"I have no way of being sure of that," Dorll said gruffly.
"Yes, you do." Gorren stood and pushed back his chair with a loud scrape. "If Felthiss had wanted to invade Dorvek, they would have done so when they last had the chance, when we turned back from the war with Vuthron."
"The country did not know it's mind then. It's had time to settle since." Dorll waved his hand at nothing in particular, a gesture of frustration that Gorren recognised well.
"And if Jorrell is as fearsome as my brother seems to think he is, I doubt a touch of snow on the Heranuc pass would have stopped him since. And I highly doubt, even given his reputation, he would attempt an invasion with an army comprised of two children."
Gorren turned to face Noridan, whose face was steadily growing paler with anger. "You should stop listening to the poison that your mistress drips into your ear, brother."
Gorren looked to his mother, and received a small nod, and the beginnings of a thin-lipped smile. He acknowledged neither, but instead turned to face the emissaries.
"We will not deny the First Mother the chance to visit her family." He turned to his father, and stared directly in his eyes. "We won't deny my wife the opportunity to meet with her family after so many years of forced separation, for which we must accept some of the blame. Despite their circumstances, they have not forsaken her. We will not stand in their way. You asked me here for my opinion, and that is it."
Gorren kept staring, kept holding his father's gaze. He might only have been a Captain in the army, but he was a prince of the country, a prince who had been close to beating his father in fair fight, a fight his father had only survived thanks to the interference of the queen. Gorren kept staring, until his father's eyes slid away.
"Very well," Dorll muttered. "The visit shall be allowed."
The table was silent, although Gorren thought that he caught a look of agreement, maybe of approval, from Lorch. He turned, and left the room, not being at all careful about whether the door slammed behind him.
He was almost to the main doors of the hall when he heard scurrying footsteps, and his mother's shouts. "Gorren!"
He continued walking.
"Gorren! Son!"
At that he turned. "What?"
Now that she had his attention, she appeared lost for words. "I... I... Are you well?"
"As well as can be expected." There was so much he wanted to say to his mother, so many questions he needed to ask, but the words dammed up behind his inability to decide what he needed to know most.
"And Elthrinn?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I... I miss her."
"Then you should come visit her."
"It's too complicated..." his mother tailed off, her eyes downcast.
"No, it isn't." Gorren gritted his teeth, and continued. "I promised her that she had a family here. I promised her that you would be a mother to her, and you've left her lonely. And now I see that you're complicit in trying to keep what little family she has from her."
The queen looked up at that, her eyes glinting. "I was going to argue for the visit to be allowed."
"And you think you would have been successful? I suppose he might have deferred to you. After all, he owes you his life," Gorren scoffed.
His mother stepped closer. He could see that she was holding herself carefully straight, protecting herself behind brittle confidence. "Could you have killed him? Your own father?"
"Yes." His mother paled at his answer. "Ambition and anger mean little. He's never been a father to me."
"You would have killed your brother, too?"
Gorren understood his mother's stance now. She was afraid of his answers, afraid for the family that she thought she had created. Gorren could have laughed. That family had never existed, had barely even been the mists of what she had supposed it might have been."
"I will. Elthrinn isn't safe whilst he breathes. I will keep her safe."
"From the tavern?"
Gorren flinched at the accuracy of his mother's sharp words, and from them knew the truth of his future actions. "No, from her side."
He left his mother standing open-mouthed in the great room of the hall, and went to find Elthrinn. The day had twisted and turned so many ways that his head ached, but from it all he had certainty. Gorren wondered what Jorm had said to Elthrinn, if it had made a difference to her fear of him. If not, it looked as though she'd have the opportunity to leave, if she wanted to. Instead of stealing away from him in the night, she could ride out of the country surrounded and secured by her family, her true family. Whatever he told himself, whatever he told her, there was no denying that she had people in the world who shared her blood, people who would be willing to risk war between two countries for the chance to see her again. He could offer her love, he could offer her a home, he could offer her himself, but he was no longer certain that it would all be enough.
As Gorren made his way to the cottage, he mulled over his fear that Elthrinn might leave, that their bond might be broken irretrievably. By the time he pushed open the door, his brain was in as much of a stew as it had been when he'd been sitting in the tavern, but now without the promise of oblivion that the jug of ale had held.
He was immediately assailed by the rich smell of something cooking, a stew, most likely. He spied the black pot hung over the hearth in which the meal would be bubbling. He could smell bread, too; Elthrinn had been baking. There were clothes hung on twine by the window. He went to them; they were only slightly damp, and they smelled of the outside. It was too cold for linens to dry fully outdoors, but Elthrinn had hung them outside to keep them fresh, and now they were inside to finish drying. The inside of his home was the picture of domesticity, but it was missing an essential component; he couldn't see his wife.
He turned towards the rattle of the latch, in time to see Elthrinn coming through the door. She was stamping her feet to shake the snow from her boots before coming inside. She brushed her hands on her cloak before she shut the door, and the motion released the dusty, musty smell of hay and stable. She had been caring for the animals. She took her cloak off, and hung it up, and then straightened in shock when she finally realised that he was in the room.
"Oh, you're home."
There was a time when she would have run across the room, and thrown herself in his arms. Now she was regarding him warily, and with some suspicion. Gorren knew he wasn't smiling, but until he paid attention to it, he hadn't realised his face had been hard, set in stern lines. He tried to relax; he wanted her to feel at ease, even if tension was threatening to turn him to stone.
Elthrinn gave him a small smile, and began to cross the room, cautiously. He watched her come towards him. He deliberately held his body still, not because he was scared he might hurt her, or because he didn't want to startle her, but because the thought of losing her had worn through all but the last of the control that had left. Tonight would be a reckoning, and if afterwards she wanted to leave, then in several moons her family would be arriving, and she would be able go with them.
She stopped when she'd gotten about half way across the room. "Something's happened." It was a statement rather than a question.
"Yes."
"Something bad."
"No." Gorren finally managed to free his vocal chords from the paralysing strain that imbued the rest of his body. "Your brother wishes to visit you."
Elthrinn took a deep, shocked breath. "Jor? Wants to come here? To Dorvek?"
"Yes." Gorren was more than a little confused by her disbelief that her brother should want to see her. "You seem surprised?"
"I am. He's been back from his wars for some time now, hasn't he? I might have thought, if he was going to come, he'd have come sooner. After what happened to Serwren, he should have known what a thing it is to have a marriage arranged for you."
Gorren winced. "He's been busy. He and the First Mother are to have a child."
"Serwren's pregnant?" Elthrinn asked for clarification.
"Apparen
tly. They want to visit when the baby is born, some moons from now, after Kwek."
"Will they be allowed to come here?"
"Yes." Gorren was impressed by Elthrinn's grasp of the political landscape. She had obviously been paying attention to his father's approach to ruling the country.
"Do you want me to leave with them?"
She didn't need to carve his heart out with something as crude as a knife. Her words had scooped the organ out of his chest, and now it was lying in a bloody puddle at her feet.
Gorren spoke the only certain truth he knew. "No."
Elthrinn cocked her head on one side, obviously disbelieving him. "You're sure?"
Yes, he was sure. He didn't want her to leave. He needed her by his side. He needed to make her see how much she meant to him. Gorren crossed the room to her. He took her by the arms, ignoring her exclamation, a mix of shock, surprise, and pain. His grip was hard, too hard. He was hurting her, and he didn't care. Every moment in her presence now was precious agony.
He pulled her over to the dressing table that he'd fashioned for her. He couldn't imagine anyone less given to primping than Elthrinn, and he was happy with that. She was naturally beautiful; he couldn't imagine her cluttered with paint and baubles. The table and mirror were simply a place for her to keep what few tools of grooming she had, and so that she could check that her hair was at least neatly brushed.
Still keeping a firm hold of one of her upper arms, Gorren reached out and tilted the mirror so that it reflected both their faces from their standing position. He yanked Elthrinn around in front of him, so that her reflection was before his in the mirror. He pulled viciously at the ties on her shift, and snatched at the material until he could expose her tattoo. Elthrinn tried to wrench free, tried to push his hands away, but he was intent. He could scent her fear, mixed with anger. When he'd achieved his aim of baring the black ink, stark against her skin, he caught her wrists, and held them fast. That didn't stop her trying to get free, but he was stronger than she, and he easily held her in place.
"See that? This is what you are to me, Rinn."
"Gorren, stop. What are you doing? You're hurting me." Threads of fear and anger were woven through her voice, too.
Gorren wrapped one arm around her upper body to still her frantic efforts to free herself. He laid his palm under the tattoo until it was framed between his thumb and his forefinger, trying to ignore the fact that he was basically cupping her soft breast to do so. "I don't want to hurt you, but, Rinn, you're carving me apart. You're everything to me. Don't you see?"
Chapter Twenty-Three
"I only see that you won't let me go when I ask," Elthrinn gritted out as she continued her struggles for release. Gorren's intensity, his painful grip of her arms, had frightened her badly, but now she was angry. He had no right to act as if the blame lay solely at her feet.
"Please, Rinn. Just look. See." To pacify him, and because it might possibly cause him to relax his hold, and therefore give her an opportunity to escape, Elthrinn stilled. The picture presented before her in the mirror caught her attention. In Gorren's tone, Elthrinn had heard only irritated anger, but the reflection before her was the portrait of a man lost.
She saw the tattoo, framed by his hand, and tried to ignore the warm weight of his palm against her skin. She remembered the day it had been inked, remembered Gorren's care of her afterwards, remembered the way that he explained his idea behind the design, what it meant to him, his passion...
"Let me go."
Gorren dropped his arms, releasing his hold on her so suddenly that she stumbled, but those few steps worth of distance between them were not a bad thing. She needed air, room to breathe and to think.
Gorren looked defeated. His eyes had lost their wild spark, his shoulders had slumped. Elthrinn realised that her words might have been taken to mean more than a request for immediate freedom. There could be no more dancing around their problems, no more avoiding the monster in the room. Elthrinn hadn't wanted to leave, but maybe her brother was coming to get her. She had to know what she would tell Jorrell when she saw him. She saw now what Jorm had been trying to tell her, that Gorren was almost crazed, maybe more than almost, where she was concerned. But she couldn't stay with him if she was scared of him all the time. It was wearing, she was exhausted by her nerves. She had to know...
"Show me." She made the demand on instinct.
She could see Gorren's confusion at her stunted request.
"Show me what you are to me. You're trying to hurt me? To be a monster? Then show me the monster that you are."
Gorren winced, and stumbled back. "Rinn, don't, please, don't do this. Don't say such things."
"But, Gorren, you don't see. You grab me, scare me like that, and you don't see. Everything I remember from that night is violence, and fear, and powerlessness. How am I supposed to wrap my mind round it all? And you're tangled right in the middle of it."
"Rinn, please..."
"Show me," she repeated. "Here. Now. Without the violence and the fear. I know you can change as you please. Show me that there's nothing to be scared of."
"Rinn, you don't know what you're asking. What if you're terrified of me? What if it makes it worse?"
"Then we'll know. You told me once that you're not a half wolf, or a half man. You're whole, just as you are. If I'm to stay, if I'm to persuade my brother that I'm happy here, then I need to know that I love all of you, not just the... aesthetically acceptable aspects of you."
"Aesthetically acceptable?" There was a grin beginning to quirk Gorren's lips.
"Yes." Elthrinn couldn't stop the beginnings of her own answering grin, even though he was making fun of her a little. "Focus. You should change, here and now, you should change."
"I don't want to lose you."
"Then show me that I don't need to be scared of you. Jorm showed me the trolls, at the barracks..."
"He what?" Gorren interrupted incredulously.
"He showed me the trolls, the sculpture, the body, or whatever you call it. It helps me to understand your other form, but what I saw that night is twisted. Please, help me to understand it better."
She could see resolve harden Gorren's features. "If I do this, I risk losing you. Remember that it's what you asked for."
Elthrinn nodded. "I'll remember."
"Very well." Gorren nodded, and began to strip, casting his clothes over the mirror of her dressing table.
His body would always be fascinating to her. His skin was alive with the artwork that indelibly decorated it. The patterns and pictures were so numerous that it was almost impossible to see the musculature of his form beyond them, but Elthrinn's eyes remembered what her fingers had often told her.
Always before, he had changed out of her sight. He'd never been very far from her, so she'd always heard the sounds of his body reshaping, but now she could see the way that his skin stretched taut and wrapped to fit the bones as they lengthened, or shortened as required. She could hear the wet snap and pop of whatever was happening inside him. Now that she could see, she marvelled that he never cried out during what looked to be an agonisingly painful transformation.
She could see his new form taking shape, and she was glad that she was watching it happen. It was no small thing to witness, as Gorren's body re-moulded itself into something new, but it helped her to understand more of the thing he was becoming. And rather than appear, bursting through the door like a thing from a nightmare, he was taking his time, developing slowly before her eyes.
When he had finished changing, he stood before her. Even though the overdeveloped muscles of his neck and shoulders gave him somewhat of a hunched stature, Elthrinn could see that Gorren was hanging his head, averting his eyes from her.
He was fearsome, of that there was no doubt, but she could see now that it was blended into the man she knew. Just as his fully-furred wolf form could be dangerous, with its sharp claws and teeth, and strong jaws, so could this be. So could his human form be, if he chose t
o use the strength in his arms and fists.
Elthrinn inhaled a deep breath, and examined the being before her. Gorren was taller, and broader in the chest, a shape he could never achieve as a full human. The muscles over his chest and ribs stood out in sharp definition, advertising the strength he possessed. The muscles in his arms and legs were thick, bulging powerhouses for the force he could exert. Elthrinn had no doubt that there was speed as well as strength in this body. Although out of proportion to the body she was most accustomed to, these were not the limbs of something that lumbered noisily though the trees.
Searching the Darkness (Erythleh Chronicles Book 2) Page 26
