Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,31
know what she knew now.
Then, if they asked him, he wouldn’t be forced to betray himself and them…and this precious beautiful child.
If what they did worked, he would never need to and the baby would be safe, they would all be safe.
Still, she wept, alone for the first time since before Selah had been born as she touched the baby’s tender cheek. So beautiful.
As much as it grieved her, Dorovan must never learn what they now knew for certain, that Selah was indeed his daughter and her child his granddaughter.
No one must know of the baby’s mixed blood. No one could know she bore in her veins not just her father Geric’s mixed blood but her mother Selah’s. That she had the forbidden blood of all three races in her tiny veins.
That she had magic.
That she was Otherling.
Dorovan wouldn’t betray her, Delae knew. But she wouldn’t have him suffer this fear as she did. Knowing what this child might be, what it meant and would mean to his people, to the Dwarves, who, as much as they loved children and had welcomed Geric, would kill this baby out of hand just for what she was. She couldn’t do that to Dorovan, to make him keep this secret against his own people.
Even the Elves, as much as they loved children, would be torn…
Tears streamed down her cheeks and she prayed that what they planned would work. No one must ever know that the baby had magic such as Elves and Dwarves did.
It had been another long cold winter, with a storm on the horizon when Dorovan rode into the compound of Delae’s homestead. In the way of men, Hallis and Petra had long passed to their Summerlands such as men had, as had Kort’s parents and Delae had taken on Dan and Morlis’s wives in their place. All were well accustomed to seeing him there but none ever spoke of it to anyone outside the homestead, not that they saw many others on this distant edge of the Kingdom.
He knew Delae was on her way back to the homestead to meet him from a ride out to check on the smallholders.
Over the years she’d become much more successful, especially once Kort had died - knifed in an alley over a gambling debt. Elf that he was, Dorovan still found it hard to grieve much for that one.
With a nod Morlis’s oldest boy came to take Charis, his eyes glinting with delight as the Elven-bred horse followed him to the stable, eager for his ration of oats.
Dorovan smiled before turning toward the great room, so familiar to him after all these years that it was nearly a second home, anticipating Delae’s arrival with a lightening of his spirit.
Pulling off his cloak, Dorovan shook the rain out and spread it over the rack by the fire, turning in surprise at the sound of the rapid patter of bare feet as they raced down the hall from the kitchens toward him.
A child burst into the room.
“Delae!” she said and then came to a sudden halt as she saw him standing there instead. “Surprise…!”
The owner of the bare feet was a small bundle of energy of about seven full seasons, her blue-gray eyes lighting up with delight and curiosity at the sight of him.
There was a hint of her grandmother in the shape of those eyes, in the glints of red in her bouncing chestnut curls and in the bright wonder in her face. More of it in the fact that they obviously couldn’t keep shoes on her. Dorovan allowed himself a small smile as she tilted her head to look at him.
“You’re an Elf,” she said, wisely. “You’re a secret. I’m not supposed to tell.”
With a chuckle and a nod, he said, “Yes, yes and yes.”
Her gaze went to his shoulder. He still wore his harness and his swords; he’d been in the process of taking them off.
“You have swords.”
“I do,” he said, watching her as he shrugged them off his shoulders.
Tilting her head at him, those big steel blue eyes wide, twisting on one foot, she said, “Can I touch one?”
“Just one?”
She looked at him gravely. “The long one would be too heavy.”
“It would. I’m Dorovan,” he said, already enraptured. He’d seen her before of course, when she’d been little more than a baby but not recently. “And you would be Ailith.”
It meant ‘light’ in the old tongue and she was a light that was certain.