The Beast of Lyntara by A. F. Dery

Author:A. F. Dery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romantic sword and sorcery fantasy, sweet fantasy romance series, beauty and the beast, elves witch romance, warlord romance
Publisher: Ring Drop Press LLC
Published: 2015-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Thane sat where he was on the edge of his bed until the room was awash in darkness. He didn’t know what he was feeling, but whatever it was, it was unbearable, a burning, aching pressure lodged under his breastbone that he knew couldn’t be physical in origin. If it had been, he wouldn’t have been able to feel it.

Ordinarily when he felt like this, inundated and overwhelmed by the unnameable, he went out and sparred in the courtyard with his men, or if he was too overcome for the necessary self-restraint required for that, he escaped into the woods outside the limits of the Keep with his ax. The terrain was rocky, sloping, and arduous—the Keep was quite high up on a mountain, after all—but the physical exertion was unparalleled for clearing his head and making things that didn’t feel like they could be dealt with seem more manageable.

Only now, he was keenly aware that the side effects of such exertion would be inflicted instead on his wife—his pregnant wife.

The very word filled him with a despair that would not leave. He couldn’t stop seeing his siblings’ graves. They had been buried outside the courtyard itself, in the woods where his mother couldn’t see them from the grounds.

His father hadn’t cared what was done with the children that had died in his Lady’s womb, but the midwives had been more compassionate. Their burial spots were marked only with large stones, all ten of them, the crossed hammer and chisel of the Eladrian seal crudely carved into them the only clue of their purpose.

He had meant to take Kesara to see them one day. He wasn’t sure why. It was the past, after all. It wasn’t like it mattered anymore. The children hadn’t even been named. But he had still wanted her to see them. They meant something to him. Eladrians didn’t just forget their dead, and these being dead were the reason he was alive.

Now he was torn between protecting her from the sight and tracking her down to take her there immediately. Maybe then she would truly understand the gravity of their situation. Maybe then, she’d see it wasn’t fear alone that compelled him...although there certainly was fear. He couldn’t deny that, even to himself.

It had wounded his pride to hear it, but he knew truth when he heard it. He was scared. Kesara had very quickly become his world. He didn’t want to face it again without her. He had felt content enough before they’d met, had been peacefully resigned to a life more-or-less alone, but now he could see the emptiness that had been in it, the loneliness that had been more to blame for all those hours in his laboratory than his intellectual curiosity had been.

In retrospect, he could see how much of his past trust in the High Lord had been due more to some misguided sense of wanting to belong somewhere, as futile as his efforts at Court had proven to be, than from any rational basis.

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