Page 1 of Boundless
CHAPTER ONE
Here Comes the Bride
DAEGA
"THE ELVESare...quite small, are they not?" Daega mused to her younger sister Tesse in the Istarii Drakan mother tongue, Draka. The younger woman was just putting the finishing touches on her elaborate wedding day hairstyle. Out of her three sisters, Tesse was the one who’d wanted to do the traditional braids.
Her sister snorted, responding in kind. "Aye. Hopefully your husband won’t be too wee. Though if he is you’ll just have to do your best not to grind his bones to dust in your bedsport. He's the only heir they've got, Mum said, so if you crush him with your fat arse there’s not another waiting in the wings.” Daega glared at her sister in the mirror, choking back a laugh.
Crass teasing was their love language, and after a few more well-placed verbal jabs Daega was back to giving as good as she got, making her sister’s dark eyes spark. Tesse was…indelicate, but she had a good heart, and it warmed Daega to realize that her younger sister had sensed her discomfort and thought to ease it. She’d fucking miss the little cunt, stuck here in the bastion of the elves with her new husband. Before her thoughts could seize on that and spiral back into a fully-bloomed anxiety, Tesse finished with the last of the ceremonial braids and patted Daega's head like she'd been a particularly obedient pup, snapping her out of it.
She smacked her sister's hand away with a growl. "Sod off, you cunt," she grumbled, but there was no venom in it. Really, she was grateful. "Let's get that blasted dress on and get this over with." She was curious about her fiancé, having never so much as seen him before in her entire life, but she was more excited by far to get this whole cunting day over with. It had been months of preparation and worry, of doing her best to scrape together some enthusiasm for this day, and she was sotired.Tired of waiting, tired of fighting back panic, tired of worrying over the unknown and inescapable. She was as ready as she’d ever be to get it over with and face her fate.
She’d been so much more certain when her parents had sat her and her three sisters down all those months ago and said that they’d finally come to an accord with the underhanded king of the elves, and that the final piece had been an agreement that one of their daughters would marry his son and only heir. Daega had trained her whole life for combat, the assumption for long years that she’d take over for her father, the warlord of the horde. But her father Kevothaen seemed to have an ability she lacked, to be able to harden his tender heart enough to survive the killing fields intact. So she’d volunteered and had been glad to be able to do it. It meant she’d not take over her father’s duties, and it meant sparing her sisters what was sure to be a miserable fate. Daega lived to care for others, to take away hurts and protect her loves from the evils of the world.
But that didn’t mean she was immune to regret. She often wished, in the dark of the night, with the night sounds of the horde lulling her to sleep, that she hadn’t done it. That she’d let it go to sharp and snapping Tesse, gentle and well-learned Sercha, or even little spitfire Vrinn. It was a disgusting thought, and it never sat well with her. After all, Tesse and Vrinn were more likely to cause a diplomatic incident than avoid one, and the elves were so vain and shallow that they’d see Sercha, with her sight impairment, to be defective. In a lot of ways, it hadhadto be Daega. And all she could hope for now was to somehow make friends with her husband-to-be and try to avoid their marriage being a total misery. People generally liked her; she was hopeful it could work.
"It's very pretty, Dae," Tesse sing-songed, standing in front of the open wardrobe and marveling at the gossamer-and-stardust confection the elves had insisted she wear for the ceremony. Daega blinked, shaking off her wandering thoughts and re-focusing on her wedding day preparations.
"Looks like it'll tear to shreds if I so much as sneeze in it," Daega muttered. As if something like that was fit to be worn by the oldest child of Gayeh and Kevothaen, matriarch and warlord of the Istarii Drakan, respectively. But like all of her people, she wanted peace with the elves more than she wanted to keep her pride intact, and so she did her best to put on a brave face and let Tesse help her into it.
At least the dainty thing had been tailored well. Despite the frivolous look of it, it hugged the toned muscles of her arms and legs without feeling restrictive, with a low back to allow her four small wings to move freely, and a slit at the small of her back to accommodate her knee-length tail. The skirt was far longer than she was used to, but the elves had been talked down from including the long train, the hem just touching the tops of the hooves on her shaggy hocks.
She was less thrilled with how the sheer low-cut bodice displayed every bump and texture on her breasts, her dark nipples clear as day against the delicate white. Curse the elves and their ceaseless vanity. To them, this was no doubt a signal of her value as a sexual object. The elvish women were allowed few liberties and suffered under heavy patriarchal oppression, her mother had told her, and she couldn’t help pitying them. But Daega knew her worth, and no number of elves gawking at her tits would change that.
Among the horde, nudity was dead common, and no one would gape at a nipple or a flash of arse. But the elves were strange about it, horrified by bare skin in one moment and demanding it the next.
It was the strangest damn thing. But she’d have to get used to it, along with a long list of other strange and inhibited practices in elvish society. She’d been working on it with her mother for months, and she still felt far from ready to face it head-on.
Daega sighed. "Shall we?" she asked, smoothing the delicate fabric over her thighs, considering her reflection. "Wait. Do you think I’m supposed to remove my panties? You can see them clear as day through this cursed thing."
Tesse cocked her head. "You think it would bother them?"
She shrugged, meeting her sister's obsidian eyes in the mirror. "They could see it as my rejecting their traditions. Because I’m wearing something besides the dress." Elves valued their traditions more than they valued their lives.
Tesse nodded, considering. "Aye. Suppose it can't do no harm to toss ‘em. It's just a puss."
Daega nodded, hiking her skirt up to take off the little bit of cloth. Maybe it was conceited to say, but Daega reckoned she had a right pretty cunt, so if the elves were determined to see it then there was no reason her betrothed should find her wanting. Unless he preferred pricks. But there was no helping that, and they'd just have to work out some sort of agreement if it came to it.
"For what it's worth, you do look beautiful, Dae," Tesse said with surprising softness, squeezing her shoulder and brushing one of Daega's wings with her own. "Fierce too, to be frank, what with all your muscles and scars on display like that. If he wasn't an elf I'd say he'd spill in his pants at the sight of you."
The sisters chuckled, brushing their wings again like they'd been doing since they were wee things running amok in the camps. "He may yet," Daega mused, checking herself over for potential diplomatic pitfalls one last time. She agreed with her sister; she looked lovely despite the strange elvish dress. "Alright, let's go then, shall we?"
The compromise for the wedding day preparations had been that Daega would do the ceremony and wear the clothing and jewels of the elves, but in return she would be prepared in the Istarii Drakan way: in total solitude with her kin, unseen by any but them until she strode into the hall in the elves' huge, soulless castle where the ceremony was taking place. It was an ancient tradition, sacred to her people—it was a time to reflect on their lives together, to revel in the bond of family, and to savor the bittersweet moment of that family becoming both smaller and bigger at the same time.
Daega's two youngest sisters and her parents were waiting for them in the antechamber, the Istariin oils and elvish jewels she'd be anointed with laid out and ready for her. Her mother Gayeh cast an approving eye over her form.
"It's barely a whisper of a dress, but you wear it well, Daega," she smiled, grasping her eldest daughter in a tight embrace. "You make your people proud this day, but you make your mother sick with grief." Daega returned Gayeh’s embrace, emotion flaying her tender.
"My baby!" her father Kevothaen choked out, wrapping Daega and her mother into a bone-crushing hug of his own. "I swore I'd be ready for this day, but I'm not." Tears soaked his deep gray cheeks, his sharp teeth worrying at the thick brass ring bisecting his bottom lip—his mark of office. "You look lovely, lass. You have your mother's strong frame." Daega's throat went tight, her eyes hot and prickling, but she didn't want to ruin the kohl her sister had painstakingly applied with tears.
In moments like these, when everyone else around her was falling apart, Daega prided herself on not letting her emotions get the better of her.Someonehad to be calm, and as the oldest child of two very busy parents, the task has naturally fallen to her. They needed her to keep her wits about her, to lead her younger sisters and set a good example for them, and even though all three were adults, now, the habit was stuck tight. So she pushed aside the urge to weep and painted a bright smile on her face.
"You lot act like I'm dying, but it's just a wedding. I'll be back in the camp toting around my new husband in a month's time."
"So long!" her father sobbed. Gayeh gently pulled him away from Daega before he could muss her wedding day getup, throwing an arm around her husband's shoulder in support. Free of her father’s clutches, Daega managed a deep breath, then another, and forced her emotions to settle the rest of the way.
She smiled at her blood, her family, the first love she'd ever known, and held out her hands for them to take. "Let's get me greased up and ready to go then, aye?"
