Page 42 of This Midsummer Heart
The innkeeper’s words trail off as he sees me dripping water onto his floor, flecking the walls with it as I lower the hood of my too small, borrowed cloak. His face is flushed—captivated by Titaine’s beauty—and then goes slack as he takes in my blue skin and pointed ears. Titaine’s are conveniently hidden by her glamour.
The innkeeper’s tone changes entirely. “W-wouldn’t be proper, of course, to have a lady and an, er, gentleman, sharing the same bed. He’ll have to stay someplace else.”
Titaine offers the innkeeper a radiant smile. “This man happens to be my husband”—the word sounds bitter—“so one bed will suit us just fine.”
The innkeeper hands her the key, his eyes darting towards me. He looks as if he’d rather swallow it than admit a water-logged elf.
The stairs creak all the way up, the paint worn off them in the center. Five agonizing flights of stairs bring us to the swelteringly humid attic, where I see the doors to not one but three rooms squeezed in beneath the eaves. Just how smallisthis room?
Titaine leads the way, pushing open the door, a slice of which is missing thanks to the intrusion of the sloping roof. The entryway doesn’t get much wider from there.
Without meaning to, a soft groan escapes my lips. Though there is the promise of rest in that little bed at the end, I’ll have to contort my sore muscles and back to get there.
“Duck,” Titaine suggests oh-so-helpfully, then slips in with no further inconvenience than a tilt of her head and a folding of her wings. I bend almost in half to make it through.
It is too hot up here to light a fire in the tiny grate and dry our clothes, and I half wonder if it’s ever used. A thick coating of dust, turning the black stove gray, proclaims that it’s mostly for decoration.
“Lovely,” I say, dropping onto the one section of the bed where I can fully sit up.
“Not everyone is born a prince, Auberon.”
“Not everyone regards elves as if they were slugs tracked in on the carpet. Why are you defending that human? He deserves no kind words from either of us.”
“Everyone deserves a kind word.”
“No, Titaine, I don’t think everyone does.”You didn’t have any for me, for several years.
Her hands settle onto her hips. “I was turned away from multiple inns in Adellor, and you don’t hear me belittling anyone’s life’s work.”
“You’venever belittled anyone’s life’s work?”
“Of course not!”
I narrow my eyes at her.
Slowly, color reaches her cheeks, turning them rosy. “That’s different.”
The mood of the room shifts completely, from close and unpleasant to downright unbearable.
“I take my life’s work very seriously, Titaine,” I say, refusing to bite my tongue this time. “Work you threatened at every turn once you decided you were done with ourarrangement.”
“Arrangement?What does that mean?”
I swallow down a harsh laugh that would come out all venom. “You treated our bonding like an arranged marriage. Don’t bother trying to deny it—I read your fine print in our bonding contract, even if I missed it when I signed.”
Titaine just stares at me, her face unreadable as she searches mine with quick golden-brown eyes. At last, she drops her arms. “That was a different time,” she says, suddenly unable to look at me. “I wouldn’t do it again.”
“Careful, Titaine,” I say, unable to hold back the edge in my voice, “that sounds dangerously close to an apology.”
Her eyes flash up at me, then look away just as quickly.
“You started our bond and marriage with a trick,” I press, though my tone is rapidly losing its harshness. “I think that deserves a real apology.”
When she says nothing, I continue. “If you’ve changed at all—and I’m not sure you have changed for the better—I’d like to think you’d see that. The gods know I’ve apologized to you many times over for my mistakes.”
“Your affair,” she retorts.
“My duty to find a wood elf consort,” I rejoin, but again, the fight goes out of me too quickly. “And, yes, I admit, I had hoped to find someone who might look at me the way you once did. But I promise you, Titaine, if I’d thought for even one second that you still loved me, I never would’ve done it. I never wanted to turn my back on you—not for all the dragon eggs in the woldings. I should’ve been stronger and resisted the pressure. And I should’ve spoken to you about what I was feeling first.” My voice is low beneath the drumming of the rain. “We both should’ve told each other so much more than we did.”
