Bound by the Mist (Mists of Eria)

by Kumar, Lisa

  “I love your hair.” Her fingers glided through the black curtain, a splash of paleness against the inkiness of his hair. He leaned into her touch, practically purring with a look of...utter bliss on his face? She faltered a bit. Could he really like that simple act so much?

  He looked down at her, smiling unabashedly. “I love your touch.”

  Her hands stilled. Well, that cleared up any lingering question she had.

  “What you do is a very relaxing, yet intimate act for my kind.”

  She nearly dropped the strands her fingers had arrested on. What, this was a form of foreplay to them?

  Relian’s shoulders shook. “Oh, Cal, how you make me laugh. While it’s true this is an intimacy shared between lovers, it’s also one shared by family and close friends. There’s not necessarily anything sexual about it. It all depends on the people involved.”

  She didn’t have to ask which kind of person he classified her as, even if she discounted their hot embraces. His smoldering look said it all. “So it’s kind of like the socialization that monkeys undergo when grooming each other for bugs?” Her free hand flew to her mouth.

  Instead of being offended as she feared, he broke into peals of laughter. “I’ve never heard it quite phrased that way, but I guess it’s as close a description as any. That is, if we were monkeys—which I have only a vague idea as to what they might be—and carried around insects on our person.”

  Her face heated. Great, he was teasing her. She’d probably never live it down. What if he told his father or Kenhel? Or worse, Maggie?

  “Don’t fret. I won’t tell a soul.”

  She relaxed.

  “Except for maybe my father and Kenhel.”

  She stiffened and started to remove her hand from his hair. He stopped her. “Nay, I tease. I won’t tell if you promise to remain as you are and speak of your life. However, I can’t guarantee I won’t tease you, whether in public or private. But I won’t release the details without your permission.”

  She frowned. That was as good as she was going to get from him? Cal nodded unenthusiastically. “The trade is acceptable: story and finger-combing for semi-silence.”

  A smile lit his face. “Good, my lady. Please proceed at your earliest convenience.”

  She rolled her eyes upward. Now he was just being a goof. “Where to start?” Her hand started its movement again.

  Relian gave a sound of contentment before he answered her hypothetical question. “Your typical day would be sufficient. What endeavor would you usually be engaged in at this moment?”

  She glanced at her hand wryly before looking at him. “Definitely not this.”

  “I would hope not.”

  Jealous, was he? Consider it payback for Cianve. She smirked internally before tackling his question. “Hmm, here it’s early evening before supper. Probably studying or in a practice.”

  “Practice?”

  Cal realized how little they’d actually talked since the language barrier had been overcome. She still didn’t know much about his life and vice versa. Since she was on his home turf, she had the benefit of inference. She could watch him interact with his people and surroundings to gain a better understanding of his life. Relian didn’t have that luxury, as everything was new to her. He might learn about how she handled new stressors in her life, but that didn’t tell much about what had come before.

  She shot him a smile. “Rehearsals and recitals.” Her smile faded. “I attend…attended college to study music. Well, music education.” Lines formed between his brows, so she hastened to explain. “Music education is for those who want to teach music to children.”

  “College? This is an English word?”

  “I don’t know if there is an equivalent term for it in Elvish. It’s basically a place of higher learning.”

  “Ah, like studying with the masters of an art?” He closed his eyes and sighed.

  Cal looked at her hand, wondering how it could bring the often-austere male to such a state. He popped open an eyelid quizzically and looked at her before glancing down at her hand. Oh, she’d forgotten to respond. “Sort of. A college or university is a place where people can learn many different careers or arts, as you call them. Music education was one of many available majors at the college I attended.”

  His eyelids came down to cover that too perceptive gaze from her sight. Without even knowing it’d been there, she released an inward sigh she’d pent up in her chest.

  The feeling of his hair between her fingers created a hypnotic effect over her and had a mesmerizing pull on her eyes. His state of relaxation was starting to reel her in. Did she even want to escape?

  He startled her out of her complacent stupor when he turned his head, and without opening his eyes, nuzzled her hand. Surprise hit her. Why was he being so affectionate? Maybe heavy-duty elvin courtship consisted of demonstrations such as these. They seemed, as a culture, quite gallant in their everyday mannerisms with the opposite sex, and finding a spouse was a high priority to many. So was it any surprise that he acted the way he did? If he didn’t, that would probably give her more cause for concern.

  A guy usually only showed such affection when wanting more—that something “more” meaning sex. But the preprogrammed spectacles she’d used to view other men often didn’t apply here.

  “So tell me more about this music education major you undertook.”

  As she told him, she found herself referring to everything in the past tense, and her heart sank. If he noticed, he didn’t comment on it. But then, what could he say? Her future was anything but settled.

  “You like to sing? You shall have to perform for us.” Even though it came out in the form of a command, he sounded hopeful. “Music is a favored pastime here.”

  Cal froze, balking at the idea. She didn’t have to ask whom he meant by “us.” His people often gathered in the great hall for performances that comprised of musicians, singers, and dancers. While she’d performed in front of large audiences, it was for human ears, not elvin ones. So how would she feel standing before a crowd of elves?

  She decided not to respond with an offer. Maybe he would forget if she answered only part of his query. “I have a passable voice.” As she shrugged, she fidgeted with his hair. “It’s better than some, worse than others.”

  “If I ever have cause to hear your voice raised in song, I’m sure I would find it lovely, like the rest of you.” He opened his eyes to a slit and gave her a heated glance.

  Cal swallowed. “Umm…right.”

  He chuckled. Was it her imagination or was he always laughing at her? Relian did say she made him do so. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Did he find her enchanting or just amusing, like a simple child? Maybe both?

  “You’re shy now?” He lifted a brow. “One moment you’re demonstrative and the next you’re hiding away.”

  He didn’t sound judgmental, so she didn’t think he criticized her. She managed to give a small smile in return. “I can’t help it. That’s the way I am, especially around you.” Her mind screamed for her to close her blubbering mouth. He already knew he made her flustered. Confirmation wasn’t needed to make it all the more glaring.

  “I find it charming, and it’s somewhat expected. I sometimes forget how young you are and how new you are to this world.”

  There was that word “young” again. Dread rose up. Did he think of her as barely out of childhood? “You’re always referring to how young I am. Everyone here does, in some form or another. You say you don’t treat me as a child, but I don’t feel I’m viewed like a full-grown adult, either. Yet if I stay, I’ll soon look older than every elf here.”

  Relian sobered. “You are young in years compared to an adult elf. Elf children grow very slowly. If I remember my studies correctly, the years you’ve lived would equate roughly to that of a two year-old elfling.”

  “Two years old?” Her voiced squeaked. She was nothing but a two-year old to them. It was a wonder they didn’t coddle her more
. He also hadn’t answered her observation about aging. She’d all too soon look older than the whole land of Eria put together. Her mind couldn’t continue to shy away from that fact.

  Relian took one of her hands in his and turned her to face him fully. “Yes, two. For every year that a human child grows, it takes elvin children ten to match that same growth, physically and mentally. Our years don’t hold true to yours or yours to ours. You are human, so we have to judge you by those standards. I’ll admit, though, this presents a conundrum of sorts for us. We’ve long been removed from your kindred and have forgotten how to view you. I don’t see you as a child and doubt many here see you as one. But everyone does keep the youth of your years in mind, a youth that seems both young and old to us.”

  He added a teasing smile. “No two-year elf could handle what you and Maggie are facing with such fortitude. Your years are young but still beyond what any elf could hope to achieve without a few centuries standing behind him or her. But you’re new to this world and don’t have the knowledge a child would’ve gained by living here.”

  She frowned. “I feel distinctly juvenile, and here I thought I’d left those years behind me.”

  “While you aren’t juvenile, I realize our actions toward you and your friend may reflect otherwise at times, but—”

  “Sorry to interrupt but let me guess. Once we are more accustomed to this world, that will change. Right?”

  “It seems you know me too well.” He drifted his lips over her neck, creating a pleasurable tickle that spread throughout her body. “Now tell me more about your life. Your family, were they supportive in your endeavors?”

  ***

  Cal watched as Maggie unloaded various items from her backpack. “I can’t actually believe you have that with you.”

  “Aren’t you glad I do? Otherwise, we would have no way to recharge our stuff. Without my trusty solar battery chargers and rechargeable batteries, our mp3 players and cell phones wouldn’t work. I always knew they’d come in handy sometime.” Maggie sent her a smug smile.

  “Our phones don’t work here. At least, I don’t think so. I never saw the point in trying.”

  “Nope, I tried. They don’t. But that is just the reception part. We don’t need a signal to enjoy some of the other stuff like the games and music we’ve already downloaded.”

  “I never thought I’d see the day when your predilection for carrying around junk and trying to be “green” would come in so useful. I’ve been worrying about conserving my precious battery and trying to figure out the fine line between actual usage and natural battery discharge over time.”

  Maggie’s grin suffused her face. “Don’t need to worry about that, at least not until the batteries won’t hold a charge any longer.”

  “Maybe we’ll be back before that happens.” Doubt laced her tone.

  Her friend stopped fiddling with the gadgets, skepticism painted on her features. “Well, unless we can get information out of them, we’re not going anywhere. It’s not like they bring it up.”

  “No, avoidance is their best tactic. I think they hope if they don’t mention it, we won’t bring it up, either.”

  “They sure ignore us when we do. But their free ride is about to end. We now have enough confidence and knowledge of the language to start ironing out details. Whether you ultimately stay with Relian or not, we need to know how that veil works. There has to be some way of travel in between.”

  Cal wished it were that simple. “You know how tight-lipped they are. No matter how we try, we’ve barely started to uncover whatever it is they hide.”

  “So make some demands, like we want to go home if they don’t tell us some pertinent facts. We now speak the language and are still none the wiser.” Maggie threw her hands up in the air. “Patience! They tell us to have patience. That’s their answer to everything.”

  “But we’ve tried asking.” Amused exasperation tinged her voice. “So where are we going to find the ruby shoes to take us home? I don’t think they’ll be handing us any, so threats about leaving won’t work.”

  Maggie acted like a balloon deprived of air and flopped down next to her. “That’s all well and true. But...I’m starting to miss home. It’s no longer the great adventure I thought it would be.”

  Cal placed an arm around Maggie’s shoulder. “I know. Even with all that’s going on with Relian, I find the thought of home creeping up on me more often. I can’t believe we won’t see it again. It doesn’t seem plausible. It can’t be.”

  “I miss my family.”

  “I know. Me, too. It’s been five months.” They sat, both consumed by their thoughts, until Cal released a chuckle.

  “What?” Maggie threw Cal a look, apparently disturbed she would make such a sound.

  “I wonder if our parents tried to send out the cavalry?”

  Maggie smiled. “While our disappearance isn’t funny because of the pain it causes, I bet it led to some pretty wacky behavior.”

  “You have to admit it’s an amusing idea—your parents working with mine.” Cal’s lips quirked up at the corners at the thought of her conservative parents joining with Maggie’s outrageous ones for anything of importance.

  Maggie shuddered. “A scarily amusing one. They hate being in the same zip code, let alone in the same room.”

  “Exactly.”

  Maggie’s face shadowed. “I wonder what they’ll do as time goes on without any word or trace of us. Have they already given up?”

  Cal gripped her friend’s arm. “Time? Did anybody mention how time here correlated to our own? Did we even ask?”

  Maggie gazed at her, realization seeping over her face, along with the hope and doubt she knew warred on her own.

  Chapter 25

  Cal brushed a damp tendril from her forehead while she eyed the door and then the elves to the left of her. She and Maggie would be barging into the king’s private study, but they couldn’t be concerned with that right now. They needed some answers.

  They’d bombarded a servant with questions about the location of the king or Relian. The poor elf—wringing his hands in the face of so much human emotion—had led them to the door where two sentries stood. As the guards and the servant discussed the new, pressing human problem, she and Maggie nodded at each other before lunging at the handle of the door.

  They tumbled into the room, evading the sentries who sprang after them. Both froze when they saw half a dozen gazes or so glued on them. Oops. Definitely in a meeting. Guess neither of them had heard or understood that part.

  Cal’s face flooded with warmth, and she couldn’t glance at any of the elves watching her. She was faintly aware that the king dismissed the lurking sentries, who apparently hadn’t wanted to grab either her or Maggie while in the royal presence of father and son.

  Relian stood up and strode to her. “Lady Calantha, is something wrong?”

  Cal gazed dumbly up at him. What’d she come in there for again? She must’ve looked dazed because he led her over to a trio of chairs that rested in one corner of the room. Maggie followed, accompanied not by Kenhel as she supposed, but by Lord Avrin—that nice elf from the garden.

  Aware she should respond to Relian and the other elves as they voiced similar inquiries, she looked at Relian hopelessly. “I...I’m fine. It’s just that Maggie and I.... Well, we wanted to ask about the time.”

  Relian’s concerned expression gave way to one of skepticism. “You’re fine, yet you ran in here to ask about the time?” he asked slowly, as if he were speaking to a recalcitrant child.

  Which was what she was to him. She was nothing but a child in his eyes. How could she have deluded herself into thinking a relationship between them was possible? Cal twisted her hands in her lap, threatening to mangle the appendages until he knelt before her and grasped them.

  “My lady, what’s wrong?” Concern colored his voice.

  She closed her eyes, trying to steady her mind. So what if she’d crashed a meeting of royal advisors? “I’m sorr
y for the interruption.”

  “Same here,” Maggie added.

  Once Cal settled her nerves, she took note of the other elves in the room. Kenhel and Sardon were there, along with an elf that Cal didn’t remember meeting, though she may’ve met him in the great hall on that morning so long ago.

  “My lady, you haven’t informed me of your reason for your extreme behavior.”

  Relian’s soft voice drew a shiver from her. The underlying steel in it told her he wouldn’t brook her continued avoidance. Though she tried not to show the jolt his words caused, she was taken aback. She’d forgotten this Relian—the Relian of her earlier days. His iciness drove home the fact she didn’t know him, not really. It only served to renew that sense of foreignness, so inhuman in its quality, that radiated off these people in direct contrast to her own humanity. She thought she’d been making peace with this indelible fact, but had she only been sweeping it under the cover of her subconscious?

  Cal fought the urge to look at Maggie, knowing she wouldn’t get much help on that front. The elves regularly rendered her gregarious friend as speechless as she herself when intimidated. The only one Maggie tussled with verbally was the king, and he’d been known to make Maggie fidget in her slippers until hotheadedness overcame common sense.

  Relian knelt before her, but his presence loomed, not soothed. She squirmed, her mind spinning. An answer was expected. That meant talking. Talking. Cal grasped onto that as the natural sequence of things. Unless she spoke, they wouldn’t know why she and Maggie were here. “Time.” Her Elvish started to fail her. “That’s what we came about.”

  Seeing Relian’s brow furrow, she elaborated, and the words flowed easier now. “We’re concerned about how time passes in this realm as compared to back home. We both have families that will worry, that are probably worrying right now.” She looked at the faces surrounding her with beseeching eyes. “We weren’t exactly planning for this trip, so to everyone it will seem as though we’ve vanished. No one here has informed us of the likelihood, beyond vague noncommittal responses, of our seeing home again. We need to know the choices open to us.”