Chapter Text
“What is this, so soon? Can I not have a moment’s peace before duty demands the rest of my life be taken from me?” Kurt stands near the window, his hand gripping the sill for balance, because the floor still seems to move beneath him after thirteen days in a carriage. The faintly tinted glass made from volcanic sand gives the world an amber glow, causing his senses to believe it’s all a half-myth.
The great stronghold of Azhervel. A place he’d only heard stories of before.
A bridge of black basalt over a wide brook of black stone and cerulean water, teeming with warm-water, brightly patterned fish in red and gold, stretches from the guest tower toward the inner palace courtyard, its walkway lined with copper braziers that burn orange at the center and green at the rim. Beyond it, Azhervel rises in terraces and horned roofs. From carved pillars, deep-goldenrod-yellow house-shield banners hang, and there are obsidian arches that look less built than grown from the mountain’s ancient lava meanderings.
His eyes stay focused on a small procession that has entered the far end of the bridge, not nearly large enough for a royal welcome by the Lord himself. But more than enough to be a nuisance and unwelcome while his own servants move around his accommodations in a storm of tranquility that only high elves can manage with their grace and mindful hands.
Wedding robes are lifted free of aspen bark-lined chests to air out. Combs, jewels, ceremonial pins, vials of scented oils, formal and casual wear, boots, and hosiery find their appointed places. Correspondence, treaties, and documents, and ink with perfect peacock quills are set upon the desk with wax for sealing letters.
Starchild, his Seneschal, commands them with articulated dignity and a precise plan on how this new household is to be set up. A younger attendant whispers his questions, offering an apology to Starchild, and is off again.
Kurt lets them work as he watches the bridge. Four attendants in dark red walk first, carrying no weapons Kurt can see, only a carved box carried between them, each holding a handle to distribute the weight. Behind them, a figure in black, broader than the others, walks without haste.
Kurt’s fingers still against the window frame.
The distance should make the stranger indistinct, but Kurt knows instantly, as the suns rise over the mountain, and catch golden light at his two curved horns, on the dark fall of curly locked hair at his shoulders. He walks with both the confidence of a Dragonborne Lord and a man unsure if he should be walking this way at all. “I cannot see his face, or hear his heartbeat, and I loathe the brute already.”
“Careful, my lord,” Starchild warns gently. “This place may listen in ways we do not yet understand.”
Kurt turns with a solemn sigh and nods. He takes in the new residence behind him, truly looking at it for the first time. The floors are black stone, the walls are also black and hold heat, not enough to stifle him, perhaps, even a nice change from the cool of his homelands, reminding him that the stronghold of Azhervel has been carved into a dormant fire. He shudders.
Tall screens of hammered bronze stand between the receiving room, punched through with patterns of dragons, florals, and fire. Beyond, he can see a door open to his new bedchamber, draped in crimson silk. He looks away immediately, but in doing so realizes that along the table here in the foyer lies a branch from a tree very different from his own native white-barked ones, with flowers woven in, their aroma almost as sweet as the moon lilies he already misses. And on either side of the door to the hallway, oversized obsidian pots have been placed, packed with moss and tiny yellow flowers at the base, with trees whose branches form a small canopy overhead.
Starchild sees what he’s looking at. “They have understood our customs and know that you require foliage and blooms the way the dragonkind need flame.”
“Perhaps.” He wipes a traitorous tear from his cheek.
“Kurt…” Starchild says, taking a step forward.
“Don’t,” Kurt chides. “You must not indulge me in my regrets or allow me to show emotions like this again. We are not children frolicking in the meadows anymore. And my life was never destined for the freedom to find great love as you have.”
“My lord, please…” he pleads. “My soul will never desert yours.”
Kurt huffs a melodic laugh and steps forward to wipe a tear off his oldest friend’s cheek. “I know my faithful servant. And that is how you ended up here, living in this… Obsidian hell with me for however long your heart can endure it. My only joy comes in knowing that your Love arrives in one week's time with your household, and that you might find happiness here among our duties.”
“I can never truly be content if you are miserable, sire.”
“You must.” He cradles his face and tips their foreheads together. “You must, Elliott, or I will relinquish believing this world has any joy in it at all.” He draws back to look at him. “I know you will attend to your duties faithfully, and in the hours that are yours, you must find all the moments of joy you are able to procure in our new lives. Continue to love your husband the unfettered way you do, bed him well, and create blissful harmony with your Bonding Song. It is the only personal wish my heart carries that can come to fruition.”
Elliott chokes back a sob, and Kurt stands up straighter, swallowing his own tears. “And do not pity me. I cannot bear it.”
He nods once, resolving to do as his master wishes. “The love of the elves and our people’s song will burn bright here in these halls for you. I will see to it.”
“I believe you will do your best,” Kurt replies, though he’s not sure it’s possible to bring the feeling of home to some place so foreign.
When the knock comes several minutes later, Starchild looks to Kurt before allowing the chamberlain to answer it, and Kurt inclines his head as if he’s not been standing at the window like a boy awaiting a festival procession instead of a High-Elven nobleman delivered to a political marriage.
The doors open, and four dragonkind attendants enter first, greeting the new household, each dressed in dark red linen belted with black leather, small patches of natural dragon scales in varying shades of warm colors embedded in their skin along their forearms, on one side of their neck, a blaze down the center of their forehead, and at their temples. Born humanoid with the dragon blood of their heritage running through their veins.
“We bring thee a gift, Noble Kurtsilva, from our Lord.” They set the basin down before the low bench near the hearth.
Kurt concedes that the Lord, if he is who he thinks he is, will wait outside. He will not speak or cross the threshold; he should have realized that. Because Dragonkind law forbids speech between arranged spouses before the vows.
Still, the silence feels personal when it crosses a bridge to stand at his doorway, as if to say that Kurtsilva the High-Elven nobleman, is not worthy of his energy.
One of the servants removes the large bronze lid, fragrant with cinnamon and crushed starblooms; the water inside is clear with petals turning slowly on its surface, their pale points opening and closing in the warmth.
The foremost attendant bows. ”If thou will permit. We will relieve your feet from your travels.”
Kurt glances at Starchild, raising a brow clearly stating, I was in a carriage for 13 days! I would love to stay standing now, thank you!
Starchild’s brow lifts in return, by a fraction.
Then Kurt looks at the silent Dragon Lord, waiting a good ten feet from the door, his hands clasped behind his back, not relaxed in the slightest. His gaze never wavering from some fixed point behind Kurt that he must have decided upon.
Kurt wants to snarl in the most unelven way, but the servants have made such an effort, and what is he here for but to acquiesce to finding peace between their races? He is careful not to say he accepts the gift, for that would be considered the greatest faux pas. The Dragon Lord must earn Kurt’s hand in marriage, and there are still five days before the ceremony.
“Thank you for your kindness.”
“My Lord’s betrothed is very beautiful for an elf.”
Kurt has to bite his cheek at what sounds of pure insult, but is probably not meant to be. Besides, all his life he has been told he’s beautiful, in a way that no longer feels like praise, rather like one comments upon the suns setting, a magnificent fountain, a ceremonial blade, a night full of bioluminescent butterflies glowing in the trees over a lake. He’s over six feet tall, as most of the high-elves are; his mother called him willowy until he came into adulthood and his muscles filled him out in a way that had men lining up for his attention. Moon-pale skin warmed at the cheeks by the fire and warmth of his new surroundings. His deer-brown hair with strands of moonbeam-touched platinum falls loose down his back with a simple braid to keep the front from falling in his face. His eyes are a storm-cast blue, sometimes greenish-gray, with the depth and wisdom of oracle tide pools.
He perches on the bench with lithe grace, gathering the navy blue travel robe away from his ankles. One attendant kneels to unfasten his boots. Another takes them as they are removed, and Kurt suddenly feels more exposed with his stockinged feet in this place than he has naked in bed with lovers.
The first stocking is peeled away.
And even the warm air feels cool against his skin after traveling all night.
He can’t help but look toward the doorway and see that the Lord, who must be at least seven feet tall, taller if he calculates for the two golden-black horns, is looking higher now, past the door beam but not quite at the sky.
Hmmmmm… He can’t decide if he wants to smile that the beast has manners or be offended that he will not look at him. Perhaps he does not think me beautiful, even for an elf.
Better this way, he supposes, trying not to let it agitate him, he should be above such emotions. He looks back at the servants attending him, now lowering his feet into the basin. Moaning slightly despite himself, as he didn’t expect the relief to be so instantaneous, moving up through his soles, his ankles, the long bones of his legs, loosening the invisible ache left by carriage motion and the endless indignity of being transported as a treaty across half a continent. The cinnamon oil slicks over his skin. Starpetals brush his calves like lunar moths kissing his flesh.
One attendant washes with a natural sponge, another pours water slowly over his ankles from a narrow bronze cup; they don’t rush the ritual, and Kurt tries not to make another noise. It’s startling intimacy, and he can’t help imagine that these hands are here by proxy, as not only can the Lord not speak to him, he cannot touch him.
When the attendant dries Kurt’s feet with a cloth warmed over the coals, another steps outside, and Kurt watches from the corner of his eyes as the Lord pulls something from a small leather pouch on his belt and hands it to her.
Starchild stiffens, ready to protect his master.
But she simply opens a small folded square of black silk and kneels at Kurt's feet, now resting on a folded towel. She sprinkles a pinch of pale crystalline powder, glimmering faintly blue, over each of his feet.
“Fallenstar salt crystals,” Starchild whispers, astonished.
Kurt turns his head toward the Lord and then back to Elliott when he speaks.
“A treasure without price, master. Used for blessing royalty from the high-elves of the northern coasts.”
“Indeed…” Kurt replies, and he doesn’t turn, but he can’t help feeling like the dragonkind’s eyes are on him. He doesn’t allow it, but his breath stutters in his chest against his will.
When the attendants are finished, they lift the basin between them, bowing their heads, and they walk backward slowly, chanting a blessing, not turning around until they have crossed the threshold outside. Kurt watches, the words in his ears,
What the road has taken, may you be restored.
Blessing of dragonfire and gifts from his hoard.
The Dragon Lord turns only when they are past him, and he follows them back down the bridge.
Only after the doors close does Kurt realize he has not moved.
Starchild waits three heartbeats before speaking; he cannot hold back his small smile. “Well?”
Kurt looks down at his bare, warmed feet now on a silken red cushion against the dark floor. The glittering powder tingling his skin with the magic of fallen stars.
Then, very carefully, with his witty tongue, because he cannot make sense of his own mind, he retorts, “I dislike customs that are difficult to mock.”
Elliott chuckles, “Yes. I do know this about you. Shall we see about your bed now? It is barely sunrise, but you have not slept properly these last two nights as we drew closer.”
Kurt realizes he’s staring at the door where the Dragon Lord was only moments ago…his thoughts lost somewhere, imagining what he might look like closer. What color has the universe made his eyes?
“Kurt?”
“Yes. What? Yes. Proper sleep is in order. Thank you.”