Lar tests the limits of his self-control

Instantly alert, Lar opened the eye that was not buried in his pillow. Somebody was climbing into bed with him. Somebody light and graceful and scented with honeysuckle like a bride.

His fingers curled around a rumple of blanket. Somebody was clearly misguided. Somebody had a most unflattering opinion of his self-​control.

The bed frame squeaked as the girl’s weight settled onto the bed. Lar’s inchoate anger flooded to his groin and throbbed against the mattress. She was going to get a demonstration of his self-​control, he decided. He was going to give her what she wanted. Just not where she wanted it.

He stared at the wall with his one eye, unflinching but drawn tight as a bow. The girl flopped daintily around, fussing with the blankets beneath her.

A second swell of outrage began to build, and Lar’s eye drifted closed as he waited for it to condense. The girl flipped back her hair, feathering his shoulder with its trailing length. Another stiff throb pushed into the mattress.

Lar whipped back the blankets, knocked the girl flat, and pounced, landing squarely between her sprawling legs.

“Bitch!” he shouted as he snatched at her arms. “Bitch! What’d you think I’d—”

At last he got a look at her face—her black eyes, her pixie features crimped with fear, her silvery hair tossing in waves around her head.

“Si—Sina!”

Lar leapt away from her and smacked his back against the wall. Sina scrambled up to sit against the headboard.

“Stinking—! Sina! What in the—!”

Lar flopped down onto his hip. This was like one of those dreams where upon closer examination, the girl he was bedding turned out to be his sister.

“Sisi, what got into your head?” he spluttered. “You didn’t honestly think I was going to— That you only had to show up in my bed for me to—”

But even if she thought so, it wasn’t like Sina to try.

“Your father put you up to this, didn’t he?”

Sina drew up her legs a little tighter and rested her cheek on her knee.

“Even he’s not that stupid!” Lar cried. “He couldn’t seriously think—”

At last he scrabbled enough of his self-​control together to shut himself up.

If any elf knew the limits of Lar’s self-​control, it was Imin. Testing them was one of his favorite pastimes. Imin must have known he wouldn’t just roll over and spawn.

“It was his idea, wasn’t it? Answer me! Don’t tell me you thought of this yourself!”

“No.”

“No, what? Did your father put you up to this? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so!”

Lar snorted and let his head fall back against the wall. Then it jerked back up as he thought to yank a corner of the blanket over his lap. He didn’t need Sina telling her father it had almost worked.

“Is that how your father treats you?” he demanded, trying to get a reaction out of the huddled girl. “Making you go naked— Where are your clothes, anyway?”

Sina lifted her free arm and pointed at a chair. Sheaves of silvery hair slid over her bare shoulder, shedding a breath of honeysuckle perfume.

“Right!” Lar said. “Making you get naked and climb into my bed uninvited—my bed! When he knew what the reaction would be? Is that how he treats you?”

In her quiet voice Sina said, “He just wants me to be happy.”

“Does it make you happy? Does it? Look at me!”

Sina lifted her head. The gesture was slight, but it sent cascades of hair slipping and showering around her skinny body. Lar was not accustomed to seeing Imin’s daughter with her hair loose and her body bare.

Her skin was tawny all over, like her father’s, as if she spent her days roasting in the sun. But her hair had the silvery color of cave-​dwelling creatures—which, in fact, she was.

Lar tried to ignore her body and focus on her face. She blinked slowly at him, and he thought she was having difficulty focusing on his.

Suspicious, Lar grabbed her by the jaw. Sina gasped and went still, with her mouth hanging open. Her skin was dry and hot. His tense grip squeezed her face into a trout’s dull-​witted gape.

Lar leaned in and fitted his mouth over hers. Sina tried to twist her squashed lips into a kiss, but Lar was only looking for a taste. And as soon as he got it his tongue curled away in revulsion, almost fleeing down his throat. He released her and drew back, nauseated and shivering, though he spoke darkly to hide it.

“He made you drink water from his pipe.”

Sina’s mortified expression eased a little. “No, that was my idea,” she admitted. “I had some of the water left at home. I—I thought it would make it… easier.”

Lar scowled. “What you’re saying is, you don’t want to be here at all.”

Sina took a deep breath and sighed. “Yes, I do. But just… not like this. Daddy thought…”

“…I’d be half asleep, and I’d do it,” Lar concluded drearily. He knew Imin had thought no such thing, but it was probably what he’d told Sina.

A smile flitted over her face. “I told him it wouldn’t work. I told him it would just make you mad as fire.”

“At least somebody believes I have a speck of self-​control.”

“Oh, I know you do. I would’ve been too afraid if I didn’t. You almost killed me before you figured out it was only me. But are you mad?”

Lar tipped his head back against the wall. “Not at you!”

Sina said, “Uh oh!” to herself and giggled. She was still coordinated enough to get undressed and climb into bed with him, but she was at least a little tipsy. It might have been funny if it hadn’t all been due to some sordid plot of Imin’s.

Sina lifted her bony arms to brush back her hair. Lar watched her discreetly through his lashes, out of the corner of his eye. The shape of her breasts hardly altered as her arms rose and fell, they were so small and high. Her nipples were tiny, like a child’s.

Even a baby would despair at the sight of her. And beneath the corner of the blanket Lar was falling limp. He liked his girls lush and curvy: soft, rippling, well-​fed armfuls that embodied freedom from want. He had come of age in a season of starvation. As a youth he had fantasized less about sex than about food.

Sina interrupted his brooding to coo, “You must miss the elf Zevadra so much, mustn’t you.”

“Shit! Sisi!” Lar started and cracked the back of his head against the wall. Then he cupped his hand over his face, hiding his eyes. He hadn’t thought of his wife at all until she’d mentioned her. Zevadra didn’t have much to do with anything any more.

Sina laid her hand on the back of his arm. “I know, Lar. I know you could never love another elf but her. And I know I’m not pretty like her. But you wouldn’t have to love me. You wouldn’t have to be faithful to me either. You could still sleep with whoever you like. I could sleep in another bed if you want.”

Lar lowered his hand. “Wait wait wait! What are we talking about here?”

“About getting married.”

“Married! I thought you just wanted a kid!”

Sina picked at the blanket. “I would like that, too. But we wouldn’t have to do that either if you don’t want children, or not right now. We could always say we tried.” She looked up. “You wouldn’t have to take me to bed at all if you don’t want. I won’t mind.”

“Sisi!” Lar laughed out of sheer exasperation. “What else do you think a husband is for? Why have me if you won’t get any of that? So you’ll have someone around who can reach the top shelf?”

Sina smiled, but she did not answer the question.

“Sisi, nobody is getting married anyway. Not you, not me, not anyone. Not right now. You know that. It just causes more problems than it solves.”

Sina hung her head. Lar could not see her expression behind her veil of hair. In a small voice she said, “I thought you must have changed your mind.”

“I must have—”

Lar laid a hand on Sina’s arm to pause the conversation. She looked up.

Imin had sent Sina with marriage in mind, not just a kid. Lar needed to fit this new information in with the rest.

Less than a moon ago Lar had laid a ban on marriages. Yet Imin had assured Sina this little plot would work. What was Imin’s scheme? Did he hope to trick Lar into getting married and force him to lift the ban, to avoid a charge of hypocrisy? Was this some kind of trap? Some kind of defiant mockery? Some kind of distraction?

“Sisi, where’s your brother tonight?”

“Uh, which brother?” Sina asked sweetly.

“Your oldest brother. Out with it, Sis. You’re not clever enough to play stupid with me.”

Sina licked her lips. “Um, Su? I think he’s at home.”

“You think? And who else is there with him?”

“Uh…”

“A whole party maybe? A wedding party?”

“Oh, Lar,” she whimpered. “I thought you must have changed your mind.”

Lar ran his hand up and down his shin, trying to lull the rage that was gathering in his body. “Now, Sina,” he growled, “now, I am mad as fire.”

“Oh, no, Lar, no! It was so pretty! Everyone’s so happy!”

“A late night wedding! And I was sleeping through it, till you came along! What is he—”

Lar clenched his hand around his knee, stopping himself again.

Why should Imin wake him now? And why wake him with a naked Sina?

If Lar stormed into Imin’s apartments to rant about Sina’s escapade, he would be storming into a wedding party. Was that the trick? Force him into a confrontation in the middle of wedding, whose guests had been “so happy” until he arrived to shut it down? Would he dare to shut it down then? Would they defy him—and if they did, what then?

And if he didn’t stop Su’s wedding, could he refuse to marry Sina? Now that she’d been in his bed on the first night of spring? Imin was an old-​fashioned father. His daughters were not promiscuous. She’d never been touched by another elf besides Llosh until Llosh had been killed.

Or had she? Was that why she had failed to get pregnant last winter? Had Imin kept her cloistered? Had Imin been saving her for him?

O Mother, this was far worse than those dreams where he unknowingly slept with his sister. This was a nightmare.

“I would be a good wife to you, Lar,” Sina pleaded weakly. “I won’t get in your way or ask you where you’ve been. Just let me live with you. We could take a bigger apartment, and you could have your own room, and Seven and I would take another—”

Seven!

Lar grabbed her—a handful of skinny arm and crinkly hair—so roughly that she screamed.

“That’s why you took Seven away from Elara! So you could catch me!”

“No!”

“Bitch! Or was it your father’s idea?”

“No!” Sina screwed up her pixie face and scratched at his hand. “Let go of me! That is not why!”

Lar was so startled by this uncharacteristic show of ferocity that he let her go. Sina snarled at him with her little teeth.

“I took Seven because the elf Elara kept getting the cough, and she couldn’t keep up with him anymore. That’s why. And—because I wanted him!” she said defiantly. “He’s a sweet boy. I took him when little Sim was—” Her mouth quivered, but she kept on. “—when he was dying, and it was the smartest thing I ever did. Because after little Sim was gone, I still had Seven, and that kept me going. And he’s the sweetest boy who ever lived, and probably does me more good than I do him.”

Sina tipped up her chin at Lar and regarded him coolly through narrowed eyes. Fuzzy little, meek little dandelion-​headed Sina! Lar was dumbfounded. It must have been the pipe water.

“And he thinks the world of you, Lar. Even though you haven’t done much to deserve it. Daddy has been teaching him some songs, and he can’t wait to show you. So you had better act impressed.”

The blackness of her eyes dimmed behind her pale lashes as she lifted her head higher and squinted still more. Lar was so confused he only made a slight nod of his head.

Sina appeared satisfied. She nodded sharply at him and lifted her arms to brush back her hair again. This time she gathered it back into a ponytail, and it took some doing to gather up all the crinkled strands and smooth them into the rope she held in her fist.

Lar stared blankly. This time he did not see bony elbows and ribs so much as the deeply feminine arch of back. Her breasts did not appear so meager when they were held high, and her hips were thrust back far enough to make a comfortable-​looking crease where her leg met her body.

Little Sisi, whom he had—with grimacing distaste—held as a diapered baby, was sitting naked on his bed. Watching her hips shifting slightly as she moved her arms, he wondered whether the fold of blanket on which she sat felt as good between her legs as it looked to him. That was when he could turn his attention away from the clenching and unclenching of her fist as her ponytail grew stiff and fat.

Beneath his corner of the blanket, all the ground he had lost was regained with one urgent throb.

This was worse than a sister. Worse than a nightmare. This was Sina: thin, undergrown Sina, with her frail, pixie face frozen almost at a fetal stage, in spite of the inevitable lengthening of her limbs and the scanty swelling of her breasts. This was Sina: the embodiment of hunger to him.

Her babyhood had been the harshest, hungriest winter of their lives. That winter, one desperate elf had even broken their people’s greatest taboo and eaten the flesh of the dead. And after his execution, some had grumbled that the most fitting punishment would have consisted of eating him. Lar remembered the longing he’d heard on their voices. He’d had the same thought. He’d felt the longing too.

Lar had passed that winter in a stupor of starvation, so he tried to reassure himself that his one clearest memory might have been a delirious dream. He’d seen the greatest taboo broken; he told himself it would have been easy to dream the second greatest, too.

For after Rimyea’s milk had dried up, and no more of the elves’ paltry rations were to have been spared to infants who would not survive the winter anyway, Lar had seen—or dreamt he had seen—Imin slit his wrist and feed baby Sina on his own blood.

A few years later he’d asked Imin whether it was true, when he was sixteen or so and cocky as a bullfinch, and had a bad habit of posing uncomfortable questions. Imin had whacked him so hard across the face he’d fallen flat on his back, and when he’d tried to spring up, Imin had knocked him out cold. But to this day Imin had never answered the question, and Lar would never again ask.

But he still wondered, sometimes, when he saw Sina daintily eating her dinner, whether she ever had a hunger she could not name and could not satisfy. He wondered whether fuzzy little, meek little pussy-​willow-​headed Sina was the one elf among her people who would understand him.

Sina lowered her arms at last. She had not fastened her ponytail, and it all puffed out and settled over her shoulders like snow. By now the defiance had left her dark eyes.

“I know we would be the strangest family of them all,” she admitted in her gentle voice. “Me and you and a man-​child, and no kids of our own, and sleeping in different beds and everything. I wouldn’t ask you if there was someone else you liked better. Is there?”

Lar shook his head.

Sina sat up straighter. Her spine lost its sensual arch. Her bony arm blocked Lar’s view of her breasts. And nevertheless another throb stirred the blanket over his lap, and he hurriedly tented it higher.

She twisted towards him and leaned closer, revealing her breasts again, until her hair slipped loose to veil them with silver and firelit gold. But her limbs and belly were bare, and where the candle illuminated her curves Lar could still make out her body through her hair.

He could not deny that her tawny skin left nothing to be desired. She was the color of honey—the very color of a woodcock glazed with honey and roasted to a turn. He wanted to hold her between his hands and lap the torchlight off her body with his tongue.

Lar flipped back the flap of blanket and vaulted over the end of the bed. Sina squeaked with fright but settled when she saw him reaching for his clothes.

“You’re getting dressed?” she asked meekly.

“I’m going to the temple. If everyone’s at your dad’s, I imagine I won’t be bothered tonight!”

Lar got his legs into his pants easily enough, but it was some work shoving his erection into the waist so he could get them belted. This was worse than a nightmare. He felt like he had broken some personal taboo, and now that he had a taste for this girl he feared there would be no getting over it.

“Tell your dad you didn’t find me here,” he said, his back still to the bed. “Tell him you waited and I never came. Let’s pretend this never happened.”

He pulled on his shirt and fumbled with the ties. Halfway down he realized he was off by one, so he simply stopped with his shirt half done.

“You want me to stay here?” she asked.

“I don’t care what you do. But I’m not coming back.”

Sina took a fortifying breath. “Well, Lar, if you don’t mind I’d rather go back to the wedding.”

“Then go to the wedding! But I don’t know anything about it, do you hear?”

“Yes, Lar.”

“And, Sisi! If you ever come to my bed again—”

He turned. She sat in a huddle, with her cheek resting on her knee and her black eyes peeking up at him through a haze of crinkly silver hair.

Lar liked his girls promiscuous and easy to disrespect. Shyness and sanctimony did nothing for him. But meek little Sina—draped in veils of hair and timidly twisting her bare toes in his blanket—did something that strained his self-​control to the limit, not to mention the front of his pants.

He had to get out of there, or he would take her—right where he wanted her—on this, the first night of spring. He had to go. He could not risk spawning another monster like his father. Another monster like him.

He’d forgotten what he was going to say. In his haste to flee, he strangled out the first thing that came to mind.

“—don’t come stinking of the pipe!”