Chapter 654: A Husband? [Bonus - ]

Chapter 654: A Husband? [Bonus Chapter]

Eluned looked straight into her wide bloodshot eyes.

"Because I can feel it." She lifted a hand and touched the center of Ther’Abella’s chest, right where the cracked ribs were still knitting. "That rage isn’t steel, Ther’Abella... It’s poison... It’s running out of your spiritual circuits like swamp water. You’ve carried it for so long that it has eaten everything except your blade."

She sighed with a sound following like autumn leaves crossing a pond.

"I don’t want that life anymore."

Ther’Abella’s mouth hung open.

"You don’t... want what?"

"I don’t care about Yggdrasil’s throne." Her tone was entirely calm. "I’m still a goddess... I’m smaller now than I was, much weaker than the great being who held up the canopy, but I’m here and my sister, since we were seedlings splitting off from our mother’s marrow, has looked at the light on my leaves and burned... She wanted to be the god, she wanted the councils to bow... She wanted the realm to tremble when her name crossed a border."

Her chin tipped up toward the pale-blue sky of Aki’s meadow.

"Now she has it... She has the timber, the spires, the empty marble halls, and the frightened courtiers who kiss her boots so lt her keep them... Let her choke on everything and the border wars with the frost giants, What she does with stolen power isn’t my burden."

"But the people—"

"The people cheered when she called me a murderer," Eluned said, without a trace of bitterness. "The elders who drank my sap for centuries turned their bows on my own squires inside ten seconds of her decree... Why should I bleed a second time for the ones who cheered at my execution?"

She looked back down, and the smile on her face was so clean that it seemed to burn the chill out of Ther’Abella’s bones.

"I have a family now, Ther’Abella." Tears of plain simple happiness gathered in the corners of her jade eyes. "A real one... Not courtiers measuring my yield, not high priests timing my prayers. I have a lord who minds my garden and a land where no one looks at me with fear. I’m happy here... Truly."

She took the elf’s scarred hands between her own soft ones.

"I want you to be part of it. I know Kaelith is gone... I know Caelia, Evandra, and Moriel are sleeping in the earth, and I carry the weight of being too weak to shield them every single day... But you’re here and you survived the dark so let the spear rest, little one. Come to Blessed Land... Let me look after you for once..."

Ther’Abella sat motionless while the wind dragged loose strands of silver across her mouth then Eluned’s hands slackened.

She lowered her head, and a small fragile sorrow crept into her face.

"Of course," she murmured, her voice shrinking into something shy and self-conscious, "it’s completely understandable if you refuse... I was a foolish goddess. I let myself be tricked by my own blood, I let my Guard be butchered, and I left you to starve in the wastes for four hundred years. If you look at me now and see only failure, if you despise me for being small..."

GRASP!

Ther’Abella lunged and clamped both hands around Eluned’s palms as she bowed until her silver bangs touched the Goddess’s knuckles and pressed her forehead against the cool flour-dusted skin of her wrists.

"Never." Her voice was thick and trembling. "Never say that, My Lady... If I had ten thousand lives I would spend every one of them guarding the dust under your feet. To serve you again... to sit in your garden and see you smile like this... it’s more than someone like me deserves. Please. Let me be part of your family and let me hold the shield for you again."

Eluned’s face lit up so bright it rivaled the noon sun.

"Thank you, Ther’Abella." She laughed and bent to press a kiss to the top of the silver head. "Thank you for coming back to me."

For a few heartbeats the meadow was quiet, and all that could be heard was grass, and the sniffling of a very tall woman kneeling at a goddess’s feet.

"Ahem."

A tiny high throat-clearing came from five paces to the left.

The two of them turned.

Princess Aki stood with her hands clasped in front of her tunic with her lapis hair stirring in the breeze and her cheeks bright with embarrassed pink.

She shifted from one boot to the other and held up one finger by about half an inch.

"Um. I really hate to interrupt, but technically..." She pointed her thumb at her own chest. "Ther’Abella is my Hero."

Ther’Abella’s silver brows drew together.

She rose slowly, all her height unfolding, and even with her armor dented and her clothes caked in mud she loomed over the petite princess like an old monument.

She looked down at the girl. "You’re the Lord of this territory?"

Aki’s heart hammered like a trapped bird.

’She’s terrifying,’ she thought, knees knocking under her tunic. ’She looks like she could snap an oak over her knee! What was the recruitment speech they taught at the Academy? "By the divine right of the Sovereign Realm, your deeds shall be recorded in the annals of—" No! That sounds awful!’

"Y-Yes!" She puffed out her chest and tried to make her chin look regal. "I am Princess Aki, Lord of this domain! I intend to build a territory founded on fair trade, true mutual defense, and thoughtful farming! If you pledge your steel to my banner, I swear upon Blessed Land that you will never lack for bread, shelter, or honor!"

She shut her eyes and waited for the giant to laugh in her face.

CLANG!

Ther’Abella dropped to one knee with her right fist striking the turf in front of Aki’s boots and her head bowed so low that silver hair pooled around the princess’s toes.

"I hear and obey, My Lord."

Aki’s eyes flew open.

"Eh?!"

"You pulled my soul out of the outer dark," Ther’Abella said, and her voice had no mockery left in it. "You brought me to this meadow and you put Lady Eluned in front of me again. For that alone, my life belongs to your hall... My level is reset and my greater arrays are sealed by the contract, but the memory in my hands is whole so until my core crumbles, my spear is yours."

Aki’s face turned the exact shade of an overripe strawberry.

"That is far too much! Please stand up! A nod is fine, truly!"

From the edge of the knoll came a very loud very rude snort as Ther’Abella’s ears twitched.

She turned her head, and her gaze landed on the floating thunder-goddess.

The warmth drained out of her face and what replaced it was a wall of arctic frost.

Thor met it with a wide mocking smirk and tapped Mjolnir against the bronze plate of her thigh.

Thunk-thunk!

Neither said a word.

The air between them tightened until a patch of clover between their boots withered to brown dust.

Anyone in the valley could tell those two had enough mutual contempt to run a thirty-year border dispute.

"Now, now," Eluned said smoothly, gliding between the two giants like a mother stepping between bickering hounds.

She picked the baking dish up off the boundary stone.

A tiny gust of spring wind curled out of her fingers, lifted the single pastry that had fallen in the dirt, stripped every speck of loam off it, and set it neatly back among the others.

"Ther’Abella, you must be obedient to Princess Aki... She’s young, but her heart is kind and her foundation is sound so take a honey cake. You haven’t eaten proper food in centuries, have you?"

"No, My Lady." Ther’Abella took one with trembling fingers and bit into it.

Wildflower honey and roasted lotus seed filled her mouth, and for a moment her throat closed up all over again.

She chewed slowly and looked around at the little camp: the white-stone wall, the timber hall, the vegetable plot, the huge runic circle humming at the eastern gate.

"Lady Eluned, there’s something I don’t understand... The girl said I was summoned to Blessed Land, but this hall is small. Is Princess Aki the lord who went into the root-tomb to rescue you?"

Aki jumped in, eager to show she was competent.

"This is a Vassal Territory! We’re registered as a branch of Blessed Land’s central core. I handle day-to-day defense and local building myself, but our hero registers are bound to the mother-hall."

"And I belong to the mother-hall," Eluned added cheerfully, smoothing her flour-dusted apron. "I was Lord Silas’s very first Hero."

Ther’Abella’s jaw tightened.

’Lord Silas.’

The name had been hovering over the whole conversation.

Was he some ancient northern warlord or a grizzled tactician who hoarded a being like Eluned herself... as a chess piece to climb the rankings of the world.

"Lord Silas," she said, folding her arms across her torn cuirass. "When he returns from his campaigns, I’ll have to judge his character with my own eyes... A man who commands Lady Eluned must have unshakeable discipline."

Eluned blinked, then gave a soft musical giggle with a decidedly un-martial, dreamy warmth.

"Oh, Silas doesn’t command me... He’s very gentle. He worries whether I’ve had enough food, and he brings me gifts from the mortal markets and he’s terribly cute when he tries to look serious."

"Cute?" Ther’Abella said. "A Lord?"

"Of course." Eluned pressed her hands over her heart with unashamed pride. "It’s only natural I find him charming... He’s my husband, after all."

Silence dropped over the meadow like a block of lead as Ther’Abella’s mouth opened.

SPURT!

A fine spray of bright red blood shot out between her teeth and splattered the green clover.

The shock was so violent that her damaged spiritual circuits misfired and back-blasted half a cup of blood through her mouth.

"H-H-HUSBAND?!" She wheezed with her eyes bulging, and dragged a trembling forearm across her chin.

She took two steps and loomed over the smaller Goddess with her voice dropping into a horrified rasp.

"My Lady, I beg your pardon. The desert winds must have damaged my hearing. Did you just say... husband?"

Eluned tilted her head looking utterly lost.

"Yes? I’m married. Lord Silas is my husband... Is something wrong?"

Every muscle in Ther’Abella’s face went completely blank.

The silver constellations on her cheeks stopped glowing and faded to dead slate-gray lines as her eyes became two hollow wells of frost.

’Husband.’

The word rang through her skull like a funeral bell.

’A mortal man... put his hands on Lady Eluned... wrapped his common dirt-caked arms around the daughter of the World Tree and left her in an open field with flour on her apron while he swaggers around the outer realms.’

"Where is he?"

There was no anger in her voice... There was nothing, it sounded like glacial ice grinding under a black sea.

"I wish to meet this Lord Silas... Immediately..."

Behind them, Thor had folded in half.

She was wheezing, one hand braced on her knee and the other pounding the air and tears running into her braids.

"Gwahaha! The face! Did you see her face?! Oh, I wish I had a mirror! I wish I had a mirror and a camera and a barrel of mead!"

"Thor," Aki hissed, "not helping!"

Eluned looked from the choking elf to the cackling goddess and back with a small puzzled frown.

"Did I say something wrong?"

Aki threw up both hands with sweat running down the back of her neck as the murderous radiation rolled off the elf.

"He isn’t here! He’s on Earth, in the mortal layer! He went back to his home city to see to family business and resupply our lines... He won’t be back until tomorrow morning at the earliest!"

"Earth," Ther’Abella repeated, flat as a blade. "The mortal layer."

’Good,’ she thought, and her hands curled slowly into white-knuckled fists behind her back. ’That gives me more hours to sharpen my lance... When this "cute" husband steps through that gate, I’ll evaluate the structural integrity of his collarbones.’

She forced her face to soften and gave Eluned a stiff, mechanical bow.

"I understand, My Lady. I’ll await his return with great anticipation."

Eluned beamed, completely oblivious to the assassination plot forming in her former squire’s head.

"Wonderful! You two will get along splendidly... Silas loves strong women."

Aki let out a long shuddering sigh of relief, though her gut told her the meadow was going to turn into an active war zone the second Silas set foot on the grass.