by Anne Logston
Ria sighed. This was the very last discussion in the world she wanted to have now.
“About marrying you?” she asked.
Cyril nodded, his cheeks flaming.
“Cyril, I—” Ria stopped, disturbed by the expression on Cyril’s face. Once again she didn’t know what to say. Her first impulse was to tell Cyril frankly that she didn’t have the least interest in marrying him now or ever, but that would hurt him, and besides, in that case would he still be willing to help her? That sounded horribly selfish even to her; and a second guilty thought followed that one. She’d promised to consider Cyril’s proposal seriously, and she hadn’t, not really. She didn’t want to consider it. Everyone’s blind assumption that Ria would marry Cyril, whether she liked it or not, made Ria want to refuse just as blindly. And how was she supposed to pretend they hadn’t been betrothed, that a forced marriage wasn’t looming just ahead of her, when everything and everyone around her conspired to remind her?
“I guess I need more time to think,” Ria said reluctantly, expecting Cyril’s disappointment, or even anger. To her surprise, however, Cyril smiled with evident relief.
“Do you know, I guess I was afraid you’d just say no,” he said, turning back to his dinner. “I might, if I were you, being kept in here like a prisoner. I almost didn’t even ask.”
Cyril’s honesty made Ria feel even more ashamed of her selfishness.
“Look, I can’t promise I’ll want to marry you,” Ria said shyly, “but I promise I won’t say no until I’ve thought about it. Really thought about it.”
“I’m glad.” Cyril smiled again. “Ria, would you mind if —well, if I kissed you?”
Ria grimaced.
“Do you have to?”
“Come on,” Cyril coaxed. “Aren’t you even a little curious about what it’s like?”
“Well—all right,” Ria said reluctantly. “Just this once, though.”
“All right.”
Cyril leaned forward and Ria held her breath, bracing herself, eyes closed tightly. A long moment later, she opened her eyes cautiously. To her outrage, Cyril was holding his hand over his mouth, barely choking back laughter.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I’m sorry, but you should see your face,” Cyril gasped. “You looked like someone punched you in the vitals or you bit into a sour apple.”
Anger almost obliterated Ria’s embarrassment, and she might have in fact punched Cyril if the maneuver would not have required bending her injured leg in a painfully awkward position.
“The next time you ever ask me for anything,” Ria said between clenched teeth, “I’m going to tell you what you can—”
She was interrupted as Cyril, no longer laughing, leaned forward and kissed her gently. Ria was so startled that it was over before she clearly realized what had happened.
“I’m sorry,” Cyril said sincerely. “I won’t laugh at you anymore. It was just—-the way you clenched up your face—” A chuckle made its way out of his throat despite his efforts, but he quickly choked it back down. “So how did you like it?”
Ria scowled at that one brief chuckle.
“What’s to like? It wasn’t anything much.”
“Well, it’s generally nicer if the woman isn’t trying to talk at the same time,” Cyril said, grinning, his voice perilously unsteady.
“Oh?” Ria raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you’ve kissed a lot of women, so you know all about it?”
Cyril flushed crimson and took a good swig of wine to cover his mistake.
“Well, if you’ll shut up for just a moment—”
This time Ria was anticipating Cyril’s action, but made no effort to move toward him as he leaned over the bed. His lips were warm and gentle on hers, and Ria thought it wasn’t as disagreeable and awkward as she’d supposed it would be; when Cyril tilted his head slightly to one side, everything pretty well matched up all right. Still, she couldn’t imagine what the appeal was. Maybe it was something only humans enjoyed, something unnatural to elves.
“Well?” Cyril demanded at last.
“Well what?” Ria retorted. Somehow she was vaguely embarrassed and self-conscious, much as if she’d stepped unaware into a pile of dung and everyone knew it but her.
“Well, wasn’t it nice?” Cyril asked insistently. “Didn’t it make you feel—well, anything?”
“Of course it did,” Ria said defensively, bristling again slightly. She did feel something, not what Cyril expected, but something, mostly annoyance at Cyril for putting her in such a position.
“Does it make you feel like you’d want to do it again?” Cyril suggested.
Ria thought about it.
“No,” she said at last. “It makes me feel like my food’s getting cold and I’d rather be eating it than playing silly games with our mouths.”
Cyril sighed and sat back, poking at his food irritably. Ria sighed, too. Somehow she’d said something wrong, although she’d told him nothing but the truth.
“Look, whatever makes people want to kiss,” Ria said awkwardly, “I doubt if it’s an aching leg and an empty stomach. I mean, maybe we can try again some other time. All right?”
Cyril looked up, and Ria was relieved when he grinned again.
“All right,” he said. “That’s only fair, isn’t it?”
“Maybe tomorrow I can go with you to the library,” Ria said, suddenly daring.
This time Cyril’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“You? In the library? I thought books and scrolls bored you.”
“They do.” Ria sighed. “But this room is even more boring. And I can’t do anything if I can’t walk. In the library, at least you’ll be there for company. Lord Sharl and Lady Rivkah were always wanting me to look at the city plans and so on anyway, and it’s a different room.”
Cyril grinned and shrugged.
“I don’t see why Mother and Father would refuse,” he said. “You can hardly run away from the library, and you might as well be sitting there as here. I’ll talk to Mother so she won’t just think this is some kind of scheme of yours.” He hesitated. “Is it?”
Ria sighed again.
“Cyril, I just told you. I’m bored. Is that odd? I don’t like sitting here with nothing to do but think about how much my leg hurts. Is that a scheme? Where am I going to go from the library, hobbling on one leg and a crutch? Your parents can put guards outside the doorway if they think I’m going to run away. I’m not going to jump out of a window four or five man-heights above the ground, or fly away, am I?”
“All right, all right,” Cyril said mildly. “I’ll talk to Mother about it this evening and then come for you in the morning.”
Despite Cyril’s accommodating attitude, Ria was glad when he was gone. His behavior was just too puzzling. For years he’d ignored her, if not avoided her, and now she couldn’t seem to be rid of him. Was this a male thing, a human thing, or just a Cyril thing? There was just no understanding him.
It would have been nice, too, if she could talk to someone about it. But there was no one. The servants loved her, but they thought she was the strange one. Once Ria had been able to talk to Lady Rivkah or Lord Sharl when life puzzled her, although they rarely seemed to understand her, but since the announcement of the wedding she couldn’t imagine confiding in them. Besides, they were both angry with her now, anyway. When she was very young she and Cyril shared secrets as they played games and pranks and filched tidbits from the kitchen, but that time was long past, and besides, they’d never talked about anything too—well, too serious.
Her brother Valann would have understood her. He’d had the upbringing she should have had, among the elves. He’d understand what she felt—and what she didn’t feel, too. He’d understand her. She wouldn’t be some strange oddity, a usually annoying, at best amusing “savage little beast” of no use to anyone except for the alliances she might bring and the children she might bear. Lady Rivkah had told her that human magical lore held that twins shared a s
pecial bond of the souls, and hadn’t Ria seen him many times in her dreams? To Ria’s brother, whose heart had beat in rhythm with her own in their mother’s womb for months, she might have some value simply as herself.
Jenji thrummed his humming purr and burrowed under Ria’s hair to nuzzle at her neck comfortingly, as if sensing her thoughts. Mage’s familiar. Perhaps he had. Ria’s mother had been a beast-speaker; perhaps Jenji was an elf-speaker?
Ria pulled Jenji down into her arms so she could trace the tufted tips of his ears with her fingertip and gaze into the dark eyes that seemed so uncannily intelligent. Jenji was more intelligent than any animal she’d known; he’d taken on his own to perching on the windowsill, his long, fluffy tail curled up over his head for balance, to let his droppings fall out the window. Bored, Ria had quickly found that “training” Jenji was more a simple matter of showing him once what she wanted.
Mage’s familiar.
Was her don’t-see-me magic? Could Jenji help her use it as he might be able to help a mage? But how could he? Ria couldn’t cast the spell Cyril had mentioned to link the familiar to her; in fact, Ria couldn’t cast any spell at all. Even when she made herself unseen she cast no spell—or did she? Lady Rivkah no longer needed incantations, braziers, and the like. Perhaps Ria was in fact using magic—elven magic, magic of a different kind. But there was no way to tell Jenji what she wanted.
Ria placed Jenji on the covers, blocking him with her hand when he tried to scamper back toward her. “Stay.”
Jenji chittered unhappily, but stayed where he was when she took her hand away.
Ria closed her eyes and concentrated hard on making herself small, insignificant, unseen, just another wrinkle in the covers in the middle of the bed. She opened her eyes and saw Jenji crouching where she’d put him, gazing directly into her eyes, thrumming excitedly, shifting eagerly from paw to paw. Obviously she wasn’t invisible to him. Either that, or he was indeed a magic-spotter and could sense her in some way that was not precisely ordinary sight. If only Ria shared her mother’s ability to speak to the minds of beasts. Better yet, if only Ria could speak to the mind of her brother!
Frustrated, Ria let her concentration slip away, scooped up Jenji, and curled herself into a small ball under the covers. Her leg throbbed painfully, and Ria sat up again, growling to herself as she reached for the bell cord. To her relief, the maid who answered the bell was Lizette, Ria’s favorite among the servants, a kind-hearted matron who had traveled to Allanmere with them.
“My leg hurts,” Ria told Lizette. “Would you ask Lady Rivkah if I could have a sleeping potion?” She sighed plaintively. “Although she’ll probably say no.”
“Poor little creetur,” Lizette sighed, patting Ria’s cheek with a soap-roughened hand. “She might indeed, she’s that angry.” Her eyes twinkled. “Say you so, I’ll just ask Yvarden instead? The High Lady’s that busy, she shouldn’t be fretted, eh?” She hurried away, returning quickly with a tray.
“Oh, Lizette, thank you,” Ria said relievedly, gulping down the potion and then sipping more slowly the hot broth Lizette had thoughtfully brought to take away the bitter flavor of the potion. Yvarden, like Lizette, had been a kindly, if secret, champion of Ria’s almost since her birth. Ria was as tired of sleeping as she was of lying in bed and staring at the walls of her room, but at least this way the time would pass more quickly.
“Not a word, pet, not a word,” Lizette said, chuckling. “Sleep ‘ee sound and mend fast.”
The hot broth in her belly and the sleeping potion conspired to carry Ria away in warm arms. Ria welcomed sleep, thinking again about her brother. How nice it would be if she could talk to him, tell him all her troubles. And what would he have to tell her? What secrets had he learned in his sixteen years among the elves? He’d have so much to teach her, if only she could—if only—
Ria drifted on the surface of a warm wave of drowsiness as she’d often floated in the pond near Emaril’s keep, neither entirely awake or asleep. It seemed that somehow she was not alone, that a comforting, familiar presence was nearby, almost close enough to touch. Instinctively Ria tried to reach out to that presence as she might have lazily stroked her way across that same pond, felt the desired presence even closer, closer, but never quite close enough.
Valann! she tried to call, fighting the potion now as it pulled her down into deep sleep, away from the familiar presence.
Come to the forest. Come home. Come soon.
Another wave of sleep, too strong to fight. For some indefinable time she surrendered weakly, then again half woke, struggling to recall that brief moment of contact, fighting until she was —
—folded in warm arms, small hands stroking boldly over skin that shivered with pleasure, lips opening under lips, fire that raced along nerves that sang with delight, the exquisite friction of warm skin on warm skin—
Ria stretched and moaned as unfamiliar sensations coursed through her body, sighing as—
—thighs parted only to clasp muscled hips, hesitant hands explored more feverishly, muscles tensed in pleasure almost too great to bear—
Ria bolted upright in her bed, suddenly wide awake, arms wrapped around her slender body as though to hold something in. Great gods, she’d had odd dreams from time to time, but nothing the likes of that! Her cheeks were inexplicably flaming, her skin still stippled with gooseflesh, her body filled with a strange sort of hunger. Was this an effect of the sleeping potion, or could this be something caused by Cyril’s kiss? For a moment Ria considered calling a maid to fetch Cyril, but a sudden reluctance seized her. If one kiss had put such odd feelings in her head, what might that kiss have done to Cyril? What if it made him want to kiss her again, or do something else, something like—well, like she’d dreamed of?
Ria shivered again.
Would that be so bad?
Ria shook her head and curled back down into the covers. Those feelings she had dreamed seemed somehow too big for her. Sex was for women with breasts and rounded hips, women who bled every month, not for skinny younglings like her—
Unless, a nagging thought whispered, elves are different. Maybe elves don’t grow like human women. Maybe elves just stay like this forever. Lady Rivkah had often marveled at how small and childlike Chyrie and her mate Valann had seemed.
How was Ria to know? Who was she to ask?
The elves, of course.
Ria set her mouth firmly and carried that thought down into thankfully dreamless sleep.
Chapter Eight—Valann
Dusk shook his head again, touching Lahti’s belly as if he could not believe what his healing sense felt there. Lahti smiled and clasped Valann’s hand. It would be moon cycles before her belly began to swell, but she had assured Valann that she could feel the first faint changes in her body that indicated that new life was growing there, and by the time they’d made their way back to Inner Heart, Val could detect the slight change in her scent as her time of ripeness ended.
“That the two of you could be so foolish shames everyone who has taught you,” Rowan scolded. “I can’t imagine what inspired the two of you to act so irresponsibly.”
Valann laid his arm comfortingly around Lahti’s shoulders, pulling her close.
“It was Lahti’s choice,” he said stoutly. “It was my choice. I could no more have refused her than I could have forced her against her wish.”
“And you,” Rowan said, turning to Lahti, “did you spare any thought to what the clan would say when they learned what you’d done? To couple when you have not yet been judged and accepted by the Mother Forest is strictly forbidden, and to conceive a child doubly so, and for very good reason indeed. And now you cannot take your passage, not with a child in your womb who might be harmed by the passage trials and potions. If you’d danced the High Circle and one of the Hawk’s Eyes had been the man to sow the seed, he couldn’t be blamed for his part in your foolishness—he’d have no way to know you hadn’t yet taken your passage. But Valann knew better.”
&
nbsp; “I wanted a child of Valann’s seed,” Lahti said staunchly, although there was a slight quaver in her voice. “I couldn’t bear to waste my time of ripeness. I might never have had another. And I didn’t want my first coupling to be with a stranger. It’s not Valann’s fault. He tried to dissuade me despite his desire. I’ll bear the consequences of my decision.”
“And did you spare any thought for the consequences to your child?” Rowan persisted. “Do you know why such a mating is forbidden? It’s said that a child born to a mother or father not judged spirit-whole by the Mother Forest will be born awry. Was that, too, a chance you didn’t hesitate to take?”
“It’s possible that our child might be born awry,” Valann said adamantly. “It’s possible that any child might be born awry. Many women who have long since made their passage into adulthood have suffered such misfortune. Every elf who bears a child or fathers one faces such a chance.”
“I’m to blame,” Dusk said suddenly, laying his hand on Rowan’s arm. “If I hadn’t helped Lahti pursue Valann, she’d have been here when she began to ripen. If I had thought to examine her, I might have sensed the change in her body. Those failures are mine, not Lahti’s. What woman would miss her chance to bear a child when such a chance might never come again, and what man would refuse her? Words—even laws—are small beside that desire.” He turned to Lahti. “I have taught you. I have touched your spirit many times. There’s no doubt in my heart that the Mother Forest will accept you. I’ll speak to the clan as your teacher and its Gifted One.”
“And I’ll speak to them as well,” Rowan relented, sighing. “But, Lahti, you know that each member of our clan will make his or her own judgment, and you know full well how some of them will react. It would have been easier, perhaps, if you’d chosen another instead of—” She hesitated, glancing at Val.
“Instead of Chyrie’s half-human whelp whom many of our women would never choose for their High Circles,” Val finished bitterly. “Many of the elders fear what would happen if I sired children of my mixed blood. Would my offspring be strange creatures like me, no true elf, gifted in ways not of our kind, or even born awry because of the mixing of the bloods? That’s what they think, even if they don’t say it aloud.”
