Mated to The Dragon Lord

Chapter 4

　　Present Time

　　“F-k,” she gripped her apron and turned her face beseechingly towards the heavens as the shallow puddle she had stepped in proved much deeper, the water, fouled by mud and animal s**t, slopping over the edge of her boot. “F-k!” She lifted her foot free with a grimace and heard a giggle.

　　A group of stable boys had been wasting their time over knuckle bones against the crumbling curtain wall, orphans of the war, they worked in exchange for food and shelter, and she often caught them at play. She let them be – play was not something they had much of in their short and sorrowful lives, and she liked that they felt at home enough to be mischievous.

　　She remembered a silver haired boy who, like these lads, had spent too little of his life playing.

　　“That is,” she told them. “A very bad word and one that I won’t appreciate any of you repeating or remembering that I used. When you are done with your game, someone be kind enough to find some dirt to fill in this hole so that I do not step into it and say that word again.”

　　“Yes, My Lady,” one of the elder ones grinned, the flash of teeth and the charm of his face recalling to her another boy.

　　Please, kind Fates who oversee Knights and Soldiers, she thought, turning her eyes to the sky, the prayer one frequently made with an aching heart, bring Sylvin back to me safe.

　　She sighed as she leaned against the cold blacksmith’s anvil in order to remove her boot and empty it. The blacksmith had been taken by the Fae early, and his apprentice had tried valiantly to continue the service, until the Fae had returned and taken him too.

　　Much as they had taken Sylvin, she thought sadly. Though he had sacrificed himself in order to save her from a worse fate.

　　She looked around the bailey courtyard. It was a mess, she admitted to herself. The cobblestones had been lost beneath seasons of dirt and animal faeces, creating a foul-stinking mud that was impossible to keep out of the castle.

　　Where the animals had once been housed away from the castle proper so that the scent of them did not permeate the house, necessity and their steadily declining number had seen them brought into the bailey. Now the three milking cows munched discontentedly in the blacksmith’s hut, and the chickens roamed free, the daily hunt for their eggs half-adventure, half disaster.

　　A sow and her litter fouled the air with their s**t but as they were happy to eat any waste from the kitchens to Yelena they were worth the stench – their upkeep taking nothing from her empty coffers.

　　The curtain wall around the bailey was mostly intact. There were two sections which had begun to crumble, the stones gathering in piles around the base of the wall. Scorch marks where fire-arrows had once set fire to hay, and other stores thought kept safe within the bailey blackened the stone in other places.

　　She sighed heavily. It was a vastly different courtyard to that of her childhood. The majority of her household were children and women, the men and older boys taken by the Fae or humans to fight their wars long before. She wondered how many had been lost in battle and fought back the sharp tug of tears.

　　Please, she pleaded silently. Please not him.

　　The last news to reach the castle and village had been of his successes. This battle won, and this foe vanquished. The mighty Silver Dragon, undefeatable.

　　He bled; she knew that from experience. He bled and felt pain.

　　Please, please…. Not him.

　　She lifted the bunch of herbs that she held to her nose, breathing in their bright apple scent, letting it lift her spirits. Hold on Yelena, she told herself. Battle on Yelena. Fight another day, another way. Hold the keep. Hold the people within it. Hold the land. Hold it all tight and hard, and one day he will return…

　　She nodded firmly to herself as if taking her own advice and returned her boot to her foot, striding across the courtyard, and up the grand staircase into the main hall.

　　It was busy, a queue of people spilling across the flagstones, and looking towards the stairs. For a moment she was unnoticed as they were expecting to see her descend the stairs, not come from the bailey. Some held produce, bread, vegetables, leather, and fabric – the seconds, no doubt, she thought wryly in the moment of peace that existed before she was noticed.

　　The village did not bring the keep their best anymore, not even their second best it seemed. Three days old bread suitable only for pigs, vegetables gone slack and soggy after over-keeping, watermarks, rotten hides… The disrespect of it and the prices that their bearers dared to charge stung her throat with bile.

　　She put her head down and strode determinedly towards the kitchen, hearing the outcry from the gathering as she passed them.

　　“Yelena!” A man called, his white beard yellowing in the corners of his mouth and his face heavily creased.

　　They did not even use her title, she thought.

　　“Your debt, madam!”

　　“We will not supply!”

　　“It is outrageous that the castle…”

　　“What is outrageous?” She rounded on them angrily. “That the village no longer does their dues to the keep? That you no longer work our fields? Pay your taxes? That you offer your Lord and Lady,” she flicked through the contents of a basket. “Half rotten produce fit only for pigs? What is outrageous?”

　　“Our bills, madam,” the shoemaker insisted grimly, her mouth downwards turned. “Or we will cease to shod the keep.”

　　“Fine,” she snarled and tugged an earring from her ear tossing it to her. She threw its companion to the tanner. “There! My household shod for another six month!”

　　“Madam!” The baker cried out. “Your debt!”

　　“No, no, no!” Her yell cut off the rising tide of theirs. “No. No. Your debt. Let us discuss your debt.”

　　She saw some on the edges shrink away into the bailey with satisfaction. She lfited her chin as the others crowded around her, trying to overwhelm her with their greater height and mass, their louder voices, and entitlement.

　　“F-k off,” she said to them, and walked away in their startlement. The power of a single word delivered unexpectedly, she thought with amusement, and added that it was a pity that the stable boys weren’t present to see it’s appropriate delivery to conclude the lesson.

　　She barely managed to contain her grimace as she rounded a corner and all but walked into the lurking presence of Lord Rithelwen. The Fae Lord’s garments were elegant, fur lined, embroidered in gold thread, and sapphires the size of her thumbnail glimmered in a long chain that hung over his chest and ended in the Royal Seal.

　　Some profited from war, she thought with sour wryness, whilst others suffered for it.

　　“My Lady Yelena,” his eyes swept over her, before settling on her face as if finding it an answer to the dissatisfaction of her garb. “Your debtors become aggressive in their demands.”

　　“Nothing that I cannot handle,” she stepped around him.

　　“There is a simpler way,” he pointed out. “One that we have touched on before,” he caught her by the elbow twisting her, the movement stealing her breath, and his body pressed her up against the wall. She lifted her face to avoid it being pressed into his chest and he caught her chin in his fingers.

　　For all that he was a handsome man, she thought, the predatory expression that crossed his features as he looked down at her made him repulsive. She knew men with their other, more animalist nature, close to the surface, and she had never found them offensive, until she had encountered this Fae courtier, who tried to hide his savagery behind civilisation.

　　“Thank you,” she said firmly. “But I am married.”

　　“Are you really, though?” He wondered, without moving back. “For it is said that you are not, and that you remain a virgin bride, the consummation unsatisfied, and the Lord Sylvin will call for annulment and marry the Princess Auralyn instead… It has been three years, and he has not returned to see how his wife and keep are…”

　　“He knows,” she snapped. “He knows and trusts that I, inheritor by birth right, will hold what is his by marriage. He trusts, My Lord, and I will not betray that trust. If, and only if, the priest delivers the annulment to my door, will I consider taking another to my bed!”

　　“Admirable,” he murmured. “Stubborn, wilful, but admirable. I will break you of your wilfulness soon enough, Yelena. For the day will come that the annulment will arrive at your door, for what man would choose a half-breed back-water provincial Lady over a Royal Princess?”