Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,26
seeing the stricken look in her eyes. “What is it? Tell me…”
“Kort was here,” she said, softly, raising her hand almost involuntarily to the bruise on her cheek. Her voice sank. “I couldn’t stop him...”
It took a second before Dorovan understood. This was a thing of men no Elf understood. How could one gain pleasure from such a thing, to turn something of such beauty into ugliness…?
Fury nearly hazed his vision. “He forced you…”
She closed her eyes.
“He’s my husband…,” she said, miserably, tears streaming.
Taking her chin in his hand, Dorovan tilted her face up so she could see his eyes.
“He broke his oath to you a thousand times, Delae, yet you have never broken your faith to him. He married you to this duty, not for love or honor. You have done it and still do it. In honor you owe him nothing. Nothing! Do you hear me?”
Brushing her hair back from her face, he said, “Know this, Delae. What we have is a faith of the heart. It can be broken only by death and nothing else. We could not have it if you were faithless. As the friend-of-my-heart, I love you. I don’t care what he does or what the laws of men say. In your heart, you know honor and keep it. As I can, I will always come, as quickly as I may.”
Delae bowed her head against his chest.
Chapter Nine
It would be three months later before Dorovan could come again. Spring was in the air, the breezes had warmed and yet through their bond Delae knew he was coming and she came to meet him, walking through the long grasses and the early spring flowers.
She looked beautiful, her brilliant hair streaming in the breeze and he watched her face glow as she caught sight of him. Her feet were bare, as always. He smiled to see them. There was a picnic basket in her hand.
As selfish as it was, Dorovan couldn’t help being glad no other of men could love her and so he had this to himself. Had she had a true love, a soul-bond other than him, he would still have been her friend-of-the-heart but without this deep joy.
He knew she loved him - deeply and truly - but she didn’t pain for the day he might find his soul-bond, even knowing it would end this that they shared between them. She loved him enough to wish it for him, to see him happy. Parted as they must be, their love forbidden, if this was all they could have, then it would enough and more than enough.
It was risk enough to come here, an Elf alone. There were some of men who would kill him just to see him. Millennia of war between their two races carried its scars and its hatreds, although it hadn’t been his people who started those wars.
There was also this, his was the longer-lived race and so he wouldn’t age as quickly as she. Delae burned so brightly but she would burn so very briefly compared to him, while he would live on long after she was gone. He hated to think it, to consider a world without bright Delae in it.
Without needing to think about it, Dorovan reached an arm down to swing her up onto the saddle before him as her mouth lifted to his for a kiss, the picnic basket across her thighs.
Delae looked at him. “I have a thing to show you. A place.”
“All right,” he said, a little mystified, but looking in her eyes to see he saw the light of mischief there.
“Will Charis mind if I guide him?”
“The reins are yours,” Dorovan said, content simply to be in her presence.
She had a quiet soul, full of warmth and energy, but content with her place, her life.
The deep woods that nearly surrounded her homestead closed around them, close and secret, so like Talaena and all the other Enclaves it was almost like home, save there were no Veils, no verandas, no homes and walkways among the trees.
Here only the birds moved among the tree tops, not his people.
Dorovan knew the great Gorge wasn’t so far away, but far enough.
Then the trees parted to reveal a little glade brilliant with sunlight and spangled with the little white flowers that grew in neat circles that men called Fairy rings. Such flowers grew over the graves of Elves who’d died in truth, who hadn’t passed on to the Summerlands.