Page 7 of The Orc Warrioress and the Elf Lord

He looked her over in approval, smiling at her. “Yes, look at you, then. I always think a woman in men’s clothing looks even more feminine. It tends to accentuate all the places she is shaped differently than a man.”

By the great goddess Haem, could this man ever stop commenting on her breasts?

But he gestured to her hands. “You have remarkably small wrists, warrioress.”

She lifted her hand, and she supposed there was quite a gap there.

“Ah, the trousers are a bit too long,” he said, and knelt down on one knee to cuff the trousers himself, his long, graceful fingers brushing her calves and making little shivers go through her, which annoyed her. She did not care if he touched her.

He stood up, and she squared her shoulders.

They regarded each other.

“As I said, this will likely be a bit awful,” he said. “Everyone is going to be talking about us, but no one will be talking to us. When they do say anything to us, it will be an insult. The High King is going to be livid, of course. But we can bear it, of course. It will be best if we pretend as if we are caught up in each other, spend all of our time making eyes at each other.”

“Will it.” She sighed heavily.

“Can you not pretend to like me at all?” He was amused.

“Of course I can,” she said with a nod.

But then, it was not awful, actually, not truly awful at all. He was right that no one talked to them, at least not often, anyway. When they did speak to them, they seemed polite to her. If there were insults, she did not hear them. They said that she looked ever so dashing in her suit, and they said that she cut quite a figure, so tall, so strong.

Iahir smirked after they said all of these things. He certainly didn’t behave as if they were insults, but instead stared at her rather constantly. She did her best to look back at him.

As for the High King, he never looked at her once.

She looked at him. She had only seen him once, from far away, when he had come to visit the barlinship where she grew up. He had given a speech on a far dais, droning on and on about something or other, but she’d been too far away to hear whatever it was he was saying. He looked older now.

For a fair elf, he was not very tall or very striking. His hair was a sort of orange color, but it was more brown than orange, and his features were not entirely symmetrical. He had a rounded area at his middle. His shoulders were rounded too, and narrow.

After the dinner, Iahir escorted her back to her room.

He spoke of how cruel the elves had been to her, apologizing.

She was confused. “Cruel? They said nothing except how dashing and tall and strong I was.”

“Yes, but that’s really an insult,” said Iahir.

“Is it?” She blinked at him.

“Yes, because it’s the sort of thing you would say about a man, not a woman.”

“And that’s insulting?” She supposed she could understand that to a degree, but she did not feel as if it had been cruel. That seemed to be stating it rather strongly.

“It’s quite insulting,” said Iahir, who furrowed his brow again. “Perhaps it isn’t entirely that insulting to you, I suppose, because you have spent your life trying to act like a man anyway.”

“I have not spent my life trying to act like a man,” she retorted. “The warrioress tradition has been written about in all manner of stories and lore. The goddess Kranr herself was a warrioress, and—”

“All right,” he said. “I see I’ve hit a nerve, there. Somehow, calling you strapping, however, did not.” He was amused.

“You have not ‘hit a nerve,’” she said, her voice rising, aware that she would not be so angry if he had not angered her.

Iahir made to say something else, but they were interrupted by a servant coming after them, who had a grim expression on his face as he summoned Iahir to an audience with the High King.

Iahir’s smile widened. “Perfect,” he said. “I quite expected this.” He turned to the servant. “You’ll need to escort my companion back to her room. She does not know her way around yet.”

The servant made a face as if something smelled bad. He was wordless as he walked Gathren through the hallways, and he walked very, very fast. But he did get her back to Iahir’s chambers in the end.