Page 8 of Boundless
He blinked, surprised. "No, I had no clue."
She nodded, standing to remove more of her armor. "Aye. She's had trouble since she was small, and it gets worse all the time. Granny, our best healer, thinks she'll be totally blind by the time she's my age. But my parents never told her ‘no’. If there was something they thought was dangerous for her to do, then they'd help her figure out a new way to do it, but they never let her feel lesser for being different. Never called her weak or useless. Never told her she couldn't do something, just told her to be careful doing it. Anything else just makes the whole thing harder for no reason."
He sat there, stunned and turning that all over, while she finished stripping down to her underwear. He was still sitting there when she went to their private bathroom, returning with a bowl of warm water and a small stack of washcloths. He started when she dipped one of the cloths into the water and used it to gently scrub away the last of his makeup.
"There you are," she murmured, poking the point of his nose with the pad of a finger. "Aren't you just the prettiest little thing." Then she was going back to the bathroom to clean herself up, her hooves making soft thuds on the thick carpeting and her tail swaying hypnotically with her stride.
"No one's ever c-called me that before," he called, finally removing his own clothes. "P-pretty, that is."
"No?" she called back, her fingers working pins out of her hair. "That's shocking. You're quite lovely, Len. You elves are all fair though, so maybe you don't bother telling each other what you already know."
He chuckled, pulling his nightclothes on over his undergarments and slipping under the covers. "No, that's certainly not it," he told her. "I-I've actually been told I'm q-quite plain more than once."
"What?" she squawked, indignant. She stormed out of the bathroom, half her braids loose around her shoulders and the other half still pinned up in their knots. "With those great big eyes of yours? And that golden hair?" She snorted, shaking her head. "Every new thing you tell me about your life here is worse than the last. We'll have a lot of work to do to get that self-esteem up, husband." She spun and returned to the bathroom, the ping of the pins hitting the sink and occasional grumbling the only sound for long minutes.
By the time she was done, he was already dozing, his body warm and heavy under the covers from everything that had happened that day. But her weight settling in beside him snapped him awake.
"Is this alright?" she asked, freezing like he'd caught her doing something untoward.
"Yes. I-I'm not used to it, but I...I don't mind." And to his shock, he realized that he really didn't. A part of him was evenexcitedto have a companion in his bed. It brought him back to his boyhood, when Sevren would sneak into his bedroom and they’d spend the night reading adventure stories to each other and talking about everything and nothing.
"Good," she grinned, drawing her legs up onto the bed. He was amused by the appearance of little socks over her hooves, presumably to protect the linens from their sharp edges. "I'm used to sleeping with my sisters and trading secrets and stories until we fall asleep."
"You four are quite close, then?"
"Oh, aye. They're terrible skags, but I love them to death."
He laughed, wishing he could have known what that was like. It was good to have Sevren, at least, but he suspected it wasn’t quite the same as having a sibling.
Something about how still and close the room felt all around them urged him to scoot closer, to peer into her face in the light of the single lamp she'd left burning before lying down. "I'm jealous of that," he confessed. "I have no s-siblings, and a-almost no friends, either. My mother d-died when I was eight a-and ever since..."
She was already on her side, facing him, so it was nothing for her to reach out a hand for him to take. And he took it gladly, whatever spell the night was casting working to pry him open wide. "I'm solonely, Daega," he whispered, his voice small in his own ears.
"Not anymore, Len. Now you have me, aye?" She smiled at him, her teeth sharp and glittering in the dim light.
Everyone had been so wrong about so much when it came to the Istarii Drakan. His wife and her family were all so kind, so open with him, despite decades of animosity and war with his people over territory and tithes. Where were the monsters he’d been told to fear? Where were the brutes who took and destroyed? His head was spinning, his mind struggling to process all the new things he was learning.
All he could do was nod at first. His father had said little to him leading up to his marriage to Daega, but one of the few things he’d said was not to trust them. That they could be crafty when they wanted and he should never forget the 70,000 elves who’d died by their hands. Hands like the one tenderly holding his, squeezing warmth into him. Hands like the ones that had held him and protected him when he’d fainted. Hands that had rubbed the back of a stranger just because it was a kind and good thing.
“And you have me, t-too. Daega,” he whispered, smiling shyly at her in the dark.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wedding Night
DAEGA
IF SOMEONEwould have told Daega a year ago that her wedding night would be spent tucked snugly under the covers while she and her new husband shared tender secrets, she wouldn't have believed them. But there she was, doing exactly that and loving it. They’d lived very different lives, but there was no denying that in Len she had a kindred spirit. They felt the same way about so many things, both big and small: that spring and autumn were the best seasons, that too much sweet was disgusting, that people were complicated and no situation was stark black and white, that it was far better to be clear and direct than polite. With every new thing she learned about her husband, the closer and more tender she felt about him.
"You're so brave and strong, Dae," he murmured, his voice slurred with fatigue but still wistful. "You...you’ve got t-to show me how to do it."
She chuckled, resisting the urge to stroke the curve of his cheek with a finger. "I'm strong, aye. But brave? Less so. You know why I volunteered to be the one to marry you? Why I pushed so hard to sway my people towards the peace treaty my parents proposed?" He shook his head, his eyes closed. "Because I was terrified of seeing a battlefield. All my life I'd trained my body to be ready, and when it came time, I did everything to avoid it."
"Practical," Len mumbled. "Fighting's such a waste."
She smiled at him, his face so soft and open like this. He looked younger and even more beautiful. He looked delicate, but he clearly had a strong spirit to have made it this far with his tender heart intact. His father was abusive, and even outside of that mess of a relationship, it seemed like no one else had wanted to have anything to do with him. She wanted peace with the elves, wanted the generations of bloodshed to finally end, but after their hours of talking she had several problems with how they conducted themselves, with how they let down their most vulnerable people.
"Sleep, princeling," she whispered, leaning down to give him a chaste kiss on his smooth forehead. "Tomorrow will be long enough as it is."
