Chapter 66 Romancing An Elf

Romancing An Elf

Queen Annilise was right. Although, every one of the five remaining eggs I was now nursing with Kazan were full-blooded dragon eggs. They all had mana signatures from me and their respective parent, but biologically they were all full-blooded dragons.

“Kazan, how is this possible? I am only half-dragon, am I not? None of the fathers of these eggs are dragonborn. How can my children be dragons?”

“Your biology has changed since we married. You are fully a dragon now, my Empress. As is every child you have had. I cannot explain it myself. I have never said anything before because I do not know why. Having the Ancient Mother and Red Queen recognize you, and them, has resolved my misgivings. Look closely at all of your children, and you will see. The two growing in your wife’s belly, will also be full dragons. I have no explanation. I am truly blessed to have been chosen by you. The line of the White Dragons has been restored. Perhaps it is some spell within the White Sceptre. Perhaps it is part of your bloodline. Perhaps it has to do with all weird magik you have absorbed. The Weavers work in mysterious ways.”

I looked down at my wife, Cune, sleeping on the edge of my nest trying to warm one of my eggs. What a foolish girl. I reached inside her with my spirit, and confirmed what Kazan had said, two dragons growing inside the womb of a human. It was inconceivable, but true. What strange magik was this? A puzzle for another day.

The elven queen Ljósáriel had demanded that Kanae visit the Elven realm and meet her people, and be crowned as regent of the Dark Elves. We could not argue against it as it was very clearly and specifically spelled out in the recent treaty that the High Elven Queen had authority over all political matters, and this was the most political of any matter.

“Dee, I want to assign Darby, Selene, and Eoghan as advisors to bring along with me. Ljósáriel will object but as Regent the choice is mine, and mine alone. Not even the Elven Council has any say. Will you release them for a sabbatical?” Kanae asked.

“Of course. They should be useful, although, you will not win any elven hearts with such advisors. Not that won’t already have a mountain of resistance. I don’t know what the Queen’s plot is here. I am certain it is some play concerning the Dark Elves.”

“I at least have the advantage of having married the one son of hers who is least inclined to do her bidding.”

“How is your you bonded soul-mate doing?”

“He is quite excited at the prospects of bedding his newlywed wife. He was very much hoping to use Aoi’s monstrosity of a spa to not only mate but give me his child. His carnal desire is so great it is leaking across the soul-bond and the bond will force me to accept his desire sooner rather than later. I have been calming him down with other techniques, but they won’t last for long.”

“Hey it’s not a monstrosity! I will have you know we are getting request from all over the many nations to order some spas. It could be our number one selling product,” Aoi said.

“Absolutely not! You are not to sell or ship any of those monstrosities, without my explicit consent. Those are extremely dangerous!” I said.

“What! You can’t do that! I’ve already sold one to Queen Matilde, Arch-Duke Setanna, Queen Ophelia, Queen Tokcraíga, and the Red Queen!” Aoi said.

“Give them all their money back. Those are five of the most perverted minds on the planet! No way I want them to have one of those devices!”

“Well Queen Tokcraíga only bought the plans and rights to make her own.”

“What!? Steward!”

The door burst open, “Yes, my Empress?”

“Shut down the city. Do not let the Dwarf Queen leave the city!”

“I’m sorry your majesty, Queen Tokcraíga left over an hour ago, on one of Duchess Aoi’s Empress Class Airships. It was last seen flying near its top speed.”

Sigh!’

“Well, it looks like Dwarves have won this battle. You may have doomed women everywhere Aoi. Now the world will have access to your fertility baths.” I said.

“Oh. Oh, no! You misunderstood. I gave her the plans for the spa, and I’m building spas for the other queens, but the fertility treatment is proprietary. I haven’t divulged that. It’s much too dangerous. I need to do a lot more research on that. We will be running some experiments during the Summer and Fall sessions at the Academy. With select couples of course.”

I started laughing, and everyone started laughing. When I finally had it under control,

“Alright Aoi, you can sell the spas, but not the fertility treatment. I want complete updates on everything you do related to that, and do not give it out without my explicit consent.”

“Of course Dee.”

At the end of the fourth week of Summer Academy, Kanae, Darby, and their spouses headed out for the elven continent on an airship with a platoon of the Dragon Guard for security.

Kanae had seen the Elven Continent in exactly one place before, in the White Palace Map Room. Lines drawn in ink. She was not prepared for this view. A land covered in golden mountains of Sallórn trees rising from a hidden forest floor. A shimmering golden roof. Here and there a single tree rose above the rest. Their ship was headed for one of them. Limbs had been magically extended and grown into a dock for airships. The Queen’s new airship was docked there.

“Auranyx, the capital city of Silmar. Quite a view isn’t, my heart?” Tiberion said.

“It is, I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t know what I was expecting.”

“It gets me too, every time I come home, and I grew up here.”

‘My heart. Is that Tiberion, or the bond. Marriage, life-debt, soul-bonding,’ Kanae’s mind played over the words. Not for the first time. ‘The idiot picks a fight with an SSS ranked golem with his mother’s stolen access code, and I dragged him back from death. Two months later the law, honor, and politics gifts me a new husband, and a trip to the land of my people, who aren’t my people. A fake Elf about to become a Queen. Well, I guess this is the Goddess’ revenge. She took her time setting the groundwork.’

‘I’m just chock-full of secrets no one can ever know, aren’t I? Save a prince and gain a husband. What would they do if they know he died, and I revived him? I don’t even want to imagine.’

The ship docked and Kanae stepped off onto the platform of living wood, and she felt it. The life force of the tree under foot. She could feel the pulse of life coursing through the trees and the forest. All of her elven senses came to life. She was home, and not home. She might be from another world, but she was an elf in the truest sense, and this was home.

They descended down a living stair into the forest below. They descended an enormous Sallórn, the central tree. The central tree was surrounded by thirteen other colossal trees. The great Sallórns had been woven together by time and magik, and the branches connected in pathways both intricate and beautiful. Beautiful in a peaceful, surreal, and slightly haunting manner. Time had no meaning here. It was both the ancient past, the vibrant present, and the promising future. Living and chrystal lanterns hung from the trees. Vines of Everlight grew everywhere and bloomed in full glory with the flowers giving off a soft, warm pale blue light. The chrystal lanterns collecting the sunlight from the roof of the forest and transmitting it down in a soft reddish-gold light. That light duplicating the light of the twin daystars, red Lugh and golden Ariel.

Now came Kanae’s procession. Lining the path to the Royal Hall, Dark elves lined balconies, and the bridges, and they were silent, and their silence spoke the unspoken words. Wanderer. Outsider. Oathsworn.

Oathsworn. That was the worst of them, she was only married into her own people through an ancient oath. An oath she hadn’t wanted and sought to evade. They all knew it, but no one dared speak it. There was no need to speak it. It was done. A thing now of the past. Elves didn’t dwell on the past. Time was a fleeting thing and stagnant.

They bowed in perfect unison as Kanae passed, an undulating wave of faces. Faces whose eyes never left Kanae. She shivered inside. Show no weakness.

“They know,” Kanae whispered.

“Mother announced it from the Great Hall weeks ago,” Tiberion said, as if it was his fault.

“Of course she did.”

“Mother, has honed her politics over centuries. Her plots run deep and still. Sometimes, swiftly.”

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The Great Royal Hall opened up like a chasm. Carved out from the living wood into a massive hall. The great and minor noble houses and royal family lined the hall. A hall so grandiose a banquet of ten thousand wouldn’t fill it. A hall built for one purpose to make sure that any who were received would know how small and insignificant they were before the great Elven Realm.

Kanae walked with all the dignity of a Dark Elf Queen, her hands lightly folded behind back, as if she were inspecting her subjects. The title was read out in ancient Silmarien and then in the common tongue.

“Kanae Banrígh of Clan Dreamweaver, Duchess of the White Dragon Realm, Princess bride of Prince Tiberion, Regent of the Dark Elven Realm for Lost Queen.”

Kanae bowed before the Queen so she could place the circlet crown of the Dark elves upon her head. A surge of mana erupted from the crown as it accepted her in an expanding wave out to the edge of the realm. The hall bowed to Kanae, and Kanae felt a binding in her chest. A thin thread connecting her to this place and these people. It tugged at her gently, weakly, faintly from somewhere below. It was gone in an instant, and Kanae couldn’t be sure of it. But she had felt it, and Ljósáriel smiled a knowing smile.

The banquet lasted for five hours, and by the end of it Kanae had five presumptive fiancés.

“Margrave Valenthíor, of the Eastern March, commands a force of six thousand knights, and has never lost in single combat,” Queen Ljósáriel said for the third time that evening.

“I am already married, with two husbands,” Kanae said, as pleasantly as she could muster. Even if one was forced upon me. Well to be fair the other was a result of my own mistakes as well.

“To a human, yes. Also to my son, a Princess Consort,” Ljósáriel said dismissively, waving her hand. “But you are now Regent of the Dark Elves, and need Dark Elf consorts, for the realm and for continuity of your clan. You must rebuild the Dreamweaver clan. That will take many husbands. You must marry broadly, as your Empress is doing. But your duty is to the Dark Elves and your clan. Not to the nations of Eå.”

“But she is married to seven! Soon to be eight! And probably five more!”

“I will not insist on seven.”

“Oh, well, thank you. You are so gracious.”

“You are welcome dear daughter. Lady Míriviel of Thornvail March,” Ljósáriel continued, “is available to the Regent as a companion, of any kind. Sir Órbhenor head librarian of the Royal Archives is a recent widower with an impressive library and has a very gentle disposition. And Margrave Valenthíor’s younger brother-”

“Your Majesty,” Kanae said, with strained courtesy, “I have been in the city barely six hours.”

“Mother. Call me mother now dear. We are family now. I understand. It is all overwhelming. I only want you to be aware of some of your options. You will of course, take as much time as you need.”

Her gaze settled on Tiberion, and then back to Kanae, and the unspoken part of the sentence hung in the air – but not too much time. Because of the other matter.

The soul-bond thrummed in her chest, and more strongly a place considerably lower. It had hummed since the first night after the bond was sealed. A patient, light pressure, like diving for pearls. For the first two weeks it had been easy to ignore. For the past two weeks it had begun leaking.

Not pain. Nobody warned her the punishment wouldn’t be pain. What came across the bonds was Tiberion, in warming, unfiltered flashes. His yearning while watching her across the breakfast table, his thoughts about the nape of her neck, flashes of dreams in the night, and the morning. Especially the morning.

She had been walking with a Dark Elf chamberlain, and in mid-sentence a thought not her own arrived, vivid and extremely detailed, and she walked into a door. A Hearth Chatelaine Bond was brutal, Kanae was learning. It was said that if one delayed the consummation, the bond would collect the debt, with interest. She had assumed it was some sort of metaphor. It was not a metaphor.

Across the table Valenthíor was explaining his latest venture, which was netting him a tidy profit. Kanae was nodding politely when a thought not her own came, loud and angry: he’s not so tough. I could take him.

She looked down the table. Tiberion was glaring at Valenthíor, his hands gripping the table with white knuckles and the focused, bloodshot intensity of a man who had once decided he could best a SSS ranked golem.

Mine! Said the bond, in a voice neither his nor hers.

“Tiberion,” she said sweetly, “Would you escort me for a moment?”

“Of course, my love,” Tiberion said, his chair clattering backward in his too sudden movement. The entire table went silent. Tiberion escorted Kanae to the terrace before one of them did something they couldn’t take back.

“Calm down. I will be forced to take several more husbands. The bond is leaking,” Kanae said.

“I know. I will try harder to control it.”

“You should return. Being this close right now is not safe,” Kanae said.

“Yes, my heart.”

Kanae couldn’t sleep, so she took a walk to clear her head. She found him on one of the great terraces, gripping the rail as if it was a snake he needed to strangle.

“You have been avoiding me,” Kanae said.

“I have been avoiding the proximity of you. It is different, and the more respectable thing to do,” He said.

“I have been hearing, and feeling, your thoughts.”

“All of them?”

“Much of them. Especially the stronger ones. Like in the morning.”

He made a strangled noise, and turned his face away, “I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying to think of anything else. I’ve even tried reciting the monotone historical lectures of Professor SleepingPill*. Nothing works. I’ve even tried thinking about my battle with that golem. But that backfired, because it makes me think about you healing me. Which makes it worse. Much, much worse.”

[* A nickname, at the Academy, for Professor Soren whose lectures were so monotone and boring it actually put many students to sleep.]

“You can’t just stand out here and-”

“I’m being responsible and respectful,” he said, with what dignity he could, “I’m giving you the space and time you need. I read it in a book that Empress Deirdre gave me.”

“Dee gave you a book on relationships?”

“It’s more a ‘How not to be a total idiot to women’ manual. I’m on chapter two,” He said glancing at me his face filled with hunger, desperation, fear, and desire.

“I swear, I won’t pressure you. I am not good at holding back. I know I’ve been an arrogant self-inflated idiot who nearly got himself killed doing something ridiculously stupid. I know I’ve earned nothing from you but contempt and disgust. I’ll wait as long as you need.”

“You are going to wait?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

A long pause, the bond pushing very unhelpful and graphic flash oh what he was thinking.

“Until tomorrow, maybe,” he said, “Maybe lunchtime.”

Another flash.

She laughed. It came out unexpectedly. It came out very undignified. The bond pulsed, with his helplessness, embarrassment, delight. Kanae realized in that moment she’d stopped being angry at some point. The idiot was trying. He was struggling against his own nature, loudly, intensely, with instruction manuals. But he was trying. For her.

“Tiberion=”

The thread pulled.

Not faint this time. It yanked, with an irresistible force. A rope. A rope being hauled hand over hand, like a boatswain raising a sail in heavy seas. It pulled Kanae down towards the roots of the mighty Sallórn. A shockwave of mana blasted out of Kanae, out over the entire continent, as she flew down the Great Stairs. Her feet as nimble as the nimblest elf, barely making contact with the ground.

“This is not me!” Tiberion said.

“I know,” Kanae said, as she noticed they were holding hands, and she was fairly dragging him along.

Downward they sped, past the bridges, and the floors, and the forest floor. Into the raised roots of the ancient Sallórn itself. She could hear the rumor of Servants and guards and the Queen’s household chasing behind them.

“Hold the stair! Let no one pass!” came the voice of the queen above them.

Kanae stopped at wall of knotted roots, glowing in a deep purple. Kanae could feel a pounding heartbeat before her. Waves of mana sweeping over her. Making her glow a light purple was well. Slowly the roots untangled and opened to a vast cavern alive in a purple light. In the center stood a great loom as large as a house. For a hundred and sixty-nine years the loom had been dark. Now it was blazing with purple fire and every thread was humming with power.

“The Dream Loom,” Tiberion gasped. “It has been dead for more than a hundred years. How-”

“It has acknowledged Regent Kanae,” came a voice behind them.

Queen Ljósáriel stood in opening, her hands on her chest and awe in her eyes. Kanae walked forward in a waking dream and strands from the loom danced around her and images came to her mind

– a woman with her eyes, laughing in a garden she had never seen, yet she knew its scent,

- a crown of black glass shorn in two,

- a black-haired child running towards the water,

- a training ground, a still chest, hands glowing in a blue edged light

No! Not that one! Kanae grabbed the thread and yanked it. The vision cracked and shattered before anyone could see.

The threads flared brightly. A single thread wrapped around Kanae’s wrist and tugged. West. Far to the West. Beyond sight.

“Alive. Out there. One yet lives. The Royal House-” Kane whispered in a voice not her own.

Then the Loom’s power found the bond. Every thread in the loom poured their light and power through Kanae and through the bond to Tiberion.

They were lifted up and pulled together. For a month the bond had been starved. Now the Bond did what it did when fed a supply of mana. It collected on the debt. Heat poured into Kanae like crashing waves into a cove. Her body had a spasm. She felt Tiberion. Everything he’d been holding in for a month. All at once. Unfiltered.

“Oh!” Kanae groaned. “Oh, my Goddess! That’s so much!”

Tiberion in his turn, received all the heat Kanae had been suppressing, denying, deceiving herself.

“Oh! Oh, my Goddess!” he groaned as his body was also wracked by spasms. The Loom wove a tapestry around them and wrapped them inside. For hours, it glowed in a warm purple light as they consummated their bond.

Then it laid them down among the roots atop the new tapestry of the House Dreamweaver-Caisearvhán. Kanae’s pelvis was glowing with a pair of purple lights.

“You have given me twins my husband.”

“No you have given me the world, and a beautiful pair of twins.”

“We confirm, Regent Kanae is carrying twins with Prince Tiberion, and the child she has already been carrying with her first husband,” a Nurse witness who had been called when it became obvious the Bond had activated consummation of the marriage.

“How!?” Queen Ljósáriel said.

Murmurs spread a like a lit fuse up the tree and throughout the continent. After finding the clothing the Loom and bond had forced off them Kanae and Tiberion dressed and left the chamber. It closed behind them.

“Don’t think you can get me to repeat that process with any future husbands. Make me a list of suitors. I will have my people build my own list, and I will choose four, if enough are found acceptable. I’m going back to the Academy.” Kanae said as she and Tiberion stumbled their way to their honeymoon suite, that the Queen had assigned them on arrival to the continent.

They collapsed on the bed they had yet to sleep on together. Eoghan kept guard so she was not disturbed. In the morning the three of them woke together, and they collected everyone and quietly left to return to the Academy. The Dark Elves were lined up along their entire route and bowed reverently, and not a few lustily, to their Regent. An Elven Priestess of the Church never taking her eyes off her, and smiling.

“Dee, I need to do a search quest to find the living royal Dark Elf, so I can be rid of this title of Regent. I had a vision of her location while in the Elven Realm,” Kanae said to Deirdre, when they got back.

“Oh, you have become a seer?” Deirdre said.

“It’s more complicated than that. But in brief it was a vision from the Dream Loom of my clan.”

“Queen Ljósáriel isn’t going to let you off the hook, just because you are no longer Regent. You still have to repopulate the House Dreamweaver with dark elves.”

“Ugh! I know. This all that lazy Goddess’ fault. All because I asked for this one little thing.”