My mate.
By the time Gorman is finished, Moreth has arrived. They confer briefly before Moreth approaches Essmira, all kindness and smiles. Gorman, meanwhile, takes me gently by the elbow and escorts me into the hall.
“How bad is it, Gorman? Did I…”
The kindest, most stoic male in all of Lemora turns to me then and, in the center of the hallway, cocks his fist back and up, high over his head. The pose looks preposterous. It robs me of whatever I was going to say next.
“Gorman, are you mad? What are you…”
And then he punches me right in the nose.
I fall back with a wild wail, tripping over nothing and landing on my ass. I grab my nose, which is leaking pink blood all over my upper lip, and sputter reflexively, “What…what was that for?”
He doesn’t answer me. Why would he need to? I already know.
He just glowers down at me as he readjusts his robes — robes Essmira made him because she’s a good creature, good enough for Lemora, and far too good for me. Once finished, he says, “Her injuries are superficial, but I will tell Merquin that Essmira will stay here this lunar while she rests. I’ll have a cart return her to Merquin’s estate the coming solar. I’ll also let Merquin know that you are not to see the female again in private quarters without an escort.”
I wince, hatred for this male making me want to fight back, but self-hatred outweighing it. I nod as I clutch my upper heart and then rub my forehead. My horns have stopped vibrating. Now they’re just itching again.
“I thought she was enjoying it,” I offer and the words sound so trite and lame that I wince as they hit the bitter air. “Why didn’t she ask me to stop?”
“She doesn’t know how,” Gorman says, picking the scab across my heart to reveal the wound anew. “If it had been an Oosa on top of her, I’m sure she’d have pretended to enjoy it then, too.”
He digs a grave, the bloodthirsty bastard, throws my body in the hole and showers dirt over me softly. I’ve never felt so low. I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t know what to do. “I don’t know what to do. I should go back in. I should…apologize?” I’ve never apologized to anyone before for anything. I’m not even sure I know how to go about it.
“You haven’t apologized to her yet?” I meet his gaze. It’s black and burning. “Raingar, Raingar, Raingar…” He shakes his head, straightens and takes a step back. “I’ll be taking the next few solars in my cabin in the countryside while I reconsider my future within this clan. I’m not sure you are the male I thought you were. And if that female ever chooses to forgive you, I want you to be haunted by the knowledge that it is only because she doesn’t know how not to. I, however, do.”
The male who has been my best friend for as long as I can remember turns from me and walks away without another word. Wind billows in through the curtain when he parts it and steps through, and I see faces — dozens of faces — gathered on the other side of it, all watching me and whispering about their naked clan chief sitting on the floor of the hall wishing…just wishing…
And I’m not even sure for what.
Maybe just some way to make it right.
8
Raingar
“Are you sure you’re alright?” I ask her for the eleventh time since we’ve left Merquin’s keep.
“Yeffa, Raingar, I promise you, I’m fine.”
“You look fine.”
“I am fine.”
“Are you sure you’re fine?”
“Yeffa. I’m sure I’m fine.” She snorts a little and it makes me feel lightyears lighter. She has her hair up today and it reveals the lovely red curls on the back of her neck. She’s wearing a simple tunic and thin, linen trousers today, both in lilac. It makes her skin look ethereal and I hate that that feral voice inside of me feels threatened by any male who looks at her and half the females, too.
I’m supposed to have silenced that voice. I’m supposed to be making it right.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt before she’s even finished. It’s hard not to. Seeing her off the solar after she left my keep, she’d had red splotches on her brown skin around her jaw and throat and likely countless other places from where I grabbed and aggressed her.
Merquin, taking one look at the marks, had punched me in the nose. Earlier this solar, Librida had done the same. It’s been six solars, but I’ve been punched on all of them, first by the other clan chiefs, and then by Lyla and Timor.
“I know. I’m sorry, too. I should have said something. I spoke to Merquin about it at great length and I feel more confident now if you wanted to try again.”
“TRY AGAIN!” I shout, startled out of my skin. I shake my head aggressively, so hard that the sight of the other pad pads and Lemoran on the path around us blur into a brown continuum. “Are you mad!”
She snorts. “Nob, I don’t think so.”
“You are. Perhaps, I need to take you back to Moreth.”
She snorts, then smiles. “You’re serious?”
“I clearly broke something in your brain. The solar that I hurt you, I found…red on my fingers. I hurt you inside.” My voice cracks over and over and I rub my face with the offending hand before balling that hand into a fist.
She reaches for it, but I jerk away from her and put as much space as the path will allow between us. A pad pad veers towards us and I panic at its proximity to Essmira. She’s so small. She could be trampled by it. I was hardly intending to hurt her, but I did effortlessly. She’s so soft and it’s my job to protect her. Even from me.
“Stay over there!” I shout at the rider, directing it to the far side of the path. Giving Essmira a wide berth, I maneuver between Essmira and danger.
The female Lemoran riding the infernal beast frowns at me, as most members of my clan have been frowning at me for the better part of five solars when Merquin came to escort Essmira out of my keep.
“Don’t look at me like that, Stara!”
The younger Lemoran female sticks out her tongue and, as she passes Essmira, tips her head down at her. “Hi there, miriga. Good to see you again!”
“How do you know each other?” I bark, unable to help the words from slipping out. I glance at Essmira apologetically, but she hasn’t turned away from Stara yet.
Instead, she says, “Good to see you, too. And, to answer your question, Raingar, Stara came in to have a tunic mended. Normally, Lyla would handle the Lemoran fits, but she was busy, so I helped her.”
“Yeffa. I had no idea this was your mate. I heard she was some beyond beautiful apparition. Didn’t expect to see her getting her hands dirty with Lyla in the dyes.” She chuckles and Essmira chuckles and snorts beside me and it’s like they’re sharing a secret I know nothing about and I hate it. I hate it more than most things I’ve ever hated before. But not all. I hated hurting her more.
“It was so much fun. I’ve never worked with Walrey dyes before. The colors are incredible.”
“Aren’t they?” Stara beams, then blasts me with a frosty gaze as she says to Essmira, “Are your bruises healing up?”
“Oh. Yeffa.” Essmira nods and tucks a stray curl behind her ear and I want nothing more than to mimic the gesture. Too bad, I’ll never touch her again. I’ll hurt her every time. I lose control too quickly around her. So nob. I’ll be her mate from afar. It will work. It will definitely work. “It was just a couple of bumps and bruises. The Lemoran anatomy is very different to mine and I think Raingar and I are learning we’ll need to be more careful in the future.”
She gives me so much grace. Far, far too much of it. Stara looks mildly surprised, and then mildly annoyed. “You need help with anything ever, you know you can come to me and I’ll punch Raingar in the nose.”
“I think our poor clan chief has already been punched in the nose by half the clan. Look how swollen his nose is, still.” She snorts so loudly she hiccups and then laughs, like I didn’t make her cry on that bed. Like I really am worthy of being forgiven.
But I know better. Gor
man knows better. Merquin and Tana and Reyna and Bebette know better, too. Stara knows better. And Gorman’s right. I can’t accept Essmira’s forgiveness because I know it isn’t real. It isn’t real. So keeping my distance and keeping her safe are the only solutions.
Stara just looks at me and grumpily spits, “A vast improvement if you ask me.”
Essmira just snorts and laughs like it’s a joke, but I don’t know if Stara was joking. Stara continues on and my nerves are frayed when most of the beings on the path to the mines stop and speak to my mate. It’s not that they aren’t nice. They are. They’re just big and I’m realizing now that one wrong touch by a Lemoran, one flutter of a Rekkaru’s bony wings, one swipe of a Hypha’s fin, one misstep by a startled pad pad could be Essmira’s doom.
“Would you stop that racket!” I shout at a mixed group that’s been speaking to Essmira for far too long already. “We have places to be and things to do.”
“Well, we’re here to speak to the miriga, not to you.” The Rekkaru turns his back to me, blocking my view of Essmira and I panic! I can’t have that. I shove him aside, but I shove him too hard and he crashes into the Lemoran female beside him. Both go toppling to the ground in pain because of me.
OHR! I’M THE OHRING PROBLEM!
“Pagh!” I shout, corralling Essmira away from the group.
“Are they alright?” She says, looking over her shoulder as she starts down the hill towards the entrance to the caves system where kintarr grows in reckless abandon. The thing we paid for her with…Ohr! Maybe taking her on a tour of my mines, which are second largest among all the clans after Merquin’s, was a bad idea.
I seem to have only bad ideas these solars.
“They’ll be fine,” I bluster, nerves mounting, sweat forming in between my horns.
“Are you sure? Shouldn’t we stop to check?”
“Nob nob! We’re here. These are the mines. They’re great big mines. I am very proud of the mines. Kintarr grows in the mines. I will show you the mines.” OHRING OHR, RAINGAR, GET IT TOGETHER!
“Are you alright?”
“I’M FINE!” I shout at her.
“Raingar?” There’s something funny about her tone. It quivers a little bit. It makes my horns hurt. When I was with her in the bed and everything had been right before everything went wrong, I lost another chunk of grey from my horns. But since then? Since I let Merquin carry her in that cart away from me, all bruised and sad and sorry?
Nothing.
No more flaking. Not even little scales. And right now, the black encasing half of each of my white horns feels terribly tight. It’s reminiscent of the moment I entered the atmosphere in Quadrant One. Like the outer shell is firming back up and hardening.
Anger and irritation swirl together in my chest, combining with the unsettling darkness that makes me glance up at the sky where pale lavender meets indigo. The underbellies of the clouds are always darkest.
My voice is quieter when I say, “Everything’s alright, Essmira.”
“Hm,” she says, and I know she doesn’t believe me at all. “I’m excited to tour the mines?” She says but her voice is pitched in a question.
I sigh and rub my face roughly, a weight suddenly heavy on my chest. “Good. They’re down below. Did you notice the view, though? It’s one of the best in my territory.”
The path turns and the hill slopes down and when we reach the top of the knoll, she smiles and the weight isn’t so heavy. “It’s incredible,” she offers and then she looks at me and it feels like everything might, just maybe be okay. “You must be proud.”
“You should be proud, too. You’re this clan’s miriga.”
“Miriga?”
Ohr! I curse under my breath. “Uhmmmmm,” I stutter. “It’s…a term of affection. Yeffa. Affection?”
She raises an eyebrow at me and sticks her tongue into her cheek. “You’re keeping something from me again, Raingar, and I don’t like it.”
I bark out a laugh, unable to help myself, and shake my head. “Don’t you start now. Otherwise, you’ll sound like me.”
She grins and her brown eyes glitter as she looks out over the sprawling green, yellow and purple mosses that clash in striking visions over the rocky topography. The purple sky above scatters everything in mist that, from this vantage point, looks like glitter. The yellow dirt path turns pink halfway down, the dust from the crystals in the fore mines tend to be.
The opening in the next large rocky hill is where this path leads. Creatures — mostly Lemoran — filter in and out of it in a steady stream. Rekkaru and Asgid, a few Hypha and even Twee and Holdar, the only known kits produced from a Hypha-Lemoran pairing — ghastly looking things — help load and drive the pad pad carts that carry the unrefined kintarr to the processing station located just outside of my village. They don’t work the mines though. Dangerous places, kintarr mines. Only Lemoran have skin tough enough for them.
But that’s why I plan to show her only briefly what’s within and the entire time, I’ll keep her safe, close.
“You really won’t tell me?”
I smile sheepishly, a little embarrassed. “It’s a good thing, I just don’t think I deserve the title.”
“You? But your clan has been calling me miriga.”
“Yeffa, but it’s a term that honors me in a way I don’t deserve.”
She softens and she’s already too soft for this world. “Raingar…”
“Nob, nob, nob. Don’t. Let’s just…let me show you the mines. They’re beautiful. Not as beautiful as you are…but still…they’re nice.”
She smiles even wider. “I forgive you, you know. You’re inexperienced and I can’t imagine what the rutting madness of Xiveri must feel like for you. I didn’t realize you’d be made so uncomfortable by my discomfort. I was trained to believe that males don’t care for the pleasure of females. I’m sorr…”
“Please!” I jolt a foot in the air and edge quickly away from her when she stretches her hand out to touch me. “Essmira, for the love of the cosmos, do not apologize. I deserve to have all four of my stones removed and fashioned into a necklace for you to wear as a sign of my contrition. If you apologize, I’ll have to give you the pillar, too.”
Her jaw drops open and she snorts with her mouth open wide. She cups her hand around her nose, like that might help the onslaught of hiccups that comes to her. It doesn’t. Instead, she just laughs and eventually, I break until we’re both standing there a few paces apart, chuckling at one another.
“While that was colorful, Raingar, I think you should leave the fashion choices to me.”
Laughing still, I cock my head toward the mine. “Let’s go. I have different stones to show you.”
Inside the large entrance, shards of old, previously mined kintarr gleams against every surface, against every stone. She gasps around at everything, including all the Lemoran who warmly welcome her while simultaneously shunning me.
I don’t like how many creatures surround her, but I’m quickly distracted when Mino and Olga approach me ranting about some problem with the new ventilation system I procured. It’s deeper in the mine structure and I’ve got no choice but to either follow them — and drag Essmira along — or ask one of the dangerous rocky Lemoran beasts to show her around in here. Out from underneath my watch! Blood flows directly out of my face through the soles of my feet at the thought.
“Essmira, come on. Stay close,” I bark at her as we move through the next three caves, further down into the earth.
The caves go down deep, much deeper than we know, and have more kintarr within them than any of us could hope to mine in our lifetimes, especially considering that, in its natural habitat and only if mined using gentle techniques that don’t scrape the kintarr bud from its root stone, kintarr regenerates so quickly it’s creepy. It’s a crystal, but it acts more like a living organism.
With Mino and Olga still bickering at my back, I’m forced to bicker, too, as I show them how to use the ventilation system ag
ain, the lousy ingrates. Eventually, they want me to reinstall it myself because the morons don’t understand what I’m talking about and, to do so, we climb up onto a high stone shelf closest to the surface, where the stem of the ventilator penetrates. I don’t invite Essmira to join me up here, but leave her in Willa’s safe hands. Willa’s one of the younger Lemoran females who works the mines. Her hands aren’t yet as blocky and thick as some of the others, and her horns aren’t so sharp, either…but then…from here, where I’m standing, she certainly does seem to tower over Essmira…
Wait just a moment!
That isn’t ohring Willa!
Essmira’s against the opposite cave wall and, though Willa is standing beside her, she’s focused on the male in front of her. A male called Jagger or Jaguar or Jabber or some nonsense like it. I can’t tell from here. And she…she! Ohring female! She’s got her hands on his back and is stroking him all over.
My rage triples. My hands clench. The ventilator is forgotten and so are the only two rules of the mine — rules I put in place:
Never go anywhere alone.
No loud noises that could disrupt the fragile equilibrium of the kintarr. It’s reactivity is part of what makes it so powerful. It’s reactivity is part of what makes it so lethal.
I roar so loud my whole body shakes, “JAGGUAR GET THE OHR AWAY FROM ESSMIRA!”
And then I watch it happen, as if in slow motion. All hundred some odd faces scattered around this cave turn to look up at me, which means they aren’t looking at her when the kintarr directly above her head breaks.
It plummets towards her, a translucent pink stalactite coated in small shells, calcium and other natural sediments that make it appear murky. And as the pointed end somehow rearranges itself to point directly down at my mate, I yell out a mangled, tortured sound and would have likely lunged off of the stone shelf beneath my feet had Olga not wrenched me back onto my ass. And I’m still on my ass, one small kintarr crystal stabbing me in the left butt cheek, when I hear it.
BOOM.
Taken to Lemora Page 14
