Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

to hug them good-bye. Then, delaying only to explain to the Dardries where and when they could come collect their horses, we paid a fee for the extension of their rental leases and headed south to Skythorn.

Having spent much of my life in the Temple’s properties, I had not been prepared for how beautiful the trip out of the city would be. Heading back down to it, the journey seemed doubly so. Farms and orchards marked most of the route, and Valeria in particular was breathless to look upon sights that were mundane to most. She and I saw them in similar lights—for Valeria, these rural plots were novelties. For me, they were examples of the intricate beauty by means of which Weltyr’s world functioned. Joy filled me to see every rice paddy, every artichoke field, all the trees full of nuts and fruit swaying softly in the wind. I had appreciated the landscape when on my way to the Nightlands, but had no idea how much I would appreciate them after my return.

All the time, Valeria—and, to a lesser extent, Indra—demanded to know the names of all number of things. Fruits they had not seen, crops they did not recognize; birds and beasts of burden that were unrecorded in durrow encyclopedias due to lack of interest, context, or relevance; the dog of Weltyr that seemed to follow us on our journey, each night lurking some distance outside our lantern but evident to the sensitive eyes of the subterranean elves. Twice Valeria stopped us to pick and learn the names of flowers, and the absolute ecstasy in her tearful eyes to see so many fields of verdant plants made me think nothing of the delay; and even Odile gasped with girlish delight, shielding her goggled eyes with one hand and pointing up with another, as an airship from the far Eastern nation of Pulnoma meandered across the cool blue sky ahead of us to the Skythorn airport.

There was nothing that escaped their amazed eyes. Branwen and I felt like teachers; the guides of aliens who had literally come from a different world. That was certainly how it felt when, at night, the durrow taught us deeper pleasures than we had previously enjoyed upon the surface. It would seem that, in her week with the durrow, Branwen had become slightly less protesting. Beneath Valeria’s radiant stars, the women would take turns with me, each watching the others enjoy her pleasure while in turn pleasuring one another. Branwen and I rarely had a moment alone to talk, but in our nights of witnessed passion I felt a certain powerful intimacy. Arguing with me, losing me, and being forced to grow accustomed to the durrow without me seemed to have changed her. Perhaps she learned, as I had been learning, to think of the consequences of her actions, and to remember how easily existence was taken for granted.

This journey was a relief compared to the one out of the Nightlands. Protected by the magic lantern while tucked in a grove of trees that would further dissuade the attention of bandits—or any other brand of marauder who would be undeterred by the light, unlike the great wild dog to whom I tossed a few scraps each night by way of peace offering—we rested well, and beneath the light of the sun traveled safely south.

My only concern was related to the durrow. With but two pairs of goggles, Indra and Odile continued to trade off as they had mentioned to me. Valeria offered hers up multiple times, but, loyal to their culture’s royalty, they refused to deny her the protection and instead wore cloaks with thick hoods. They pulled these hoods down low before their faces whenever required, and though I remained concerned that the protection was insufficient, the women nonetheless insisted they were fine. How much of this was show for Valeria’s sake, I’m not sure; but I’m sure they also felt, like I did, that once we were safely at The Poisoned Mongoose we wouldn’t have quite so much to worry about.

Those hoods were important in other ways, too. Skythorn was a place of mingling, as I described it to Valeria. Men and women, upper class and lower, mankinds of all varieties met and worked in the city as casually as you pleased. Humans of every creed and color passed through the city walls.

But never, not once, had I or anyone else that I knew of seen a durrow come through.

To Skythorn citizens, dark elves were as good as faeries. Most only knew them as far-away creatures living below the surface of Urde, a kind of anti-elf renown for sadistic inclinations and their penchant for slavery. They were sometimes used as the villains of fairy tales, or as a way to get children to behave at bedtime. “If you don’t go to sleep right this instant, your mother and I will sell you to the dark elves…” (Did I miss that much by not having parents? When speaking to those allegedly more fortunate than I, I always wondered.)

In other words, durrow were as uncommon as it got. I was therefore far more concerned about traveling through the streets of Skythorn than I had been about moving through Soot. There was nothing necessarily illegal about their presence in the city, but between Odile’s recollection of her colony’s destruction and the general bigotry that mankinds could show one another, I could not shake my worry.

However…much to my relief, no one we encountered on the highway seemed to give the women a second glance outside of the sort men tended to give women as painfully beautiful as my companions. I admit, I felt rather prideful to have them all by my side. What I had done to deserve such companionship, I was not sure—but I was also very thankful for their beauty, because it provided a natural glamor in the magical sense of the word. Those who looked upon them were so taken by their radiant