Page 109 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

Maybe you shouldn’t have killed him.

No, she had to, because if not, it would have been his word against hers, and it would have been messy, and he had deserved it, and she hadn’t really had a choice. He’d had every chance to take the challenge, after all. It was his own fault. No orc would fault her for what she had done.

She dragged him off under some trees and covered him with leaves. She did not have it in her to bury him.

Then she mounted her horse, missing acutely the unnamed horse she’d left back in Cirlahir, and she took off for the capital, the letter safe in her pocket.

31

THREE DAYS LATER, Iahir awoke to Adalir dragging him out of his bed. He was tied up, both his hands and his feet, and he was gagged. He struggled, but his brother only shrugged down at him in a way that let Iahir know it wasn’t Adalir, it was that Malik person that lived inside his brother.

He was dragged through the hallways, dragged down the stairs, and no one was there.

They really were bleeding servants.

At the bottom of the stairs, he was handed off to someone he recognized.

It was Kinsahad nae Ralhir, the one who had sparred with Gathren in the ring, his friend, a man who he had drunk with and laughed with and been teased by and teased in turn. He was surprised at how much it hurt.

They spoke over him. Kinsahad promised Adalir that they would be given more protection here, that sacrificing his brother meant that the capital would send men to guard Cirlahir.

Wasn’t Malik just so good at trading people for protection?

He supposed that Malik didn’t think people were worth anything. After all, Malik was the part of Adalir who had been left to endure their father treating him like he didn’t matter, like his pain didn’t matter, like he was nothing more than an experiment.

Kinsahad untied his feet and put him on a horse, but he left the gag in. He tied Iahir’s tied hands to the pommel of the horse’s saddle. “There will be a trial, my friend,” he said. “If you’re innocent, you’ll have the chance to speak for yourself.”

But then, when they got back to Renegahan, they paraded him through the streets—not the main streets, he noted, but side streets. He understood, from things that Kinsahad and the others were saying to each other, that the orcs controlled the main streets of town. Elves were not welcome there.

The elves on the side streets threw rotten vegetables at him. They called out that he was a kingkiller and a traitor and that they would see him hung.

So, even if he had been innocent—which he wasn’t—it would not have mattered.

Iahir wondered about getting word to his father. His father might have been able to stop this at some point, but that was when his father had people to command, and his father had nothing now.

They didn’t take him to the castle. Apparently, the orcs had the castle now.

They took him, instead, to the royal dower house, where the queen mother would have stayed if there had been a queen mother. Findas’s mother had been long gone.

He was tossed in the attic, in some old servants’ rooms, and he supposed he should count himself lucky to have a bed, to be fed.

He was there for three days before Kinsahad came in to see him.

Three days had been rather maddening. He had never been so very alone for so long, he had to admit. He had started talking to himself rather sooner than he might have imagined he would. The time had seemed interminable.

When Kinsahad came in, he wanted to weep for the relief of simply having another person there.

“Your father made an attempt to get you out, but it’s been refused,” said Kinsahad. “He was forced to admit your brother is not fit to rule, which has hurt everything. Your whole family is in disgrace, I think. Cirlahir is going to be reassigned.”

“Reassigned by whom?” said Iahir.

Kinsahad shrugged. “Well, the High King, of course.”

“Findas’s son? Gilrihl?”

Kinsahad nodded.

“He came here?” said Iahir, remembering the conversation he’d had before with Marthlis, that Gilrihl would set up court in Cairnil, where he was settled.