“Yes, darling.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault the payments at the quarry have decreased.” The woman bit her lip and traced a finger over the man’s chest. “How can the foreman forget where he got the copper to pay everyone from when people weren’t buying stone for building materials? How does he expect to replenish it with more copper if he can’t pay the men enough to dig it up?”
“We’ll find more.” The man took the woman’s hand in his. “We all have our goddesses to take care of. So many of the men have children—”
“Thank the goddess we haven’t yet had any.” The woman smiled, but just barely. She didn’t seem thankful at all. “I don’t mean … Don’t get it into your head that I don’t want any. Because I do. It’s just … ” Her voice quieted as she played with her man’s shirt. “I’d hate for them to be so hungry now, along with us. Someday it’ll get better. We can welcome them then.”
Someday it’ll get better. It won’t.
The bucket fell out of my hands and clattered to the ground. The coupling in front of me tore their gazes from each other just long enough to glower at me, but I didn’t care. I crouched beside the bucket and hugged my knees to my chest.
They don’t remember the lord. They don’t realize it was him who kept this village running. I didn’t even realize it was him, really. How could I? He never even came down to the village. He never spoke with the people directly. How could I have known he helped so many?
How could I have known what I was doing, when I yearned for my own freedom?
“Hey. Hey. Do you want some water or don’t you?” The woman behind me kicked at my back lightly.
I saw the line that had formed behind me and realized I was some distance from the well and it was my turn. I didn’t know how long I must have been lost in my thoughts. “Yes,” I said, quietly, thinking of the men in the commune.
Every muscle ached as I dipped the bucket down with the rope to the well and pulled it back upward.
They all knew. Before they forgot him. They all wanted me to Return to him, to keep him happy because he was their best customer.
Because he kept this village going.
***
A couple of weeks later, I laid on the ground in my shack, telling my thoughts to quiet for once so that I might sleep and enjoy a brief moment of peace from my waking dream.
“Because you bring us water. And scraps. And for the rose.”
A gruff voice. I struggled to open at least one eye, but my eyelids were heavy, and it strained me more than it should have. I blinked to bring the streaming moonlight into focus. A black figure stood in the doorway.
I shot up from my pile of hay on the ground. My heart beat harder, stronger.
And then I recognized Jaron standing before me.
It wasn’t the lord. He was gone, and he’d taken everything I knew with him. My life was gone. I felt the violence of a torment that would not break, even across the jagged surface of my heart.
Jaron must have recognized the feeling in my face, for he was soon crouching before me with both hands extended.
He held a sheathed blade. Does he even know what’s in his hands?
Before I could stop myself, I grabbed it from him, pulling it out of harm’s way and removing the blade by the hilt. It sparkled with a violet glow that felt all too familiar. “Elgar? How … ”
“Don’t know what it is. Maybe a carving tool. Found it in a tree hollow in the woods,” croaked Jaron tersely. “When cutting wood for Alvilda. Years ago. She would not take it.”
Years ago? Of course. I just have to leave it there for him to find, all these countless years later.
I felt a stirring in my heart that wasn’t quite like the pain it had known for the past month. It was mixed with great sorrow for Jaron and the truth of the longing I knew he felt even now for Alvilda.
I sheathed the sword and squeezed Jaron’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Jaron’s mask bobbed, and he stood up. He left the shack just as quietly as he had entered it.
I pulled out the sword, gripped my hair into a tail behind me, and sliced it off close to my scalp. Now that I was alone, I was free to be myself. There would be nothing about me for anyone to make pretty.
***
I brushed aside the last of the branches that blocked the cavern’s entrance from view. Elgar, my blade, had summoned me here. The sheath hung from my waist, and I rested my hand comfortably over Elgar’s hilt. I couldn’t walk through this life anymore. My parents were gone. My sister and the man I’d loved were lost in each other completely. The lord had vanished, but he left behind a feeling of emptiness in my chest each time I thought of his face—and I hated myself for that. I didn’t want the burden of remembering him. If my heart was empty after I had slain the heartless monster, I would let the blade and the violet glow guide me to where I would stop him from hurting others in the first place.
I was the elf queen—and I was nobody’s goddess.