331 Chapter 331

'He didn't cut me.' The thought ran through Nua's mind on a loop as she drove the carriage on. Her ears wiggled up and down still, and more than once she reached up to touch them just to confirm they were still there. 'Why didn't he cut me?' She asked herself that question every time she felt the wiggle or felt the tip of her ear.

'If he weren't a friend of Cardinal Dominic, and if he weren't… a Cardinal, I'd think it was conscience. Or… pity.' She loathed the word, but against it she felt confident that she was secure. 'Monsters have no pity. Even if he does… even if he leaves them intact this whole time, when I'm returned to Cardinal Dominic… they're gone again.' She cracked the whip well over the horses, urging them to quicken their speed. The overcast sky was slowly changing and the sun was breaking through in places, and as the hours passed her clothing began to dry, the mud on her clothing began to fleck away rather than drip, and she brushed her hands over it in places to cast it aside, back down to the road below and leave it behind.

'What was he thinking when he stopped… all he saw was our reflection in the puddle.' Nua asked herself that question too, and thought back to the man who bought her with violent intent who couldn't go through with it. "That one wasn't all bad…" She murmured and watched the horses race ahead toward the far off horizon. 'I have to understand him, the more I understand, the safer I am from harm.' His fondness for knives was a point she made special note of. 'That is some common ground at least, even if I don't get to use them for the same things…'

'I'm not going to thank him for it…' She clenched her teeth at the very idea, 'I'm a whole elf now… for the first time since I was a girl… I'm not going to thank him… if he wants me fawning all over him, praising him for not being evil… he's got another thing coming.' She cracked the whip over the horse again, and the carriage lurched forward again as it picked up speed.

'You're driving angry, Nua… you shouldn't do that.' She told herself, but didn't slow down.

The wind picked up her short hair, and tears of anger formed when she reached back and touched it. Her long hair was one of her few vanities, it made her stand out, marked her as beautiful in her own mind, and it marked her status. Only skilled elves who did work on matters like potions or the arts, had long hair.

Now hers was shorn to what felt like nothing, a mockery, cut like a human boy's.

"Why have we picked up the pace?" Raymond's voice carried through the slat, and Nua's body went briefly tense.

"Master, we lost time with the… aborted ceremony. Now that it's dry, we can make that up… if it pleases you, I can slow down?" She said, but the slat only closed with a snap.

Raymond sat back.

'She's upset.' He thought, 'Oh my, a clairvoyant aren't you?' He asked himself with abundant sarcasm.

"She's an elf. This is just what has to be done. Don't beat yourself up over it." Raymond told himself in a grumble that was not really even words and moved to the other side of the long seat.

'Zesshi is half elf… you never wanted to mutilate her.' He felt his conscience say.

'She's different.' He argued back.

'Is she though? You've seen half elves with their amputated ears. Would you do it to Zesshi if she lost her power to stop you?' He asked himself and knew the answer.

'No. Never. But this one… Nua, she's not a half elf…' He told himself this, but the horrified, fear filled, eyes… so blue that the sky seemed pale, so deep and endless like an ocean, and they'd become like glass when his hand reached down to grab and twist her ear… the knife in his hand, the familiar grip was always a comfort to him. The way she quivered at his feet and tried to crawl away while looking at him as if he were a monster…

Now the knife might as well have weighed more than a mountain. He couldn't bring his hand to touch it.

And that single glance at the puddle that caught both their reflections. Her stretched out body, slender, lithe, the flash of scar tissue on her back from wounds so long ago healed over that the potion did nothing, and himself, standing up and stretching out to take her for the harvesting.

'In all my years… I've never had to do that… if I'd been a young priest and had to… could I have continued?' He asked himself, and it was a sullen 'No.' That came back at him in his own head.

Even those who stood on the block were certified as priests, it was a 'cardinal duty' on par with the significance of a child's baptism.

'And here I am, a Cardinal, risen through temple ranks and Scripture ranks… the pinnacle of power other than the Pontifex Maximus… and I can't slice a pair of ears because… why?' That was the question that vexed the leader of men.

'Is it because she's beautiful?' He wondered. Many men kept elven mistresses, and there was a long tradition of tragic plays… however underground they might have been, everyone had seen at least one, of men and elves who fell in love across the divide.

Still the warnings in such stories were seldom adhered to. 'Nobody would resent me if I were to purchase her from Dominic and bring her into my house…' The thought died in a heartbeat.

'She would.' He knew immediately, though her mask was more perfect than one worn for a masquerade ball, the beginnings of his understanding of this one was that, even if she complied. She would hate it.

She would hate him.

It would be an act.

A lie.

Done to spare herself pain.

'I don't want that. Not any of it.' He pondered the problem further.

The words of the Queen of Frost came back to him. 'Did she curse me? Am I under some kind of a curse…?' At first glance it didn't seem likely. 'Demihumans though… they have strange powers sometimes… at the next town I'll disguise myself and visit a priest, I'll have myself checked.'

He glared at the slit, on the other side of the wood of the carriage, the elf drove on, oblivious to his murderous thoughts.

He couldn't see his driver. Not her radiant, beautiful smile that spread out over her face like the sun rising over the sky. Not the golden hair that, even shorn like a sheep, swayed like wheat in a breeze. Not that expression of wonder when pain stopped and her thin, perfect lips when awed relief overtook her.

'This would be so much easier if I hated her.' He told himself. Like the monsters he'd slain for the murder of villagers. Or the band of elves he slew in revenge for taking the woman he loved, away from him. 'If I return her with her ears intact… I'll gain a reputation for softness. If she stops being afraid of me and it shows, that would be worse. I suppose I could just tell Dominic she's his property and it's his job, but it would still raise uncomfortable questions.'

It led his brain back to something else. 'She was trained as a bodyguard…' It got his curiosity up. 'She fears dying very much… fears pain very much… how good can she be…?'

Therein lay the answer. 'She'll betray me. Or abandon me. Or… no, even I can't blame her for that. But what if she does something truly cruel to a human when given a chance? Then… then maybe I can do my fucking job…' He told himself, and swallowed the bile it raised in his throat when he thought of grabbing her ear and starting to cut.