“You don’t say? She’s working with Timor and Lyla, then?”
“Yeffa. I mean, nob, she was until…”
I’m pulled around by the chatter, but the words fade as more creatures start to cheer. I don’t know why they’re bloody cheering. I know it’s likely at my expense, but I can’t bring myself to cower out of this. I’m a rotten bastard, yeffa, but I’m a clan chief — not a coward.
“Raingar, you’ve got to loosen up a bit! Don’t be so stiff!” Pilla shouts. He’s on the ground below, still. No longer dancing, he’s at a table playing a game of mok bir, the less dramatic version of the Niahhorru game mok biz, played with sticks instead of tokens.
I shake my fist at him and release a snarl, but it’s Essmira who responds on my behalf in words I can’t seem to find. She reaches across my body, slides her two soft hands over each of my arms. She pulls my raised fist back against my body and ticks her chin up at him. “I happen to like our stiff clan chief and the way he moves his hips.” She winks at him and Willa, nearby, shrieks with laughter.
Was that…was that innuendo? Is she…perhaps lobba isn’t the problem then. She truly has gone mental!
My mind shorts. My skin sizzles. I will my cock not to rise, but as she moves against me more vigorously it betrays every command I give it. She twists and spins and sings and dances and I move my awkward giant body on the table, content to stamp and stomp and simply be mesmerized.
She has another wyrn of ale and I have another two. It isn’t enough to dull my sensitivity to her skin, but it is enough to drop the reserve I had about touching her. I keep touching her, catching myself and then flinching away.
She falls against my chest, spilling lobba all over me though she neither seems to care or notice. “You know, I’m not a delicate flower, my Lord.” Her voice is a little slurred and I’m a little worried.
“I know you’re not, miriga” I say, brushing some of the spilled ale away.
“Do you?”
“I…” I’m not sure. “I’m trying. I’m going to try.”
“Good. That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it, Raingar?”
I capture both of her palms against my chest to stop them from fluttering over my skin and making my carefully composed restraint unfurl. “Raingar. You called me Raingar.”
“And you called me miriga.” She leans against me. She’s struggling to stand. Her eyes are already starting to slink shut.
“Miriga, I think we should get you to bed.”
She doesn’t respond and, though I yearn to give her choices, I’m trying and I use that as my excuse when I scoop her off of her feet and carefully carry her from the table to the floor, across the pub, to the stairs to the second floor and find an open sleeping chamber. I kick the door shut behind me and the movement jolts her awake. Her eyes meet mine in the moonlight shining in through the room’s twin windows, one on either side of the narrow bed.
This is it.
The decision rests with me. What kind of life will she lead? The same one she has led under Igmora and Tyto’s vile, repugnant rule? Or something else? Something wild and perfect for this wild and perfect creature.
“I will not stand in your way, Essmira. But I would, I mean, if you’ll still have me, like to be your guide. I am a clan chief here, and we aren’t like the Voraxians — I don’t have control over all the planets in this quadrant — and I’m no scummy Niahhorru pirate. I can’t give you the skies. But I can give you Lemora.
“I know that a female of your caliber deserves everything. The suns, the moons, every shooting star, but I can only offer you mine. Those that I have.” I cradle her with one arm and pull the blankets back before settling her on the room’s only bed.
In the moonlight, the sweat on her skin shimmers like the Lemoran mines just after a fresh harvest. She smiles and leans back and my muscles all twitch, firing with the urge to reach her, gather her up and rut her into oblivion, but I can’t do that. I shouldn’t have done anything to her. I should have just taken Librida and her mate’s ohring advice and let her be. Let her live.
“I would be honored to have you as my guide, Raingar.”
“Shh. I don’t need an answer. You won’t remember any of this when you wake, anyway. Just sleep for now. We can go back to fighting at solarbreak.”
“I don’t think I want to fight anymore. I think I just want to be happy. Isn’t that what you want?”
I nod, heart full to bursting as I touch her hair, her cheek, her nose, her neck. “Yeffa, Essmira. But I already am. Every moment in your presence.” I clear my throat, feeling awkward and sheepish. “I will just be at the door. Shout if you need me.”
“Raingar?”
“Yeffa?”
“Will you hold me in the lunar? I’ve never been held and I’ve always wanted to be.”
My throat gets tight. What a request. So small. So painful. I was planning on sleeping in front of her door to keep the riffraff out but I don’t bother explaining this to her now. From now on, whatever she wants the answer is, “Yeffa. I’ll just get you a pitcher of sweet water first. You’ll need it if you’ve had a lot of ale to drink.”
“Thank you.”
I grit my teeth, wanting her to stop thanking me for things. For everything. Wanting to rip out Igmora’s bloody throat for denying this perfect female something so small as this simple affection in the lunar. But I don’t.
I just fight my way through the dancing horde below and return with a pitcher of sweet water to find her fast asleep. I set the pitcher on the floor beside her bed and stack two cups next to it. Then I slide onto the bed beside her. She smells like bloodstone and like moss, like fresh dew — and now, like lobba. I am careful to wrap a sheet around her, not wanting to abrade her skin any more than I already have with the rough way I’ve handled her and I do just what she asked.
I form my body around hers and strap my arm across her chest. I squeeze her into the cavern of mine and I make her vows, scrolls and scrolls of them, that I will do better, that I will guide her through the wonders of this life, and that she will never hurt again.
She will live and I will not stop her.
13
Essmira
I wake with a start and with a sickening realization that there is a male in my bed and I will be punished for it brutally.
If Tyto finds out that I was with another male, even in sleep, he will make me run pleasure simulations for him for the next several solars, without rest, without food, without anything to drink. He’s done it before for offenses much less grievous.
My stomach roils and churns, turning over on itself like a wave. I lurch up and out of the male’s arms and stagger off of the bed. I double over. Oh stars. I’m going to be sick. I glance around and see a door against the right wall and try it, but it opens onto a ledge and beyond that is empty space.
I rush back inside and try the second door and find a chamber pot that smells…the smell is enough for my stomach to finally lose the battle to the bile raging within it. With a great heave over the chamber pot, I give it all up.
I heave and I heave…and I heave…I heave until I can’t heave anymore.
Eventually, I manage to stand up straight. I’m dizzy and disoriented and I’m not sure what to expect because I’ve never felt like this, so when I stagger dramatically into the main room only to be caught in arms, I’m quite shocked. I’m carried to a bed — nob, I’m carried back to the bed — by the male I know to be my master.
Wait a moment.
There’s no master. There’s no Tyto. Not anymore.
I am something else. Something that starts with an m…
“Stay here!” Raingar shouts in a panic, “You’re sick! You weren’t supposed to get sick! Lemoran don’t get sick from lobba! Here, drink this water and I’ll be back soon with food and a healer and all the things!” Stomp stomp, slam slam. He’s gone and I just lay there, wishing for the end.
My stomach bubbles and churns disgustingly and I get up when my body no lon
ger allows me to lie still and I heave and heave and heave over a pitcher that’s been placed out for me. The water within has been emptied. For this purpose? I hope not. I’m miriga…and I’m ohring embarrassed.
Eventually — a miserable lifetime later — I’m dragged by my hair into the present. I recognize I’m in a room that I don’t recognize and that I shouldn’t be here because I escaped through the hatch with the rope Gorman told me to get out of the chest and last thing I remember before that is shouting at Raingar and him shouting at me.
Only we hadn’t been shouting anymore, had we? We’d reached a tenuous middle ground, that dangerous truce. And then he came for me. Flashes of memories come back. Raingar stomping by my side…dancing. He danced with me all through the lunar.
I want to go to him, shout at him, and tell him I forgive him…I want to do all of this, and then I want to lay down and die.
I make it to the door and then out onto the landing, which overlooks a room full of beings sprawled out across floor and benches and the one great table. I blink and in the haze, manage to spot a female I recognize.
“Charana,” I croak.
She lifts her face from the table, fins curling up as she grins. “Miriga,” she says, and then she tips her face forward. She has no differentiating marks from the males of her species, however, she is slighter and her eyes and mouth are both larger. Her fins aren’t as impressive, but that doesn’t make her any less impressive.
“I…” My stomach heaves and I slap both hands onto the table.
“Essmira, are you alright?”
“I’ve never…” I grip the edge of the wood so hard that my arm muscles burn all the way up to the elbows. “I’ve never…”
She starts to chuckle as she rises to her feet. Her hands grip my outer arms and give me a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t you go back to bed? Raingar’s been fretting around. He’ll have more water and food and likely every healer in his clan and the surrounding ones on your doorstep soon.”
“Raingar?” I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut tight as another bout of nausea threatens to take me off of my feet. “I need to tell him…something…”
“Oh stars help you. You’ve never had spirits before, have you?” She gives me a dull pat on the arm.
“The…my sickness is from the ale?” Cursed thing!
“Yeffa.” She laughs a little harder and tries to pry my fingers off of the table. I’m resistant. “Come on. Let’s get you up to your room before Raingar has a nervous breakdown.”
I shake my head, not sure how to answer as I lean against her, letting her take my weight. I’m sweating. And I stink. “What ohring torture is this?”
“Ah, it’s one of a kind.” She chuckles and kicks aside a foot belonging to a very large male asleep on his back on the floor.
“I stink.”
“Yeffa. But everyone else stinks more. I think Carvern pissed himself last lunar.”
“Who is Carvern?”
“This idiot,” she says, shoving a male roughly aside as we reach the stairs. He topples off of them, dead weight, and hits the ground face first.
I’ve just gotten the dry, dusty railing firm in my sweaty grip when I hear a booming voice slash through the space. “ESSMIRA, ARE YOU OKAY!”
Charana helps me turn, catching me when my foot slides off of the top stair. The soles of my feet are bare and sticky.
Raingar stands in front of an open door with the proprietor of the inn just behind him. She’s a Lemoran female with bright white horns and among the kindest dispositions I’ve encountered yet. She’s carrying a tray. There are two more Lemoran females with a huge tub suspended between them. Raingar’s got his arms laden with jugs and a large leather satchel and that’s when I spot Moreth in the back of the small cluster.
My stomach floods with fear and dread. “Are you…what is this? Are you taking me back…”
“Essmira…what? Nob! Nob nob nob!” I feel like there’s so much I’m not remembering, but I can’t focus.
I start to sweat even more profusely while even more violent chills ransack my body. I’ve never felt like this. I’ve been sick only a handful of times my entire life — Igmora and Tyto made sure of it — and never so miserably.
I lower my gaze to the floor and tighten my muscles, trying to clear my head and gather my thoughts and prepare for battle, if there’s going to be one — between Raingar and I, it seems there always is.
But…there isn’t.
Because Raingar stomps through the inn, several curses and pained cries going up when he steps directly onto creatures’ limbs, or uses his blocky feet to shove them aside. He unloads all of the things in his arms on the table where Charana once sat, and then his body drops hard onto the ground at my feet.
Thud. His palms face up, reminding me far too much of my position pose, and he looks up at me with a look of pure helplessness in his gaze. It startles me. I blink a little wider, nausea and delirium parting as a lucid memory slashes through my illness. Raingar dancing with me on the tables. Raingar tucking me into his chest and holding me close. Raingar telling me beautiful, soft things in the heat of the lunar. He said he’d try for me.
I’ll try for him, too. Did I tell him that?
“Essmira, I…” He shakes his head and then he does the unthinkable. He tilts forward, bending so that his horns graze the floor right at my bare toes, some brown, some red. “Forgive me, miriga. Forgive me.”
My shaky legs finally give out and Charana isn’t quick enough to hold me up. I plop down onto the floor directly in front of Raingar, close enough to reach out and touch his horns. I lift a hand. Everything else falls away. The entire room. Everyone in it but us.
I concentrate the best that I can as I bring just my middle, longest finger to Raingar’s left horn. I stroke it from the white tip to the black base. It brings me closer to Raingar, so close I’m leaning over him. So close, I can see his rough skin ripple and smell lobba and sunshine on his skin. He shakes once, with force, before tipping his face up to meet my gaze. He looks so hesitant and unsure, a little afraid.
I lick my lips. He looks at my mouth. He licks his lips. I focus on his.
And then I whisper, “There is nothing to forgive.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“It is. Before I got to Winter’s End, I’d already forgiven you.”
The shock on Raingar’s face is clear enough to make me snort and laugh and hiccup, but the abrupt movement makes my stomach lurch up into my throat. I try to back away as bile pitches and churns, but Raingar comes forward.
I hold up my hand and back up onto the lowest stair, but Raingar keeps coming forward, and closer, and then…it’s all too late. A violent surge of nausea hits me and I’m sick all over my mate.
I choke on sick and then I heave again, giving everything in my stomach up…all over his lap. Raingar, with bile all over his knees and chunks of…I’m too horrified to even think of what…staining his pants, bursts into wild ruckus laughter. It doesn’t take long for Charana to laugh…or for the whole inn to laugh with her.
Raingar stands and I hear a male somewhere shout, “Wouldn’t want to piss off that female!” Another chorus of laughter goes up and I’m horrified and so embarrassed I could die — that is, if the lobba doesn’t do the job first.
“Don’t worry, I think I’ve learned my lesson,” Raingar quips, returning to my side with a bucket and a damp rag. He sets the former underneath me while he presses the cool cloth to my forehead and then the back of my neck.
“Just breathe through it. You’re alright.”
“Nob, I’m notttttt,” I moan, starting to cry.
He chuckles. “Yeffa, you are. You will be.”
“Awm so sooooooosawee…” I wheeze before the next surge of bile shoots up my lungs and into my mouth and then into the bucket. The splatter…the splatter is so horrible. The little spray of acidic, disgusting, wet, bile. I’ve never… My brain shorts. I cringe away from my own sick in disgust as hug
e, heavy hands come against my back and rub up and down in awkward, jerky movements. Raingar.
“I told you not to apologize to me anymore.”
“I throoooawp on yoooo,” I groan.
“What did we talk about yesterday? We’re trying for each other. This is you trying. I’d say, it’s going pretty good. Besides, you think you’re the first creature to throw up on me in this ohring inn? Not even close.” He hacks out a laugh that makes Charana beside me laugh even harder.
“You bloody wench, you’ve got no right to laugh,” Raingar barks at her, shaking his fist in her face. “This is entirely your fault.”
“My fault?”
“You plied your miriga with lobba and got her sick. No more lobba for you, Essmira,” he scolds, full of irritation.
“Daaawntell me whaz to…doooooo.” I throw up all over again, brain frying as the inn comes to life around me. Embarrassment can’t touch the female I’ve become.
Raingar chuckles, “Wouldn’t dream of it, miriga. Just get it all out. Then we’ll get you back to bed. Moreth brought healing salts for your bath. He also brought giri to help settle your stomach. When you’re feeling better, Celia has a large platter prepared for you. You can eat it a little at a time. And then sleep. You need lots of it. Here, or we can take you back to Merquin’s. Or, if you’d like, you can move into my chambers. I’d like for you to have them. The keys, I mean. And the chambers. They’re yours. I’ll sleep somewhere else. Or there, if you want me to. But I won’t…you don’t…you don’t ever have to fear being kept anywhere. The keys to Lemora belong to you. I swear it, miriga.”
And the funny thing is, as I throw up for the hundredth time, I believe him. I try to smile, but heave instead, making good friends with this bucket below me. In between the dry heaving, I manage, “I thrust you, Raingar.”
“You…you what?”
“Trust…trust you.”
“Nob,” he says, touching the top of my head and gently stroking his fingers through my hair. So, so gently. With extreme care. “You don’t yet. You can’t. But you will. First though, I’ll give you a reason to.”
Taken to Lemora Page 18
