I can feel the difference and his words douse a small part of my flaming heart. But I don’t tell him that. I can’t. Not when I’m winning the argument. I’ve never won an argument. I’ve never even had one. And even though these words are right, he’s still wrong.
“You shouldn’t lock me away.”
“It’s for your own protection,” he wheezes, sounding broken and in pain.
“Nob, it’s for your protection. If I truly am your mate, then it hurts you to see me hurt. You don’t like the way it makes you feel.”
“That isn’t the half of it. I feel wretched knowing what I did to you. I hate the way that I act around you half the time. You make me crazed.” He slaps his hand against the door, but without the effort of his previous attempts. He’s slowing down, sliding down…thud. Rattle, rattle. The sound of him clunking down onto his bottom and banging the back of his head against the door.
“I never wanted a mate,” he confesses and the confession strangely hurts. It makes me feel…unwanted. “But then I met you and you threw that statue at my head and I couldn’t believe that the stars had aligned to produce such a mate for a male like me. I don’t deserve you. That’s why…”
He swallows audibly. “That’s why I get jealous when you speak to other males. I know how fine the beings of Lemora are. You could do better than me in almost any one of them, but I can’t…I won’t give you up. So I don’t want to let you out of my sight because I worry about you getting hurt, yeffa, but because I also don’t want to give you that chance.”
I brush the scar on my palm with my thumb, the reminder that I had tried for freedom even then, before I knew what freedom was. “Raingar,” I say, voice a little shaky. His words…they get to me. I understand the insecurity. I understand the angst of it. The fear. The uncertainty. I understand it all.
Something delicate blossoms in my throat. I can feel it in my mouth, on my tongue, in the words that I speak when I say exactly what’s on my mind, without thinking. “You’re not alone.”
“What?”
“You’re not alone. All beings feel these things. I feel them, too.”
“For me?”
“Of course for you,” I snort. “You are clan chief. I’m just a pleasure female that your clans were compassionate enough to pay for and I’ve seen how your clan loves you — how everyone loves you — your grumpy ways and all. You’re an untried male, even. You wanted to wait for your mate before ever experiencing pleasure. Having come from a world where mating is a sport, at best, and at worst, a way for cruel creatures to exert their power over others, how could I not find that romantic? I wanted to be this female for you so badly. In the fabric shop? You remember what you said to me? You spoke of mates. That was the moment I first felt hope. So much of it.
“But this? Holding me prisoner? Keeping me from experiencing Lemora, the world that you love? It’s too much, Raingar. You can’t offer me hope and then take it back. It hurts too deeply and you’re right. I am a delicate female, soft, breakable…but my skin has nothing to do with it. I’m breakable in this. Only in this. Don’t take it from me, the beautiful gift you gave.”
Silence. A lot of it. Finally, I hear the turning of the key as Raingar unlocks the door. He huffs, “I’m a rotten bastard, Essmira. I don’t deserve you.”
I smirk. “And I’m a pleasure female for purchase. I don’t deserve you, either.”
“Then where does that leave us?”
“I’d say it leaves us rather perfect for each other, don’t you?”
He makes a strained sound, half-yelp, half-hiss. “You…you still…you hate me,” he whispers.
“Nob,” I groan. “This is a fight, my Lord. It doesn’t change my underlying feelings about you.”
“Feelings?”
“Yeffa. Feelings.”
He pauses. “Good feelings?”
I bark out a laugh that ends in a small snort. “We’re fighting, clan chief. I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
“You truly are too good for me…” He sighs and it’s almost a laugh, but too sad to truly be. “Essmira, I didn’t sleep last lunar. Can I sleep now so that we can continue fighting a little later?”
I snort. “Of course you can.”
“And then we’ll fight?”
“Yeffa.”
“Promise?”
“Yeffa, my Lord.”
“And you’ll still have these feelings for me when I wake up?”
“Pagh! Raingar, stop this. Go to sleep. Here, would you like a pillow?”
“Yeffa,” he grumbles, and I stuff one through the crack in the door.
Already my soul feels lighter than it did before — than it ever has — as I go to the room’s largest window.
“Essmira?”
“Goodnight, Raingar,” I say, voice stern.
He hesitates, like there’s something more he wants to get off of his chest right now in this very moment. Then, “Goodnight, miriga.”
I smile and cross my arms over my chest as a cool brush of wind caresses me. The countryside is epically beautiful and I sigh at all the colors. Yellows and greens, purples and reds. The moss grows over everything, a few brave stones daring to protrude through its surface. Roads leading away from Raingar’s keep wind in almost every direction. Not many, though. It’s still a relatively sparsely populated world, from what I’ve seen. Huge, though. There are still so many corners and pockets of Lemora I haven’t been.
I want to see the mountains and the icy cliffs that lie East. I want to pick bulberry from the fields in Bebette’s village. I want to drink from the suspended river that flows up the cursed mountain, and not down it. I want to go to one of the inns and dance. I want to sleep under the stars out in the open. I want to see the sandy dunes that make up the Dark Flats. Yeffa, most of all, I want to see these.
But I won’t be able to if my mate is intent on shackling me.
I don’t know how long I sit there staring out at everything when I hear a harried voice call my name. “Essmira! Are you alright?”
The pounding of pad pad hooves draws my attention to the ground below. “Gorman! You’re back.”
“I heard that Raingar was keeping you prisoner…” He looks stricken and I feel immediately guilty. I know he’d been occupied with something in the countryside and I hope it wasn’t important, knowing that he came back for this.
“I’m so sorry. It’s not what it seems at all. I actually barricaded myself in this room. I wanted a good lunar’s rest and it took him all lunar to realize where I was.”
Gorman stares at me for a suspended breath, then cracks a smile. It’s a rare sighting, that grin. “Fabulous. Are you well, then?”
“Yeffa. Never better.” And I mean it. I feel like a new female. One that has a mate. And he’s a mess. And I’m miriga. And I don’t know how to be.
But we’re learning.
And trying.
And that’s all any miriga and her mate can ever hope to do.
“You’re certain? There’s nothing you need?”
My stomach chooses that moment to growl and I cover it with my hand. “I’m actually a little hungry.”
“Come down then. I’ll have Eewa prepare something for you…”
“I actually can’t. Raingar’s asleep in front of the door and I don’t want to wake him. He didn’t sleep last lunar.”
Gorman’s grin stretches even wider. “So…you’ve forgiven him, then?”
“Yeffa. Most definitely. But he doesn’t know it and I don’t intend to tell him.”
And then he laughs. Gorman actually laughs. It’s a strange sound, like several chords being plucked in several very different instruments, but winning that sound from him? It makes me feel like I can do anything.
“I am miriga,” I whisper to myself. I rub my palm and its scar. “I can do anything.”
“Did you know that all of the towers have escape hatches in case of fires?”
I blink. “Truly?”
“Come
down from there and I’ll take you to the village. There’s a stir going on at the pub. There should be food there, too.”
“That sounds wonderful.” Perhaps, I don’t need to worry about shackles, after all. Not when there are hatches built into them.
“Just to warn you, it can be a debaucherous affair. I likely won’t stay all lunar, but you’ll be in good hands if you choose to.”
Trust. It makes me sparkle and shine. I wish this could be the type of trust Raingar has in me, too. “That sounds perfect. Thank you, Gorman. Now…uhm…how do I get down?”
His grin turns a little wicked then and he raises both of his pointed brows. “How do you feel about rope, miriga?”
“Rope? Like repelling down these four stories with a rope?”
He nods.
My heart beats faster in the scar across my palm. I touch it, reminded, ever reminded. “I feel excited.”
“Then check the chest at the foot of the bed and come outside. The party at Winter’s End should be in full swing by the time we arrive.”
11
Essmira
Whatever my expectations had been about the concept of a Lemoran party…Winter’s End doused them in fire starter and set match to them. The flames are as wild as ever.
Some indeterminate time later and I’ve lost the cloak Gorman loaned me…and Gorman himself. Or did he leave? I can’t remember. I’ve got a horn of some spicy concoction in my hand and am feeling the full effects of it. My head is buzzing pleasantly and my heart is pounding to the tune of the music incinerating all silence around me and I’m…I’m dancing. Just like I wanted.
I know how to dance expertly, I’ve been trained in all styles, but I’ve never danced in a group before who encourage me to just let loose and go wild.
So I do. “I’m miriga,” I whisper at the first hint of doubt that crosses my mind, telling me to dance to a set style, not to move too much for fear of embarrassing myself, not to let my emotions come out of me in wonderful, colorful bursts. “I can do anything.”
I am miriga and a miriga dances on tables, the arms of the other dancers around me looped through mine. The Hypha beside me is a new friend called Charana, but several of the other females are those that I recognize. Willa is there and so is Olga, who is quick to inform me that Jaygar is doing just fine. Twee and Holdar are both there and so is the healer Moreth.
I spend a long time talking to Twee and Holdar. They’re hybrids like me, though I don’t know what my mix is. Speculation is that I am half Drakesh and half a species called human. A newly discovered species, only two known human colonies exist in the Quadrants — one in Quandrant Four and the other just inside of the infamous and disputed Grey Zone largely under Niahhorru pirate control.
We talk for spans about the strange oddities in being hybrids and I feel a kinship with the male and the female pair that I haven’t felt with most. And then I’m pulled off of my feet and twirled around by Willa and the music takes me away to other stars in other Quadrants.
I’m twirled into one of the long benches that dot either side of the enormously long table that runs the full length of the inn. I bump into a Lemoran male who’d been in the midst of a game played with sticks and bouncing cubes and he spills his ale all down the front of my dress.
He apologizes profusely, but I just throw my head back and snort with laughter and he asks me to dance and I remind him that I’m mated to Raingar and he assures me that he’s already mated himself and that he doesn’t mean any harm by it. I blush when I look up at his horns and see that they’re white.
Guilt dares to breach the barrier of my thoughts. I shouldn’t have left him there. Not because a female must tend to her male, but because I, Essmira, don’t want to see him, Raingar, hurt. And he’d been so tired, running after me. But…I also am not sure he’d have joined me in this — I’m actually certain, he wouldn’t have. And I want to live.
So I take the male called Prilla’s arm and, hand-in-hand, we twirl on top of the long table with several other pairs. He smells like sweat and the spices from the ale and I’m sure I smell much worse as I spin between him and Charana and Olga and Willa and a dozen other pairs.
I spin and spin and spin and I realize soon that the entire inn is chanting my name. “Essmiiiiiiira! Essmiiiiiiiiiira!” And the occasional shout, “Look at our miriga dance!”
My hips are shaking to the beat and my hands are above my head, fingers flicking to the chords I can feel radiating throughout my body as powerfully as the spiced ale I’ve drunk from the horns that were handed to me. My head…my head spins. I make a high trilling sound with my tongue against the roof of my mouth and the room responds with cheers. I trip over something, try to catch myself, but the last of my coordination gives out and my feet fly out from under me.
I’m flying. Oh nob, I’m falling.
I yelp and several others shout. In my peripheries, I sense movement but when Willa and Prilla lunge for me, their chaotic, uncoordinated movements send both of them — and Charana and Olga — toppling off of the table and onto the floor.
I close my eyes, bracing for impact…but it never comes. The world doubles and triples as I’m lifted into the air and the wooden walls of the tavern revolve around and around, overlapping in kaleidescoping colors before finally settling on black and blue and purple and grey and orange and yellow and electric green right in the middle. That green glows and pops.
Raingar winces and holds me out from his body with a jerk. He tries to set me down, but I’m dizzy…so dizzy…that I cling to him. I recognize his face, but I don’t recognize it because Raingar is full of anger and knives and this male is full of hesitation and soft things like pocket lint and bulberry tufts blowing in a gentle Lemoran wind.
“Essmira?” He says, voice so rough he has to clear it several times. He swallows and swallows and swallows.
Strange, that I can hear his every movement when it’s so loud in the inn…nob, it was loud, but now it isn’t. Now, it’s quiet. And that’s why I hear him perfectly when he says, “Can I cut in?”
12
Raingar
“Merquin? Merquin, I know you’re ohring in there!” I shout up at the darkened walls of her keep. The drawbridge that crosses the short river surrounding her keep is closed. The drawbridge is never closed. Gorman must have been right. She must be here and now Merquin is keeping her from me.
I rub my chin thoughtfully, thinking back on Gorman. He’d been in my keep, organizing pallets like he’d never even left. I’d been surprised to see him — surprised and grateful — but he’d just dismissively told me where to find Essmira and it felt like…we were friends again.
Though I got the distinct impression that the rat bastard was up to something…in fact, he looked far, far too pleased to be helping me…I believed him and now I’m here. He’s never given me any excuse not to.
He’s my best friend and I’m glad he’s back in the keep with promises to stick around, if only until the next time I fail her. And I’m a clumsy dolt, every bit the wooden-headed Egama she accused me of being. There will be a next time.
I cup my hands around my mouth and shout again, “Librida! Come talk to me.”
“She’s not here,” comes Librida’s answering reply from the small landing on top of the wall.
“I can hear you!”
“Nob, you can’t,” she snaps back petulantly — it’s something I would do.
I plant my hands on my hips, then throw them up in the air. If I could get across and scale the damn walls, I already would’ve. My horns are on ohring fire, but chills wrack my body, making me shiver. I’ve never felt so terrible. I’m sick. I’ve never been sick.
“Merquin!” I shout and I shake my right fist up at the small Eshmiri globe illuminating the upper landing. “I need you! You have to talk to me. You’re my best friend! Well, aside from Gorman, and right now I feel like everyone is lying to me. Or ignoring me. Do you know that I went to the ohring pad pad stables and the stable master wouldn�
�t give me one! Me! The ohring clan chief!”
I would have raged against the stable master, but she’s Rekkaru and I could seriously hurt her and I don’t want to hurt anyone.
I don’t want to hurt anyone else.
Not anymore. Never again.
Merquin’s chuckle greets me before she says loudly, “You hardly deserve the title.”
“I know.” My organs all feel enlarged. Too big for my body, they’re pushing against my brittle bones. I stoop, having to catch myself on my knees. I say as loud as I can, “I hurt my mate, Merquin.”
There’s a pause and a voice that is not Merquin’s but her mate’s says, “We know. We saw the bruises. And then we heard this solar you were keeping her prisoner.”
“The bruises, I took her freedom, I insulted and neglected her, I…I’m hardly better than Tyto!” Still better, but hardly.
Silence. It’s harder this time. The lunar has fallen around us and is deepening quickly and I just want to see her, to lower my horns to the ground at her feet and promise her the world if it just means she’ll talk to me again. And if she promises never to call me master. And if she promises to stop running from me, but just tell me where she’ll be so I can know she’s okay, even if she asks me not to join her. But I would. I’d go anywhere she wanted to be if it means I can just be with her.
“And?” Librida draws the word out. I don’t understand.
“What?”
“And what do you plan to do about it?”
“Give up!” I roar. “She is miriga. She makes the rules. And I will have to learn to trust that she’ll make rules possible for me to follow.”
“Unlike your rules.”
“Yeffa.” I wince, thinking about all the ways I tried to curb or stop her from living. “That’s why she makes them from now on.”
“Does she know that?”
“Nob, you silly female! That’s why I’m here! To tell her!”
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