It was as if a palace kitchen and sitting room had been smashed together into one room.

  How self-sufficient were the elvish royalty? She wouldn’t be expected to cook and clean and those sort of things, would she? Not that it terrified her necessarily, but she’d been raised a princess. She hadn’t been taught how to fend for herself in that way.

  Farrendel’s boots barely whispered over the wood floor as he strode across the room. He tapped a finger against the door in the middle. “This is your room.” Without turning to her, he opened the door on the right. “This one is mine.”

  Without another word, he stepped through the doorway and shut the door behind him, leaving her alone.

  Essie let out a long, slow breath. A human marriage alliance would usually have to be consummated to be considered official. But that was probably one of those mistakes Jalissa had been talking about. The ones elves didn’t make.

  Did Farrendel see Essie as a mistake or a potential mistake? Maybe he never intended for this to be more than a platonic friendship since she was a short-lived, going-to-die-in-a-few-decades-anyway human.

  Maybe she truly was just a pet to him that he planned to keep fed and somewhat happy for a few decades before she died, leaving him free to move on with a real, elf wife.

  Essie straightened her shoulders. She would make the best of it. That’s what she’d decided back when she’d agreed to this arranged marriage, and that wasn’t going to change now.

  After crossing the room, she opened the center door. A staircase led up a branch to another, smaller structure perched even higher in the tree. A staircase without handrails led toward it.

  She swallowed and glanced back at the room behind her. She didn’t know how to turn the lights off. As they were magic, they wouldn’t catch anything on fire like a candle would. If the light bothered Farrendel, he could come back and turn them off himself.

  Besides, she needed the light to navigate the staircase. No way would she go up it in the dark.

  She forced herself up the staircase, holding her breath the whole time until she reached the platform at the top. Stepping inside the room, sh
e glanced around. The light from the building down below cast a glow through the windows, enough for Essie to make out the vague shapes of the furniture.

  She could try to speak the word Farrendel had used to turn on the lights, but she didn’t know how to turn them off. Nor did she see any curtains to draw across the windows to prevent anyone who might be looking in this direction from seeing inside. As she didn’t know how close other rooms might be in this palace in the trees, she didn’t dare risk it.

  It felt odd to sleep in nothing but her undergarments, especially the scandalous elven ones, but Essie wasn’t sure if there were any other clothes in this room and her wedding dress wasn’t comfortable enough to sleep in.

  Shrugging, she slid out of her wedding dress, stumbled to the hammock-shaped bed along one wall, and crawled into it. She pulled the blankets around her, curling on her side.

  Hopefully this wasn’t a day she would end up regretting for the rest of her life.

  BIRDS SANG obnoxiously loud outside her windows. Louder than Essie could ever remember them being. There weren’t many places for birds to land near her windows.

  Essie opened her eyes, blinked, and brought the room into focus.

  This wasn’t her bedroom in Winstead Palace. The memories of the wedding, Estyra, and Farrendel jolted through her.

  This was her new home, as foreign and unhomelike as it felt.

  Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, Essie slid from the bed. The floorboards were cool beneath her feet with a few patches warmed by the thin shafts of sun penetrating the foliage above to cascade through the wide, open windows.

  Across from the bed, a mirror framed with twining sticks seemed to be embedded in the wall. Below it, a few shelves held folded pieces of clothing. A mound of clothing on the bottom shelf caught her eye, and she recognized the two dresses she’d brought from home. Apparently some elf maid had attempted to fold them and stuffed them on the shelf, not realizing that humans hung their clothes in wardrobes.

  No matter. Essie didn’t plan to wear either of those dresses any time soon.

  The shelf above Essie’s dresses held two folded elven dresses while the shelf above that held pants, shirts, and a few long, flowing tunics. Yesterday while watching Estyra flash past, she’d seen many of the elven women wearing tunics similar to the men’s. It was more practical for wandering around in treetops than dresses.

  Next to the shelves, a door led into a water closet complete with all the facilities, including a spigot that spouted warm water from above her head. She didn’t see a tub, only a basin. Did elves wash in the water pouring down on them instead of soaking in a tub?

  Essie changed into the pants, a shirt, and one of the tunics, belting it with a leather belt hung on a peg nearby. A pair of boots made of a soft buckskin sat under the peg. Essie put them on. The boots reached nearly to her knees and only squished her toes a little bit. Not enough to be bothered by it. Not bad for a pair of boots that had been scrounged for her last minute.

  As she brushed and braided her hair, Essie’s stomach rumbled, sending gurgles twirling around her insides. Where would she find breakfast here? Would there be food in the main room below or would she have to walk all the way back to the main palace?

  Only way to find out was to start exploring and hope she found Farrendel while she was at it. Maybe he would be in a talkative mood this morning.

  She checked her appearance one last time in the mirror. The green symbols were still visible on her cheek and forehead. Was she allowed to wash them off? Or did they have to stay painted on her until they naturally wore off?

  She’d leave them until she had a chance to see Farrendel and know for sure what she was supposed to do.

  The staircase outside was less scary in the daylight. She couldn’t see the ground as she’d feared. Instead, a network of branches, leaves, and even the roofs of a few rooms far below blocked her view of the ground, and she could almost convince herself that if she fell, she’d be bruised, but something would stop her fall before she was killed.

  When she stepped inside, she found the main room empty, though a wooden plate with a thick slice of bread and a piece of cheese waited for her on the wooden countertop. Had a servant left it for her? Or had Farrendel? How early did elves normally rise in the mornings?

  As she ate, she poked around the main room, opening all the cupboards and exploring their contents. While many of them contained dishes and one cupboard was chilled, acting as an ice box even if she didn’t see any ice, there weren’t any pots, pans, or a stove for cooking. All of the food seemed to be bread, cheese, cold meat, and other items that could be eaten without cooking.

  Did elves only have hot meals for special occasions? Or did they eat cold meals in their rooms for most of their meals while one meal was hot in the main part of the palace? And how was this different from non-royal elves?

  She peered out all the windows and explored the stairway outside of the third doorway. It led to a third bedroom, this one empty of clothing like it was a guest bedroom.

  Last night, she hadn’t noticed that the main room and her bedroom had porch-like walkways circling them on the outside, thankfully with railings. She walked the perimeter of both her bedroom and the main living and dining room.

  While she could see the roofs of structures far below and one structure almost buried in the leaves and branches in the distance, it was almost as if this set of rooms was a secluded wing of the elven palace. No other elves were wandering in this direction. Not even servants.

  Though, if this were the morning after a wedding in Escarland, the servants would be shy about disturbing the bride and groom.

  Still, there was a sense that this quiet part of the treetop palace was normally this quiet. Farrendel seemed the sort who would choose to live in the most out of the way part of the palace as possible.

  Where was he? Surely he hadn’t wandered back to the main part of the palace and left her here by herself?

  Unless he got bored with waiting for her to get up and left, figuring she’d stay sleeping for hours. Or maybe he never planned to wait for her and had just gone on about his day as normal.

  This constant uncertainty about her status and his motives was going to eat her from the inside out if she let it.

  She would check his room. She wouldn’t go inside—she didn’t intend to be that nosy on her first day here—but she could knock on the door and walk the porch perimeter. If he wasn’t there, then she’d decide if she should try to find her way back to the grand hall or if she’d camp out in the main room and hope he deigned to return sometime that day.

  She climbed the stairway to his room and halted on the platform, listening. She couldn’t hear any noises from inside, though she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. It was silent. Almost...too silent.

  The birds were quiet. She cocked her head. The birds were still singing nearer to her bedroom structure a branch over, but near Farrendel’s bedroom, the birds had gone silent, as if scared off.

  A faint thumping sound came from the far side. Not inside the room, but in the tree branches.

  Essie crept around the walkway. As she reached the far side, she halted, frozen in place.

  Wearing only a pair of pants and his boots, Farrendel was running along a tree branch only about four inches wide, his silver-blond hair floating behind him. With a leap, he somersaulted in the air, spun, and landed on his feet in a crouch, his hands held out like he was wielding weapons, though he wasn’t carrying his swords.

  After only a second’s pause, he leapt to his feet, dashed along the branch, and launched himself across a several feet wide gap to land on another branch, turning the move immediately into a spinning kick.

  Essie tiptoed closer and sank onto the edge of the walkway where he’d left his swords and his shirt.

  The sunlight glinted on the sweat covering his torso, highlighting the scars tracing across his back, down his shoulders, and across his stomach. But the scars hardly detracted from the sinewy
play of the muscles beneath.

  Essie couldn’t swallow, much less breathe. She didn’t even want to think about the adjectives going through her head at the moment for him. They would all sound too swoony.

  She was ogling him. Full on, unabashedly ogling.

  But he was her husband. It was perfectly fine for her to ogle him. That was the gist of the marriage vows after all, that she’d ogle only him and all that.

  And she was perfectly content to sit right here and stare. All morning, if he kept this up. Based on how sweaty he was, he must have been at this for quite some time.

  Tomorrow, she was going to get up much earlier if this was the view she could look forward to.

  He continued racing across the branches, flipping in the air, always landing on his feet, his silver hair whipping through the air in a shining arc as he moved.

  Was this what made him Laesornysh? From the stories, she’d always thought most elves were naturally athletic, graceful, and balanced. She’d certainly seen the evidence of that in the way their palace was built.

  While Farrendel’s athletic display was magnificent, was it more so than any other elf’s? Since Essie had never watched any other elves while they performed feats of balance and agility, she didn’t know, but something told her that Farrendel’s muscles and balance weren’t the only things that had made him Laesornysh.

  Farrendel spun and raced toward his bedroom and Essie’s hiding place. Should she move? Had he seen her?

  With a leap and a flip in the air, he somersaulted over the railing and landed in a crouch within arm’s reach of Essie. All at once, he went rigid, staring at her.

  Coming from him, that was the equivalent of him falling backwards and gaping in surprise.

  “I, um...” What could she say? She shouldn’t be embarrassed to be caught spying on him, but it was rather awkward anyway. “I didn’t know where you were and then...you have...” She stopped herself just short of saying he had a lot of muscles. “A lot of scars.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. She didn’t know how she knew, but something in his eyes dimmed as he ducked his head. He reached for his shirt. “I will cover them.”