Page 23 of Crown of Flame
“This house. You just made it out of almost nothing. How is it even standing?” She stands up and then rubs her hands together.
When I look at her, her face looks almost feverish, as though something has set her on fire from inside.
Maybe contact with me has lit the flame inside her that everyone has.
She looks around wonderingly, and then paces around the dwelling. She examines every inch of the place.
A harsh wind whistles outside, and she shudders again, although this time I can tell that the movement is reflexive more than anything else.
“It’s amazing.” She mutters to herself and keeps muttering to herself as she paws lightly at the rocks and traces the lines of the dwelling, which is not much more than a cave. Albeit a cave with a door and windows.
I do not really know what is amazing about what I have created. I supposed someone like Serena needs shelter, and this would be adequate.
“So you’ve told me,” I say. “Several times.”
There are so many things I do not understand about this realm, about this plane of existence.
I cannot help but wonder if I’ll ever understand.
The question bursts from me then. The question that has been nagging at me since I pulled Serena away from those dark elves who summoned me.
“Why did they keep you alive?”
I know that she understands what I mean by the way her shoulders stiffen. She hunches over slightly, and her full mouth becomes one thin, flat line.
Serena shakes her head, sighs, and then turns to me.
Her face is wan and tired, and her skin is stretched tight across the bones of her face.
“I had hoped you wouldn’t ask,” she says.
Still, I watch her expectantly.
“They kept me around because they might have bred with me.” Her voice is emotionless.
“Or that’s all I can figure. They said they only needed eight humans for the ritual, but there were undertones...”
“Bred with you?” I cock my head to the side. Yet another thing I do not understand.
She sees the confusion on my face and sighs again.
“They might have wanted to have sex with me. For pleasure. Or to make me pregnant so that I could produce more dark elves.”
I understand then. Sort of.
And I go cold, for the first time in centuries, as horror descends on me.
“Do you want to… be bred by them?” I ask and my voice is hard even though I expected it to be shaky.
Serena bites down on her lower lip, and for a second I cannot look away from her wide, glossy eyes.
Serena turns then, her shoulders hunched uncomfortably, and I take that as an answer to my question.
My gaze drifts down as she strides away from me to marvel over the dwelling again.
Something unknown, something hot, tightens in my core at the sight of her. She is tall, her legs long and lithe, her body supple and soft.
I manage to swallow an involuntary groan before it slips out. And I know then that this woman, this creature from an entirely different plane of existence, this being made of flesh and blood and probably moonlight from the looks of her skin, makes me want.