Shared Between Them

by Korey Mae Johnson

  “We can escape the kingdom, maybe. But we can't escape our fate, Taric,” Draevan reminded, his voice pained. “It's foretold—the chosen one will be half giant-slayer and half-elfkind. Unfortunately, I cannot think of any other giants, or of anyone who’s ever slain any… 'Tis too late. We can no sooner keep the sun from rising.”

  Taric grunted unhappily, cursing his own name.

  When they walked into the castle, they were told that the king requested audience with them upon their return. They were led out to the festival yard in the back of the castle, where everyone was beginning to assemble for the hangings. The king had never looked happier, his smile never redder, his piercings particularly shiny. They could almost be fooled that the king was happy to see them return, but they feared the king really just liked a good, entertaining execution.

  Only an elf would view an execution like a normal person would view a picnic on a sunny spring day. Thinking about it, the only time when Draevan or Taric had ever heard of an elf being seen was when a village execution was going on. They’d heard in the nearby villages that elves would sometimes appear to watch and then leave afterwards with a spring in their step.

  “Did you take care of your business, lads?” the king asked them, chortling.

  “As best we could,” Draevan grumbled and plopped heavily down in the seat the king offered him. There was a turkey leg on the platter in front of him that he made quick work of as the king offered his condolences to their mood and then began to crow merrily about the hangings that were coming about.

  “You see,” the king told them, “because of you lads, it's a larger event than it's ever been! Because the giant's dead, we were able to clean the untouchable thieves out of the Blue Forest and beyond! Now that there's no true danger of the giant, the bounty-hunters and royal guards have been busy bees all month long; they've been bringing back carts and carts full of thieves, murderers, poachers—you name it. I even have a couple of beheadings scheduled!” He clapped his hands together with excitement.

  “Oh, goodie,” Taric sighed into his freshly-poured chalice of wine.

  Even though they had definitely delivered their fair share of death—hell, maybe even because of it—Taric and Draevan were never excited to see one man after another succumb to justice. Some of their friends were forced to go to every execution growing up in their village, their fathers thinking it would teach them some sort of lesson. The only lesson their own grandfather had seen fit to teach them was that life was crueler than it needed to be. He never made them go, and so they rarely had gone.

  Once the king announced to a ready crowd for the 'festivities' to commence, Draevan and Taric noticed that the worst part of a hanging wasn't the actual death. What was by far worse was the amount of groveling the poor victim would do before he was ignored and dragged up to the scaffold.

  After two, even Draevan, who normally let his stomach dictate his morals before his brain was given the opportunity, had quite lost his appetite. “Excuse me, Your Highness,” he grumbled, standing from his seat. “We are tired from the journey, so we'll have to excuse ourselves…”

  The king frowned. “Oh?” he said, disappointed. “But you're my honored guests… And it's just begun!” He had the look of a man who was insulted. Apparently, he was proud of this event.

  “Well, the thing is…” Draevan began to say, before he was cut short as a boy with muddy, bare feet and wearing a bag on his head was led out towards the king to get his death sentence. Needless to say, the sad sight broke Draevan’s train of thought.

  There was a sack on the boy's head, just like with every criminal led out, but this time when the boy was 'unveiled', the crowed hummed with excitement.

  Taric's breath hitched. It wasn't a boy at all! It was Kyra; her coat had hid her curves, and the sack had hid everything else, even her ivory hair that was knotted messily to the back of her neck. Dirt and soot blackened whole patches of her skin, and she stood shivering in the cold, winter air. She looked like she had spent a very hard, long month in the dungeons.

  Taric and Draevan watched her with their mouths open wide enough for a bird to perch on their tongue. They heard what the king was saying, “Well, well! The last of the infamous Kingsguard family finally meets its end!” he gloated. “After your brothers had a short-drop-and-a-sudden-stop, I thought you would have been gobbled up by the giant soon after!”

  “Well, I'm glad my family could entertain you one last time,” she replied, spitting with disdain.

  “Me as well! Farewell, Lady Kingsguard!” the king waved his hand, and the executioners grabbed her arms to drag her up the scaffold towards the noose.

  Moving as one, Draevan and Taric didn't even plead to the king. Their first thought was to get her safe.

  They jumped over the rail and pounced onto the ground fifteen feet below. Draevan had his sword unsheathed and raised high above his head, and the executioners stared at him with horror in their pale yellow eyes. They wouldn't fight him—elves were cowardly where battle was concerned. “Drop her,” Draevan hissed, and the executioners immediately dropped her arms and showed Draevan their hands. Elves, after all, loved executing but hated fighting.

  When she was released, it was with a motion that made her topple into Taric.

  The king stood up on his feet and put his hands on the rail in front of him. “What's the meaning of this, Giantsbane?” the king demanded, looking more aghast than angry. He was using the name that he’d given them when they’d first come into the kingdom. The crowd around them was certainly excited.

  “This girl is under our protection,” Taric replied wrapping his arm tightly around Kyra and holding her to his chest. Surprisingly, she didn’t try to escape him. In fact, her nails were digging desperately into his arm, and she was trembling. The brave face she had displayed in front of the king was a farce. She had been horrified by her impending death.

  “This girl is a wanted criminal from an old family of traitors and thieves!” the king argued firmly and loudly enough for everyone to hear. “She's an untouchable outcast! The noose is really too good for her kind!”

  “We choose her as wife!” Draevan firmly and loudly decreed.

  The king was so surprised that he took a step back. The crowd loudly tittered and guffawed around them. “Her?” the king asked, looking like he was unsure that he'd heard Draevan correctly. “Her?” he echoed. “You'd take her as wife? Out of anyone? You can have your choice of anyone in the kingdom…” he explained, which was silly of him, since he wasn't excited about giving any elf-woman to them at all, and certainly wouldn’t have ever promised one to them if he hadn't been so desperate to have someone kill that giant to get his precious shield back.

  “If you will bid us a boon and pardon her, Your Highness…” Taric said, puffing out his chest. He was ordinarily horrified of speaking in front of crowds, but the girl clawing into his arm with fear was enough to keep his words loud and steady. “We will be more than happy to take her as wife and leave your good ladies to be had only by elf-kind. We have no desire to take a beloved daughter from a father, or sister from a brother.” It was a lie, of course. They would have had trouble ever being aroused by any other she-elf!

  “The way we see it,” he continued, “this is the only way to keep your people from heartbreak and to save a lady from the noose.”

  “Ah!” the king grinned, nodding. “Now I understand! You just don't want to see a female hung! I forgot how soft you humans are when it comes to women's punishments…” He straightened the robe on his shoulders, grinning. “So, I will grant you what you wish, for we owe you much, my lads! Very well! Very well, indeed!” He gave a happy laugh. “Then have your woman; she is pardoned! Kyra Kingsguard will forever be known from here forth as Kyra Giantsbane!” He gestured with his arm. “Bring the marriage chalice, and let's make this official.”

  Draevan looked back and forth before putting his sword into its sheath. Taric did the same with his own, and they exchanged looks. They were s
urely thinking the same thing: that this was not a very romantic setting. Two men's bodies were already stacked on the other side of the yard, and many men were waiting their turn with sacks over their faces off to the other side of the stadium.

  Draevan pulled Kyra out of Taric's arms so he could put his hands on the sides of her face. Adrenaline was still surging through his veins and reddening his skin. Draevan wanted to ward off any attempts at her throwing a fit and told her firmly, “You are ours now. Do you understand? Ours. You have no choice in this. Your choices are spent.” Her lip trembled in reply, and he asked in a softer tone, “Are you injured?”

  She shook her head weakly, failing to meet either of their eyes. Taric couldn’t decide whether this was because she was tired, terrified, or ashamed.

  Draevan took a deep, relief-filled breath but then went right back to being firm. Taric could see that he was still pride-stung from her disappearance and the taking of his horse and his heart along with her. “Good. That’s one good bit of luck out of all this. We’ve been combing the forest for you for a whole month.” He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “This could have all been avoided, pet, if you just did as you were told. Let this be a firm lesson for you.”

  The girl started to sniffle, but Taric looked over her head and gave the smallest of guilty grins at Draevan, and Draevan smirked back. He was happy again—they finally had the girl they'd wanted from the beginning.

  “Damn strange creatures,” Draevan grumbled to Taric in their secret tongue. “Who are we to agree to marry her in this hell?”

  Taric entwined his hand around Kyra's. “Ones who don't want to wait any longer to bed their wife and leave this horrible place. This is a blessing, believe me!” Taric was practically laughing when he said it, trying not to let himself realize that if they hadn't seen the king when they did, or if they had left sooner, or if they hadn't given up looking for Kyra when they did, she'd be dead, along with their hopes of happiness.

  “Please… Please don't make me marry… I'm just… just…” she murmured, sniffling, unable to reach their eyes.

  “Fifteen paces towards death?” Draevan finished, in no mood to broach any argument from her. “I can't believe you'd have the gall to refuse us. We just saved your life. You're marrying us, and that's that. Now shush with your nonsense.”

  “But—but I can't marry two men!” she sobbed.

  “You can and you will,” Draevan argued.

  Taric wanted to wrap her up in his arms and explain that in the Northlands, it was actually quite normal for a wife to take two husbands at once. Because the nobles tended to scoop up many women for their harems, there weren’t normally scores of women to go around for the rest of the population. Strangely, it worked out that way—a woman and her children were sure to never to go hungry with two providers, such women tended to be better kept in line, and if the village was raided, she had two protectors, and maybe more depending on the age of her sons.

  Draevan and Taric had been honing their skills to kill the giant, knowing there would only be one wife given as their reward. That being said, they were quite resolved to the fact that they would be sharing a wife their entire lives. That idea, however, might have been quite different to a girl from a culture where, although one elf could marry multiple she-elves, it was simply unheard of for a woman to marry more than one man.

  The king actually walked down onto the field with the sacred wedding chalice in his hands, set to perform the ceremony for them. He actually seemed friendlier than ever now that it was certain Draevan or Taric wouldn't ask for the hand of one of his daughters or nieces.

  During the ceremony, called 'The Binding', the men drank out of the chalice before it was offered to Kyra, who dug in her heels and clenched her lips together.

  The king glared at her for a long moment. It wasn’t usual for an elven girl to be forced into marriage, but then nothing about this situation was usual. It was unusual to have humans in the kingdom at all, it was unusual to get any sort of pardon from the king, and it was unusual to have an audience of this size at a wedding ceremony. Everyone was watching from the stadium around them.

  “Hold her,” Draevan ordered Taric, who promptly pinned her hands to the small of her back with his grip. Draevan took the chalice, pinched her nose, and waited for her to open her mouth where the wine from the cup was immediately sloshed into her mouth.

  She coughed and sputtered. When Taric let her hands go, she wiped them across her face, muttering something to herself that he couldn't hear. She was trembling again, and then Taric and Draevan both put a hand around one of her upper arms, as if helping her to stand.

  The king had a gratified look on his face as he continued the ceremony, as if the force they were using with their bride pleased him in some way.

  It was then that the men felt a burning on their skin that stretched from their fingernails to their elbows—Draevan's left arm and Taric's right. This burning began to sear, as if an invisible knife was slicing into them.

  Draevan's expression changed to murderous, and he opened his mouth to say something, but a forlorn cry of pain escaped Kyra's lips, and he turned to look at her.

  The skin on her arms was beginning to change. While there used to be a small white tattoo spanning up some of her fingers, now the lace-like paisley tattoo began to creep up her skin like a vine, right before their eyes.

  “You are bound forever together,” the king finished, and then gestured for his people to rejoice. For a long while, Taric and Draevan were too busy inspecting the arms of their new wife to begin inspecting their own. When they looked down at their hands and forearms, they saw that where their own skin had been seared and pained was a tattoo exactly like their wife's.

  “What is this?” Draevan asked the king as the people all around them cheered, happy that they weren't the ones who had to marry them.

  “The Binding,” the king replied, as if the answer was all too obvious. When Draevan remained unhappy by the response, he added, “There's magic binding you together now. You all have become of one spirit, and her powers are now shared by you.”

  “She cannot turn invisible?” Draevan asked, awed. Somehow they both felt that was the best part of this 'binding' nonsense.

  The king looked at him like Draevan was a child fooled by a magician pulling a coin from behind his ear. “She cannot hide from you anymore than you can hide from yourself.” The king turned, then looked over his shoulder as if he'd forgotten something. “Congratulations.”

  Chapter Three

  It had been a trying day, and all Kyra wanted to do was vomit what pittance was left in her stomach and curl up into the fetal position in a corner somewhere. Her stomach was tied into knots, and she had barely slept for nearly a month. She was exhausted, cold, and damp because the dungeons had less-than-ideal conditions for those who wanted to stay dry.

  Her arms throbbed, and her pride? Well, that was long gone. It had been gone since the night she decided to play with fire in the form of the human giant-killers.

  “C'mon, honey,” Taric said when she crumpled over before they'd even made it out of the arena. He hoisted her easily into his arms and carried her like a babe up the stairs leading towards the castle.

  “Is she alright?” Draevan asked over her head. “God help us if she's taken ill!”

  “I don't know. She's cold as ice,” Taric replied, concern saturating his voice. He looked down at her. “What were you thinking about, running away? We told you we'd take care of you from here on out.”

  “I'm not…” She meant to argue that she wasn't a slave, that they didn't own her, and a lot of other trifle that, since the binding ceremony, wasn't at all true. Wives, when looked at it in a certain way, were very similar to slaves. They had to do what they were bid; their husbands kept all the rights of their person.

  She didn't get to even argue. She passed out. She had never fainted before, but then again, she had never been nearly hung and then married to two human men against her wi
ll before. Though the real reason she'd fainted was mainly because she hadn't been given water or food for the last three days because the executioners preferred a clean corpse, and before that, the bowls of gruel she had been eating the last three weeks weren’t the most nutritious meals she'd ever eaten.

  When her eyes fluttered open, she found herself lying in a bed. She had never lain in a bed before; and it was just like she'd heard it to be. It was like sleeping on cloud! Even though her head and stomach ached, she could still feel the fluffy mattress under her, pleasantly warm.

  It was then she realized she had been… bathed. Her body felt so clean and soft, and she smelled good, fresh.

  “Finally!” she heard a male's voice above her say. The word was pregnant with relief. “She's waking up.” She felt a calloused hand press against her cheek. The skin of the hand touching her felt so rough; like a crust of bread. She opened her eyes and saw Draevan above her, his brow wrinkled as he gazed down at her. “Dying after the ceremony is a cheap way to get out of your duties,” he told her. As always, his voice and eyes were stern and made her stomach flutter with nerves, but his touch was careful and loving, like she was a small pet.

  “Told you she'd be fine,” Taric said, leaning over her and glancing at her face. He put a hand under her and hoisted her back up until he replaced his hold with about five pillows to prop her up. Real pillows—feather ones. “Even the color's back in her cheeks.” He grabbed a mug from a nearby tray and put it into her hands. “Drink this,” he ordered her.

  His order was so firm, she didn't even sniff the contents first; she just brought it to her lips and drank. Luckily, she discovered it was only lukewarm water. When she was done, Taric took it and filled it again, and then again. Upon the forth cup, she shook her head and pushed it away. “I'm going to start sloshing,” she grumbled.