Chapter 23
Natasha sat at a table with Thorontur, Shi, Faeron, and their daughters for dinner, with several other nonhumans that she'd met shortly after the wedding ceremony took place. It was nice, and strange, to see Elarinya giggling and happy with the small child that her brother had created with the human girl. She was sure that Thorontur had had quite the strong opinion about their brother impregnating and imprinting on a non-wood elf. She could imagine the argument that had occurred. However, by the time the eldest brother would have learned about it, Shi would already have been pregnant, and there was nothing that could have been done at that point. Still, yet another child that was not fully elf. It wouldn't have made Thorontur happy.
Granted, she couldn't think of anything that made her family that still lived at Farwathain happy. She barely knew them and hadn't really enjoyed the time she'd spent with them when she'd promised Thorontur that he could take her there for a month. Her sisters had been distant, and despite the fact that Thorontur wanted her there, he was quiet, untrusting of her the entire time. Now, after what he'd seen her do with the boundary of Vorhees, she could see even more of that distrust when he looked at her. She knew he wanted all of her secrets in the open, but she had no intention of divulging her full power to him, to anyone. If her family knew what she could do, they could try to force her to use those powers in ways that she didn't approve, and she knew her family's past, their poor behavior. She wanted nothing to do with it.
"Ennostiel, walk with me?" He couldn't have known she was thinking about him, but Natasha shivered a little anyway when she moved her eyes over to the face of her brother.
"Yes, hanar." Natasha stood and put a hand on Elarinya's shoulder to stay her when the little girl started to rise.
"Stay with Saerwen. She is enjoying you tonight." Natasha kissed her daughter's forehead, over her mark, and then waited for her brother to round the table and take hold of her arm just above the elbow.
"It was a lovely wedding. You looked beautiful tonight." Thorontur said in his deep voice, he didn't really care about the wedding, it was just another opportunity for him to spy on his siblings.
"I am not used to wearing this...little." She looked down at her exposed arms and upper chest as they walked under a canopy and then out into the open air on the side of the mountain.
The satyrs lived high up on the upper cliffs of the mountain range. It was a gorgeous area that allowed you to see for miles and miles. From here, the spa was a sprinkle of lights in the night sky. She was telling her brother the truth, she'd felt practically naked wearing so little tonight. Elves dressed conservatively, as did her father's people. So much skin exposed was abnormal for them.
"Elarinya seems happy here." He wasn't looking at her, his large eyes were focused out at the sky, as well.
"She is happy here. She gets to be a child again. No one is expecting too much of her." Natasha wished he would let her arm go, but knew it wasn't likely, as he obviously had something he wanted to discuss with her.
"Your father's people seemed to be kind to her." He didn't mention how the elves had ignored the little girl, he would never own up to that.
"They were, but wizards...they have a tendency to try to make everything a lesson. Despite how you might have felt about my being raised by Sargon Majerei, that I wasn't learning how to act as an elf, I was constantly being taught something, whether I wanted the lesson or not. I didn't want that for my daughter. Neither did Aonghas." She knew he tensed when she said the name of her dead husband, but she didn't care.
"Judging from what I've seen you do of late, you were an apt pupil." Thorontur looked down at her face.
"I have always wanted to please my father, hanar. I obviously never pleased my mother, or my siblings." She bit her lip and looked back out at the dark sky.
"You could come home." He said in a gruff, deep voice that she almost didn't hear, the pitch was so low, but she bristled a little anyway and felt him squeeze her arm a bit.
"Farwathain has never been my home. I am not comfortable there." She shook her head.
"Vorhees is so far away. Faeron has a wife and child now, he doesn't have time to look after you."
"I don't need him to look after me. Or you, for that matter." Natasha shook her head, he was so incredibly easy to read. If he had any idea just how easy it was for her to read his thoughts, and everyone else's here at Vorhees tonight, he might be more afraid of her than irritated by her.
"Ennostiel..."
"Natasha. My name is Natasha, Thorontur. Please." Natasha jerked her arm out of his grasp and turned to face him, tiring of this repetitive cycle she was on with her brother.
Thorontur's face tensed with his anger and he closed his eyes as he tried to steady his breathing. She watched as his chest rose and fell and if it wouldn't have made him more angry, she would have smirked at the fact that he was counting to twenty in his head. So very easy.
"I don't think you realize how scared we all were when you got taken by the minotaurs. It took so long to find you. We had begun to lose hope."
Natasha felt her eyes cloud with tears, they'd been scared...she'd watched her husband murdered and then had watched the minotaurs strip his carcass and eat his flesh. She'd been raped and impregnated and raped again. Scared was nothing. She'd been terrified. Clenching her fists at her side, she glared up at the eldest male elf in her family.
"Do not ever mention what happened to me again, hanar. If you do so, it will be the last time that we ever speak." Her words were cold, crisp, and she knew they hit their mark because her brother's facial expression weakened just a tad and he nodded softly at her.