Shared Between Them (16 page)

The only thing cramping the evening right now was Taric, who wasn’t himself. Taric was normally the wide-eyed smart, resourceful one with an open mind. He normally didn’t allow himself to get depressed or foul-tempered, but right now he was the spitting image of an ominous thundercloud as he marched behind them, his hands in his pockets, his eyes pursed into a stony glare.

He didn’t understand how the man could spend the afternoon fucking their goddess of a wife to the point that the servants were talking about it and still be in such a rotten mood. He had accused Draevan of trying to buy Kyra’s love, but Draevan hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t thought about trying to get her to like him above Taric at all… The necklace was just shiny, and Draevan had heard that women liked shiny things. He only wanted to make the poor thing happy, since she seemed so awkward and saddened when he’d left that morning.

Taric normally wasn’t one to try to spur Draevan’s anger, either. Draevan could be a violent man, and Taric knew it. Yet when Taric had come in and boasted in their secret tongue, ‘
You can enjoy her mouth, Cousin, because I took her tight little ass today until she was begging for it,
” Draevan was overcome with the urge to thump his skull for him. Taric had never said anything of that sort to him before; it was completely out of character.

Draevan wasn’t stupid enough to wonder what had made the change in Taric. They were fighting over possession of their own wife. One they were both married to, both lawfully and even magically, and that wasn’t going to change.

When they were boys, they’d known they would share a wife and had never thought they would bicker with each other over her. They’d certainly never competed over women or whores, even though Taric would allow himself to like a woman much more than Draevan ever allowed himself to, and despite the gruffness with which Draevan would normally be fucking those same women eventually.

Kyra’s fingers were as cold as ice before they made it to the dinner hall. Before they were announced, Draevan nipped the top of her pointy ear. “Don’t be nervous,” he said into her ear. “It’s just an elf-king.”

She eyed him and blinked at him until he grinned at her teasingly. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, since you married us, you’re actually wealthier than the king.”

That made her dark little eyebrows shoot up with surprise. He felt warmth go back into her hands, and he straightened his shoulders as the king’s servant announced them as the “Honored guests of the Giantsbane family.”

He was never going to tire of being called
Giantsbane
, even if it was the elves that named them that.

The room was packed full of red-toothed, noble elves, and Kyra began to quickly wilt as they regarded all of them with unkind-yet-interested eyes, particularly towards her. The men stood, including the king, and the women sat. The servant led them to their seats, pulling out the chair in the middle for Kyra. She didn’t notice, he hoped, how the servant immediately removed his white gloves from his hands when her back brushed up against the man’s knuckle as she sat down and tossed them onto a tray filled with dirty glasses, apparently to be disposed of.

“There were not enough seats for all of the members of the court who wanted to come see you off this evening,” the king told them with a laugh, sitting down. “It’s as if they fear never seeing another human again!”

Fear wasn’t the word Draevan would have used, judging from the crowd. Curiously eager would have been a better word for it. Trying to manage polite smiles, Draevan and Taric sat down, following the king’s example, and then there was a rustle as all the other men took suit.

“Your wife certainly looks better now than last I saw her,” the king said with a smug grin.

“It’s amazing what not being locked in a dungeon can do,” Taric was quick to reply back with sarcastic flippancy.

“Not to mention
food
,” Draevan seethed. He felt Kyra put her hand over his knee and squeeze it to get his attention and apparently to warn him not to make a deal out of her experiences.

He picked up her hand from her knee, brought it all the way up to his lips, and kissed along the knuckle. She looked pleased by this, and even blushed girlishly, but then when her eyes darted to the side, she pulled her hand back as if he’d bitten her and put it back under the table. When he glanced to see what she’d been looking at, he saw that a few elves across the table were shuddering at the display of affection.

Even the king said, “Uck,” but he didn’t comment any further. He hung back in his chair as servants served soup. “You can’t blame me for not feeding a felon right before we tied her up to the noose,” the king told Draevan. “Besides—her kind doesn’t need to eat as much as
we
do.”

Draevan growled and Kyra squeezed his knee again.

Luckily, the king started making conversation with his queen, and then with the other guests.

Draevan could see Taric, on the other side of Kyra, grab so tightly onto his wineglass that he was surprised it wasn’t broken. Taric turned his head at Kyra and said, “Aren’t you going to eat, wife?”

She glanced at the other elves sipping on their spoons with their overly-pierced lips and shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she whispered, looking miserable.

“Yes, you are,” Taric argued quietly. “You slept through noonday. You’ve got to be famished, so eat.”

Kyra nervously picked up the spoon, glancing at the object nervously.

Suddenly the king snorted with laughter. “Look at her! She doesn’t even know how to use a spoon!” Draevan didn’t realize the king was noticing them again, but apparently he was still watching Kyra out of the side of his eye.

The whole room began to chortle with laughter, except for the three of them, and Kyra looked like she was set to melt underneath the table. Her skin burned a deep red as she eyed the tablecloth, embarrassed.

Draevan ground his teeth in the king’s direction. If he wasn’t royalty, he would have busted his face for him already.

“Drink from your bowl,” Taric advised her calmly, turning his shoulder to the rest of the company. “You don’t have to use these; I should have realized you don’t use them. You’ve never had a reason to.”

She put down her spoon and, amongst the laughter, she picked up her bowl with her hands. Draevan and Taric followed suit, until the laughter died slightly. “Our wife could teach lessons in practicality. Her needs are delightfully few,” Draevan told the king, putting up his spoon and then putting it down. “It makes it all the better when we spoil her with the wealth of a whole kingdom.”

That made the king stop laughing, and he even pursed his lips. “Yes,” he said. “Killing the giant has done you well. If you were higher born, you could be a king,” he added aloofly.

“If we
wanted
kingship, My Lord, then kings we’d be,” Draevan responded, straightening his shoulders. “Who would stop us?”

For a moment, the words sat in the air like the threat they were. There was silence for a while after that, and Kyra sat up straighter in her chair. She was still blushing, but honestly so was Draevan. He wasn’t used to attention.

Taric sat back in his seat, his body language relaxed, yet threatening, like a man-eating dragon that was merely digesting his last large meal of village-folk. He looked thoughtfully at Draevan, then at Kyra, not saying a word. The only thing that broke his still movements was when he leaned forward, took Kyra’s chin in his hand, and kissed the side of her nose, right where her small bruise ended.

Kyra didn’t bite her lip or respond to Taric at all like she had done with Draevan, he noticed. She didn’t melt back in his direction. Instead, she turned her knees in Draevan’s direction afterwards, as if she didn’t want Taric to touch her again.

Draevan frowned, wondering what the devil Taric did to her. If his taking her bottom created this much disdain, then Draevan was thankful indeed that he wasn’t the one to have done it. After all, his girth was even thicker than Taric’s… She might have never forgiven him.

Supper moved slowly, and making conversation with the people around them hadn’t made it pass any more quickly. Kyra refused to say anything at all to anyone, making sure her eyes stayed on her food at all times.

Her differences in comparison to the other elves had never been so evident. Kyra looked stronger than these people around her, even though she had lost so much weight since they’d met her in the forest. Her skin was pinker, probably because she had been outside all of her life and actually saw the sun, whereas the elven royals’ skin was a pale white, nearly translucent; they would look veiny and sickly if it wasn’t for their tattoos. Her white hair was even shinier, her eyes a shiny gold instead of a pale yellow.

Despite the fact that she nibbled on everything with her delicate little fingers, somehow she was also more feminine than the other females in the room.

They were beginning to get anxious to leave the chamber by the time dessert was served. It seemed like the elves were layering on all the courses to torture them.

“What will you do now, Giantsbane?” the king asked. “Once you leave us, where will you go?”

“Back to the Northlands,” Taric offered in a grunt over his glass of wine.

He snorted. “With the girl,” he said, sounding disgusted by the concept.

“Of course, she’s our wife.”

The king winced. “Yes, yes… But you know you don’t have to
keep her
as your wife. You’ve had your fun with her; I’ve heard that much from the servants. Now you know what it’s like between a she-elf’s thighs and to take on some magical ability, which is surely all you could have wanted from this little arrangement, or else you would have chosen a higher-born she-elf to take as wife! Apparently you understand that her kind is less than pleasant.” He gestured to the bruise on her face, as if it had to have been there from a punishment she was given. “If you just wanted to toss her down a ravine, or something more interesting than bringing her all the way to the Northlands, certainly the world wouldn’t be any worse for wear… Then you could take a better wife for yourselves… From your
own people
, perhaps.”

Draevan growled defensively, “That bruise was not given to her in anger.”

The king shrugged, not believing him. Draevan could tell by the king’s chiding glance that the king thought of himself as very wise. “Very well. My point remains.”

“Killing her is far from our plans. We’d happily
die
for Kyra,” he declared angrily. “We’ll never take another wife.”

“Well, what about heirs to inherit your fortune?” the king asked. “You have to think of these things. You surely have to take another wife—a human one—soon.”

“Kyra will have our children. We plan to have her with-child well before we arrive back into the Northern Lands.”

There was lots of tittering in the room when that was said. The king laughed and said, shaking his head, “You really think she can birth you children? It’s never been done before, my friend!”

“It’s never been tried, either,” Draevan growled.

“Trust me,” the king said, waving his hand in front of him. “She is not good for anything but warming your bed, and that will feel quite cold before long. If you think one day you can get her to do what you want, forget it. Her kind cannot be taught anything, not even the ways in bed. They cannot be taught to read, work, or use a fork!”

“My Lord, you are wrong,” Taric said calmly, but his hands were gripping the table.

The room gasped. “Wrong?” the king said, looking offended. He pointed a tattooed finger at Kyra. “She is the spawn of a long line of traitors and thieves! If I’m wrong, then it’s only because you found out something that we haven’t! Bring her back to the Northern Lands, if you will. If she is good for anything, it’s for spreading her legs like a proper whore! Obviously you don’t mind shar—!”

There was no sound in the room now, not even gasping. Everyone stood up from their chairs to watch Taric, who suddenly had thrown the king into the wall behind him and had him writhing in a choke-hold. He was being held against the wall so high, that his legs flailed.

Draevan grabbed Kyra’s arm, stood up to pull her body behind him, and pulled out his sword, brandishing it before approaching guards. The guards stilled, apparently not wanting to wrangle with a man who’d taken on the giant.

“Say another word to my wife ever again,
Sire
, and I will end you,” Taric growled. His body language was unlike anything Draevan had ever seen. It was strong, but uncannily calm. He choked harder, and the king made a gurgling sound. “And if you call my wife a whore again, I will do everything I can to bring down your kingdom, the gods as my witnesses. Do you understand?”

“Urghh…” the king gurgled, doing something that looked like a nod as he turned blue.

Taric released, and the king dropped to the floor. He pulled out his sword from his satchel, eyeing the guards.

“Well, kill them!” the king choked. “Thugs and low-lives!”

The guards looked a little pale at the order and didn’t make any aggressive moves. At least they were smart enough to realize that they didn’t have much of a chance against such warriors. Draevan held his sword with both hands, looking like he would be pleased to cut off the head of the next elf to make a move or even sneeze. Taric crossed the room to…

…Kyra? Damn, she looked different… She looked paler, with hair as black as night… Claws, even!

Taric pulled her away from the wall behind Draevan, which she was crouching against, looking horrified, and then he pushed her in front of him. “
Go now, and don’t give away her location. They know she’s the easiest target
.”

“
What do you mean
?” he snapped back.

“
She’s gone invisible,”
Taric said.
Draevan was sure there was something he didn’t understand about what Taric said at first—their language wasn’t perfect by any means.

They were rushing out of the door before he finally remembered that she was an elf, and therefore could do magic, like turn invisible. Apparently, she used her skill as soon as she saw serious trouble. “Straight to the horses. Down this way,” Draevan instructed, turning down a hallway.