Shared Between Them (2 page)

Taric gave a singular laugh at being called wealthy. Perhaps in comparison to her they seemed well-to-do, but they were far from considering themselves rich-men. That’s something they hoped to remedy on this adventure—that, and their marriage.

Long ago, the king of the elves decreed that whoever would slay the giant and bring back a golden shield that the kingdom had lost nearly a millennia ago that the giant now kept on his person, would be given an elf-maiden of the victor’s choice as payment for the service.

Draevan and Taric found themselves, in that case, between two prophecies told in the North: that the slayer of the Dark Wizard, the scourge of half the world and enemy to the Western Realm, would be killed by the spawn of an elf and a giant-slayer. And Draevan and Taric, when they were boys, were foretold to be the slayers of that giant. In short—the Dark Wizard’s time was drawing near… As long as something wasn’t misunderstood.

“Don’t you worry about us, pet,” Draevan scolded, though a smirk still hadn’t disappeared from his face. “Just worry about yourself. We don’t take kindly to thieves, but I tell you what: you keep your hands to yourself, and we’ll keep
our
hands to
our
selves.”

She frowned. “You’re not as fun as I thought you’d be,” she openly pouted like a little girl who couldn’t get anyone to join her for a tea party. She contorted her body and pulled herself up until the feet of her boots perched on the branch she’d been sitting upon. “I come out to warn you, and I get threats and accusations in kind!” She slipped off the branch, stomped behind the dark, ominous oak she had been seated on, and promptly disappeared.

The men just stood silent and looked at the tree. Eventually, they walked around it, looking up at the climbing branches, but saw no trace of the elf. “
Well, she’s still around, I guarantee it
,” Draevan grumbled.

Taric agreed. “
And she’ll be back to rob us blind before tomorrow when we meet this giant
,” he ascertained. “
This is her window of opportunity
.”

Draevan turned and raised an eyebrow. Normally, thieves would make him bunch up his fists and scream swears to the world around them. This time, however, Draevan was rolling his shoulders back with excitement. “
Well, let’s get ourselves ready for her visit then, shall we, Cousin
?” he asked him mischievously.

Taric stifled a laugh, realizing instantly what Draevan planned—to set a little trap. Tonight was going to be very interesting, indeed. “
Well
,” Taric replied. “
It’ll surely get us used to the feel of an elf-wife
.” He pointed to Draevan then and reminded, “But I was right about there not being ghosts.”

Draevan smiled with his whole face. “I’ve never been so happy about your being right.”

* * *

Finally! The humans were asleep. It was nearly sad, as Kyra watched them drink the afternoon away while laughing and joking with each other, knowing that it was their last night with such joys. They'd surely die tomorrow, fast if they were lucky, very slowly and painfully if they got the giant in too bad of a mood first. She guessed on the latter. There was something hardened about these men that Kyra couldn't help but recognize. They'd surely succeed in using their weapons on the giant, but that would only piss him off.

It still bothered her that she couldn’t put her finger on the language they would sometimes speak in. Their accents were known to her: they were from the Northern villages, beyond the Crystal Mountains… But she still didn't understand their tongue, and until now she had been quite confident in thinking that she'd heard all the northern languages before. Apparently, she had been wrong.

She stifled a sigh, trying to be as silent as possible, but she couldn't help but think of her brothers, three of whom had raised her but were now very dead: one by the giant and the other two by the hangman's noose in the middle of the elven kingdom. Any one of them would have been able to understand the language spoken by these two human men; they had been so smart and clever… before they were hunted down like dogs.

The human men had unsaddled their horses to give the beasts rest, and unfortunately they were using the saddles as pillows. This was not uncommon, but it always made getting her loot more difficult; most men kept their gold coins in a bag they tied to their saddle. Even worse was when they hid their coin in their boots—like she did. She'd taken the boots off a corpse once, and although they were too big for her, she fell in love with the hollowed-out sole that allowed her to keep her coins, and even a spare weapon or two, safely hidden beneath her feet.

She bit her lip and slowly approached the men’s camp, where they had hunkered down in knee-high grass, using the carpet of the forest and a couple of bedrolls as a mattress. A small fire burned by their feet, though it wasn’t even nightfall yet. Even with the fire, she realized it would be better to try to make her move now, before it became too dark to see. Humans always had the advantage when it came to total darkness, since elves' eyes weren't as sharp. Elves were much weaker in body, and they probably would have been killed off years ago if they hadn't had some magical ability.

The hulking Draevan gave a loud snore just as she was reaching out to his saddle. The sudden sound nearly made her jump backwards. Wearily, she took a relaxing breath and bent down closer to Draevan's saddle, pulling coins out of a purse secured around the horn. She smirked and then turned towards the other one.

There was a sudden tightening around her ankle. She paused. All she was able to do was mutter “Damn!” wearily, just before a rope yanked her violently from the ground and then up a tree, until she found herself swaying back and forth and upside down by a thick, low-hanging oak branch.

She recognized the full indignity of being caught in the same manner as one might catch a rabbit and was suitably furious. “Son of a bitch!” she cried, then looked at the upside down image of the two men climbing easily to their feet.

They didn't even look drunk now! They had stumbled to their make-shift beds not thirty minutes before… This didn’t make any sense.

She had been tricked! And they added insult to injury when Draevan crowed with laughter. “Eenie, meanie, minie, moe. Catch a she-elf by her toe…”

“Get me down!” she cried, realizing that she had let herself go back to her visible state during the shock of being captured. She pulled her shirt down—or up, rather—over her belly-button, since it seemed to want to expose her breasts with the help of gravity. “Put me down right now!” She tried to bend in a way that would free the rope lasso from around her boot, but she didn't even come close to completing the maneuver before her muscles trembled from the strain and then straightened with defeat. She let herself hang and sway, grumbling. “When did you even find time to do this? I was watching you all afternoon!” she cried.

“You were watching us, but not carefully enough. We've done this before. Enemies are easily distracted,” said Taric as he brushed his black hair back out of his eyes. “Got any weapons on you?” he asked.

“No,” she lied, pressing her lips together stubbornly.

She was searched anyway. Draevan came up to her and patted his ridiculously large hands up and down her squirming body. “Ogre,” she grumbled as he found a slingshot in her pocket and a dagger strapped to her upper arm.

“You are quite a different sort of elf,” Taric grumbled. His tone sounded like he was trying to be angry but still only coming up as amused. He must have been referring to elves not being creatures known to carry weapons… And he would have been right if he hadn’t been talking to the last descendant of a long, tragic line of outcasts. Her family had to make-do to survive.

“The only thing I hate worse than violence,” she defended tersely in defense, “is when it’s being done to
me
!”

He pulled her coat completely off of her, and yet another knife hit the ground. “Careful!” she snapped. “You're gonna cut me that way!”

“You could have told us the truth, dove,” Draevan replied firmly. “No weapons, indeed! If I find one more—just
one more
—I'm stripping you naked. Even an idiot knows to throw down his arms when he has no other choice.”

“Well, I'm a special kind of idiot,” she replied, although his threat was alarming enough. She wasn’t about to come clean about what was hidden in her boots; she was hoping for the best, and they were her last defense. Without weapons, she wouldn’t have a prayer in fighting either of these two behemoths off. They were massive, hard-bodied men.

He gave a wry laugh. “I guess so.” Even though she struggled, he had no problem binding her hands together with a piece of leather. He looked at Taric and said, “Cut her down. We need to get her boots off. If they’re a dead man's, she's probably using them for storage.”

Her brow ruffled. “How'd you know they're not
my
boots?” she asked, quite astonished.

“Your foot ends about here.” He squeezed her toe, which ended halfway through her boot. “Don't you know it's unlucky to wear a dead man's boots?”

She pursed her lips, but was quickly feeling unease as blood continued to rush to her face. She wondered how much longer it would be before her face turned purple. “That would explain a lot…”

Draevan scooped his massive arm around her body, and when Taric cut the rope tied to her feet, he neatly adjusted her body so that she was cradled in his arms. She looked down at the ground beneath her. Damn, he was tall… She had never been this close to either of them and hadn’t really considered how tall they’d be up close. He would have dwarfed even her brothers in comparison.

She kicked her feet, struggling to get out of his grasp, but Taric jumped forward to aid him and pulled her boots off. They came off easily, being so large for her, and he quickly upheld one, pulled out the inside sole, and several knives, coins, and small trinkets fell out. They had apparently run into those sorts of boots long before they met her, and often enough that it was apparently something they expected from a thief.

Still, Taric looked at her and lifted an eyebrow, silently accusing her of, once again, lying about not being armed.

“Alright, so you caught me,” she growled. “I don't have a pot of gold or anything, so I fail to see what you gain by this.”

“What’s
not
to be gained by this?” Draevan replied curtly, dropping her bare feet onto the grass. She tried to run, but got stopped mid-step as Draevan grabbed at her tunic.

Her eyes went wide. “No!” she growled as she fought against him. With a loud tearing noise, Draevan had ripped her shirt into two pieces at the seam. “Stop!”

He didn’t; he merely continued to tear the rest of the fabric completely from her bound arms and threw it onto the ground in tatters.

She shot a terrified glance towards the leaner, and seemingly more cultured, Taric. “Please,” she begged him.

She immediately lost hope in gaining his assistance when she saw that his eyes weren’t on hers. They were looking at her bare, exposed breasts. She wanted to get swallowed up by the earth and die; never before had her breasts been seen by a male. Her throat tightened, a cry getting stuck in her throat, unable to contemplate her current modification or fear.

Massive arms reached around her from behind and unlatched the clasp at her belt. Her pants, pulled from a body far larger than her own, fell off her hips and right onto the ground around her. Her thin underwear came down moments after that, and she sunk down low, bending herself in a way that she hoped would hide some of her nudity.

Taric merely gazed hungrily at her with those icy-blue eyes of his, a curt smile curling at his lips. She looked at his boots to avoid the leering gaze.

“
Now
,” Taric said as Draevan came along beside her, leering down at all of her skin and holding her by her elbow, “I think she’s unarmed.”

“You can’t treat me like this!” she gasped, feeling out of breath from the shock of her miserable situation and her treatment. She knew she wasn’t attractive enough for them to be actually aroused, thank the gods, but the humiliation stabbed at her like a blade in her heart. “What have I done to you?” She meant to raise his eyes and pierce him with a hurt look, but she couldn’t do it. In fact, she squinted her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to look at anything at all.

“You tried to steal from us, for one. And I warned you to come clean about the weapons, didn’t I?” lectured Draevan pedantically.

She began to shiver violently from the cold on her skin and curled her toes into the cold, moist ground under her feet, unable to find warmth. Noticing her misery, Draevan grumbled and swooped her up into his arms.

She took a deep breath, surprised by the way her body clung comfortably to the heat he emitted. At least she wasn’t knee-deep in cold grass any longer. Draevan shifted her weight in his arms and said to Taric, “I say we fuck the daylights out of her. She's a ripe little thing.” She felt a wave of nausea when he said this, but upon his expression, she found herself relaxing. There was only mischief in Draevan’s eyes, and far too much of it for his words to be believed. “Besides, it's never been done before—a human-elf coupling. I say we practice up for when we claim our elf-bride.”

Taric smirked. “Why would we
reward her
for trying to rob us blind?” he replied, squaring his shoulders suavely. He looked at her as if to say, 'What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?'

She didn't answer that look. “Robbing is a dark way to look at this little visit!” she defended sharply, after he glared in her direction long enough. “Besides, I’m not the one manhandling a harmless female!”

She sniffed the air indignantly, and was surprised. Draevan smelt surprisingly good; not like food, but strangely like the rain after a storm—earthy, yet fresh.

She squirmed to get more comfortable, adding, “I like to think of this like I was a neighbor, simply borrowing a cup of sugar from some friendly-looking folks. One that I don't plan to return since you'll both be dead by tomorrow evening. Don't forget that—you being dead in the morning is very important to looking at this situation the proper way. Anyway, I don’t know what it’s like in the Northern Lands, but around here we don’t strip people who come about borrowing things!”