Taken to Lemora by Elizabeth Stephens

10

Essmira

True to Willa’s plan, Raingar doesn’t realize that I’m sleeping in his own private quarters until the next solar. And I sleep well. His living chambers are behind the door at the end of the left corridor, but his bedroom is actually up, up, up, the spiral staircase at the top of the tower. I’ve barricaded myself in now and am bracing my arms against the heavy desk I’ve got propped up against the door while Raingar pounds on its other side.

“You…you infernal wench! Open this door!”

“Never!” I shout, feeling manic. Feeling wild. Feeling utterly uncaged despite the fact that I am caged. I laugh and snort at the same time. “Not until you apologize, you…you stupid brute!”

“ME? A STUPID BRUTE!” He bangs on the door with both fists, making the heavy black wood rattle in its frame.

I search my mind for insults, finding that I don’t actually know many. “You…you’re dumber than an Egama if you think I’m going to open this door!”

“An Egama! You kept me awake all lunar worrying! How dare you!”

“How dare I?” I shout, pushing harder against the desk as it jolts across the floor a half a step. “You’re the one who almost got Jaygar killed!”

“And I apologized!”

“You don’t know how to apologize!”

“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT! I’M THE OHRING CLAN CHIEF! I DON’T APOLOGIZE TO ANYBODY!”

“And I’m the miriga! I know what it means!” I’ve never shouted before in my life, not at anyone or anything and it’s ohring exhilarating. “It doesn’t mean I’m some delicate flower!” My hair flies around my face, curls sticking to my neck in sweat. I’m using all of my weight to keep the desk in place and I’m fairly assured that Raingar could still destroy both door and desk if he really wanted to get in.

I glance behind me quickly and spot a chest. Quickly abandoning my post, I race over to it and start dragging it toward the door. “I’m…no…delicate…blossom!”

I grunt as I push the chest with all my might under the desk, right up against the door. I have to get down on my back and kick it the last few paces with my bare feet. I’m still wearing my kintarr-crusted dress from the lunar before. I thought about staying up all lunar to make new robes, but then I thought, ohr that. Raingar still hasn’t let me make him more than the one pair of pants and insists on still wearing the monstrous trousers that are generations old and look it. Who cares what I wear?

“Yeffa, you are! Did you not experience how easily I hurt you when I wasn’t even meaning to?”

“Nob! I’m not!” I kick the crate again and giggle wildly to myself, even as a shooting pain attacks my heel and shivers up the back of my leg. I giggle madly. I feel like I’ve lost half my mind.

The voices that rang so true for so long are all quiet, incinerated, like sparks that have fizzled out. Without their guiding light, I’m not sure who’s left. Me? Essmira? The name doesn’t even belong to me, but was given to me by Igmora because she thought it was easy to pronounce in all the principle languages.

She’s not my mother. She never loved me half as much as a female I’ve only met twice called Willa. Or Librida and Merquin who took me in even though I was a stranger. Or the four clan chiefs who came together to spend rotations’ worth of kintarr to free me. On another note — is being caged not a disgrace to the sacrifice they made? And how about Raingar? The clan chief who’s shirked his responsibilities for solars just to chase me around and profess his undying frustration with me like only a clan chief would do for his miriga.

Maybe I am miriga. Not the, but a, at the very least. These Lemoran make me feel like a queen, so why not fully act like it.

I am miriga. I do what I like.

“Are you blind, female!” He shouts. “Did you not see the size of that kintarr splinter! It would have crushed you if Jaygar hadn’t been there…”

“Ha! So you do admit that he saved my life!”

“I…you…he…pagh!” Raingar thumps against the door, shoving more of his bodyweight behind the thrust this time. Part of the door splinters and I shriek, quickly scrambling out from under the desk so I can put more of my weight into it, the little that it helps.

Through the crack left behind, I can now see him and Raingar can see me. “You don’t know enough about Lemora!” He wags his finger at me angrily, thrusting it through the broken door.

I point a finger right back, mirroring the gesture. “You don’t know anything about Lemora! I am miriga! I do what I like!”

“You…you…”

“Stop babbling like a buffoon! Finish your sentences. And don’t shout all the time. It’s annoying. And don’t be mean to beings within your clan or any other. They deserve the same kindness that they show you! And stop cursing. You’re clan chief. You shouldn’t curse so much. And get new trousers made that fit!”

Raingar’s mouth has gone totally slack. Through the crack, he’s simply gaping at me. “Are you finished!” He shrieks, voice rising three octaves.

It makes me snort. “I am miriga! And I’m not finished in the slightest.” I shake my head again, curls flying wild like ravens lifting into the sun.

“Are you going to open this door?”

“Nob, my Lord,” I sneer, “I’m not.”

He starts to rattle, everything bunched so tightly together that he reminds me instantly of a kettle about to pop. “Pagh!” He bangs both fists on the door and a bolt pops free of the metal frame surrounding the wooden door. It bounces off of the table and I snatch it before it falls, then chuck it through the opening.

My aim is true and it bounces right off of his nose. “PAGH! FINE! You want to stay in there? You can stay in there forever for all I care!” He scrambles around for a moment, before I hear the unmistakable sound of a heavy lock sliding into place.

“You’re locking me in here, then? Is that it? Just like Tyto?”

“Stop saying that wretch’s name or I’ll be forced to contact Rhorkanterannu and acquire Tyto’s whereabouts so that I can go and find him and skin him alive! I’m nothing like him, but I hate it when you say that I am. I’m just angry with you! We’re having a fight. Can’t you feel the difference?”

I can feel the difference and his words douse a small part of my flaming heart. But I don’t tell him that. I can’t. Not when I’m winning the argument. I’ve never won an argument. I’ve never even had one. And even though these words are right, he’s still wrong.

“You shouldn’t lock me away.”

“It’s for your own protection,” he wheezes, sounding broken and in pain.

“Nob, it’s for your protection. If I truly am your mate, then it hurts you to see me hurt. You don’t like the way it makes you feel.”

“That isn’t the half of it. I feel wretched knowing what I did to you. I hate the way that I act around you half the time. You make me crazed.” He slaps his hand against the door, but without the effort of his previous attempts. He’s slowing down, sliding down…thud. Rattle, rattle. The sound of him clunking down onto his bottom and banging the back of his head against the door.

“I never wanted a mate,” he confesses and the confession strangely hurts. It makes me feel…unwanted. “But then I met you and you threw that statue at my head and I couldn’t believe that the stars had aligned to produce such a mate for a male like me. I don’t deserve you. That’s why…”

He swallows audibly. “That’s why I get jealous when you speak to other males. I know how fine the beings of Lemora are. You could do better than me in almost any one of them, but I can’t…I won’t give you up. So I don’t want to let you out of my sight because I worry about you getting hurt, yeffa, but because I also don’t want to give you that chance.”

I brush the scar on my palm with my thumb, the reminder that I had tried for freedom even then, before I knew what freedom was. “Raingar,” I say, voice a little shaky. His words…they get to me. I understand the insecurity. I understand the angst of it. The fear. The uncertainty. I understand it all.

Something delicate blossoms in my throat. I can feel it in my mouth, on my tongue, in the words that I speak when I say exactly what’s on my mind, without thinking. “You’re not alone.”

“What?”

“You’re not alone. All beings feel these things. I feel them, too.”

“For me?”

“Of course for you,” I snort. “You are clan chief. I’m just a pleasure female that your clans were compassionate enough to pay for and I’ve seen how your clan loves you — how everyone loves you — your grumpy ways and all. You’re an untried male, even. You wanted to wait for your mate before ever experiencing pleasure. Having come from a world where mating is a sport, at best, and at worst, a way for cruel creatures to exert their power over others, how could I not find that romantic? I wanted to be this female for you so badly. In the fabric shop? You remember what you said to me? You spoke of mates. That was the moment I first felt hope. So much of it.

“But this? Holding me prisoner? Keeping me from experiencing Lemora, the world that you love? It’s too much, Raingar. You can’t offer me hope and then take it back. It hurts too deeply and you’re right. I am a delicate female, soft, breakable…but my skin has nothing to do with it. I’m breakable in this. Only in this. Don’t take it from me, the beautiful gift you gave.”

Silence. A lot of it. Finally, I hear the turning of the key as Raingar unlocks the door. He huffs, “I’m a rotten bastard, Essmira. I don’t deserve you.”

I smirk. “And I’m a pleasure female for purchase. I don’t deserve you, either.”

“Then where does that leave us?”

“I’d say it leaves us rather perfect for each other, don’t you?”

He makes a strained sound, half-yelp, half-hiss. “You…you still…you hate me,” he whispers.

“Nob,” I groan. “This is a fight, my Lord. It doesn’t change my underlying feelings about you.”

“Feelings?”

“Yeffa. Feelings.”

He pauses. “Good feelings?”

I bark out a laugh that ends in a small snort. “We’re fighting, clan chief. I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

“You truly are too good for me…” He sighs and it’s almost a laugh, but too sad to truly be. “Essmira, I didn’t sleep last lunar. Can I sleep now so that we can continue fighting a little later?”

I snort. “Of course you can.”

“And then we’ll fight?”

“Yeffa.”

“Promise?”

“Yeffa, my Lord.”

“And you’ll still have these feelings for me when I wake up?”

“Pagh! Raingar, stop this. Go to sleep. Here, would you like a pillow?”

“Yeffa,” he grumbles, and I stuff one through the crack in the door.

Already my soul feels lighter than it did before — than it ever has — as I go to the room’s largest window.

“Essmira?”

“Goodnight, Raingar,” I say, voice stern.

He hesitates, like there’s something more he wants to get off of his chest right now in this very moment. Then, “Goodnight, miriga.”

I smile and cross my arms over my chest as a cool brush of wind caresses me. The countryside is epically beautiful and I sigh at all the colors. Yellows and greens, purples and reds. The moss grows over everything, a few brave stones daring to protrude through its surface. Roads leading away from Raingar’s keep wind in almost every direction. Not many, though. It’s still a relatively sparsely populated world, from what I’ve seen. Huge, though. There are still so many corners and pockets of Lemora I haven’t been.

I want to see the mountains and the icy cliffs that lie East. I want to pick bulberry from the fields in Bebette’s village. I want to drink from the suspended river that flows up the cursed mountain, and not down it. I want to go to one of the inns and dance. I want to sleep under the stars out in the open. I want to see the sandy dunes that make up the Dark Flats. Yeffa, most of all, I want to see these.

But I won’t be able to if my mate is intent on shackling me.

I don’t know how long I sit there staring out at everything when I hear a harried voice call my name. “Essmira! Are you alright?”

The pounding of pad pad hooves draws my attention to the ground below. “Gorman! You’re back.”

“I heard that Raingar was keeping you prisoner…” He looks stricken and I feel immediately guilty. I know he’d been occupied with something in the countryside and I hope it wasn’t important, knowing that he came back for this.

“I’m so sorry. It’s not what it seems at all. I actually barricaded myself in this room. I wanted a good lunar’s rest and it took him all lunar to realize where I was.”

Gorman stares at me for a suspended breath, then cracks a smile. It’s a rare sighting, that grin. “Fabulous. Are you well, then?”

“Yeffa. Never better.” And I mean it. I feel like a new female. One that has a mate. And he’s a mess. And I’m miriga. And I don’t know how to be.

But we’re learning.

And trying.

And that’s all any miriga and her mate can ever hope to do.

“You’re certain? There’s nothing you need?”

My stomach chooses that moment to growl and I cover it with my hand. “I’m actually a little hungry.”

“Come down then. I’ll have Eewa prepare something for you…”

“I actually can’t. Raingar’s asleep in front of the door and I don’t want to wake him. He didn’t sleep last lunar.”

Gorman’s grin stretches even wider. “So…you’ve forgiven him, then?”

“Yeffa. Most definitely. But he doesn’t know it and I don’t intend to tell him.”

And then he laughs. Gorman actually laughs. It’s a strange sound, like several chords being plucked in several very different instruments, but winning that sound from him? It makes me feel like I can do anything.

“I am miriga,” I whisper to myself. I rub my palm and its scar. “I can do anything.”

“Did you know that all of the towers have escape hatches in case of fires?”

I blink. “Truly?”

“Come down from there and I’ll take you to the village. There’s a stir going on at the pub. There should be food there, too.”

“That sounds wonderful.” Perhaps, I don’t need to worry about shackles, after all. Not when there are hatches built into them.

“Just to warn you, it can be a debaucherous affair. I likely won’t stay all lunar, but you’ll be in good hands if you choose to.”

Trust. It makes me sparkle and shine. I wish this could be the type of trust Raingar has in me, too. “That sounds perfect. Thank you, Gorman. Now…uhm…how do I get down?”

His grin turns a little wicked then and he raises both of his pointed brows. “How do you feel about rope, miriga?”

“Rope? Like repelling down these four stories with a rope?”

He nods.

My heart beats faster in the scar across my palm. I touch it, reminded, ever reminded. “I feel excited.”

“Then check the chest at the foot of the bed and come outside. The party at Winter’s End should be in full swing by the time we arrive.”