1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Breidentel

winter: Year 253 of the Bynding

The sensation has tugged at the back of her head all day, muddying her focus even though it doesn't actually hurt. Dakadza is scowling at her journal where she documents what she eats. It's practice for him, with the language he's fought to learn over the past few years, and a second opinion for her.

"There's no pattern!" he gripes, anxiety tightening his tone. He says he's just aware of how inconsistencies can be weaponized—he grew up subject to that—but Geddis is unconvinced.

"Maybe we're missing something," she says anyway about the record she keeps because he asked her to, even as she stares at the envelope in her hand. A real-live dragon Shifter brought it--and not the one that's her forefather many generations removed, either. Shifters are supposed to be myths at best, rare abominations that can't control their animal natures, but she's met several in the past few years. "Maybe it's stress."

Dakadza immediately tosses the book back on the shelf and drops beside her on the mat she sits on. His hands knead up her side, the flow of it warning her not to look at him unless she wants to be late for her next class.

"Not now," she tells him, voice soft with the desire for yes, now. But she made a promise to these people, to teach them the local trade language so they can gain autonomy and decide what they want to do for themselves, and she's not going to muck with that, no matter how badly she wants the comfort he's offering.

The natives here are the underclass, the illegitimate persons who've been used as slaves. The new high king of the elves pulled the overclass into his realm, where he can have more control, and sent a few of his own people to help the transition, since they themselves had only recently escaped slavery (and, from how the old masters had treated them, many were illegitimate).

Focusing on her desires over the repercussions were what got her here, in a foreign realm where she's broader than any three locals put together and knows little of their language. Geddis became a king's mistress on purpose, because she didn't want to spend the rest of her life working. She's since realized that she just didn't want to be a maid, which was horrible for her health, and she'd had people offering her jobs that suited her better. She just hadn't been listening.

Maybe she still would've chosen to be a king's mistress, regardless, despite the king's wife being one of the few people who'd noticed and remembered Geddis even when she was a maid. King Liathen had noticed her, too, and he'd found her attractive because of her bulk, not despite it. Their child hadn't affected that.

If anything, their child had reminded him how much he had to resent about his half-sister, Evonalé. Her father had stolen his from him. Their mother had gotten to raise her, not him, and she had escaped while he experienced horrors that Geddis never had learned the full extent of. Evonalé even got a husband she loved deeply, while he had to make do with a barren woman he found entertaining but often disliked.

At least, that's what Geddis suspects, now, from discussions with Dakadza, who likes chatting about that sort of thing. That possibility sure explains how Liathen handled his wife finding out about Firthé. He hadn't told Lallie that he'd taken a mistress, but he hadn't minded at all when she found out at the newborn's cradle. Even Lallie herself had expressed more distress at the lack of communication than at what he'd done, and she'd intentionally left the realm so she wouldn't interfere with their relationship.

Liathen had been a stubborn man--how else would he have survived what Evonalé's family did to him?--but maybe Lallie could've coaxed him into being more careful when the assassin was about. She would've at least ensured he was better guarded even if she defied him to do it, and she could have healed him. All Geddis could do was try to drag him back to the populated part of the caves, screaming for help that had come too late.