Half-Elf Harlot Ch. 04

She had to admit, it was at least a little bit fun to be on the other end of the Raven Queen temple's theatrical door opening bit. Waiting on the other side was Amara's fiancé and all-around spy guy, Marcus. Zelia flung her hands wide in greeting.

"Marcus! Ol' buddy ol' pal. Please do come in."

Marcus grinned his lopsided smile and held out a hand, waiting.

"Oh, right."

Zelia fished out Amara's pendant and dropped it into Marcus's outstretched palm.

Lanky, tall, and charming, Marcus still looked more like a theatre player than the lieutenant of a secret resistance faction that he now was, but his eyes missed very little, despite the affability of his expression. He tucked the pendant into his pocket and followed Zelia inside the temple.

"This place is spooky," he murmured, looking around at the somber statues framing the landing of the massive staircase, the strange amber coloured light, and the eerie quality of muffled echoes in the vast central chamber.

Zelia raised her eyebrows.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

They found an empty prayer room and closed themselves within. Once inside, Marcus was straight down to business.

"The Shadow Hand has found a lead on the whereabouts of Queen Ilwyn. Amara's on her way now to investigate, and I'll join her once I leave you. We should know within a matter of weeks how the situation lies. It's good news: this is what we've been waiting for."

"Great! Let me come," said Zelia. "I'll be much more useful to the Hand wherever you're going than rotting away in here, I promise you."

Marcus frowned.

"I'm afraid it's still too much of a risk, unfortunate though that is. Without this—" he patted the pocket containing Amara's pendant, "and without these walls you're trackable, and we already know they're looking for you. Right now I don't believe they know your whereabouts, and that's to our advantage. I know it's hard, but this really is the best place for you until we're ready to make our move."

"Fine, I'll stay put. But not for too long," Zelia warned, holding up a finger.

"We'll do our very best."

"Wait—where's Alessa in all of this?"

"Gone. Amara tells me she rode east late last night, called home on urgent business with her family."

"Huh. They must be summoning demons again," mused Zelia.

Marcus's head snapped up.

"Wha—Really?"

Zelia shrugged.

"I don't know, probably?"

Marcus's realm was the political; the otherworldly threats she and her party tended to get tangled up in regularly always seemed to shock him when he learned what they were up to. The Barov family were notorious demon worshippers. Their infernal dealings were supposedly to blame for Alessa being born with horns and hooves, and why she'd left her home seeking to become a force for good in the world.

"What about Leda," Zelia asked. "Is she ok? It was right outside the shop that I was arrested. The Black Circle must have been on their way there looking for me."

Marcus nodded.

"It isn't safe for her in Faramon now, either. She's shuttered up her shop for now and gone to Vandor until things settle down. I escorted her out through the tunnels myself."

Zelia looked for somewhere to sit down. She felt the world crumbling down around her, and here she was trapped in this museum of death worship, unable to help her friends or to feel the excitement of leaping into the fray. Leda: that was another friend now who was suffering specifically for her ties to Zelia.

Marcus laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"It's going to be ok. I've been working for a long time to bring Chrysmer Eneris down and restore the throne, and it's thanks to the three of you that that goal is now within our reach. You just have to hang tight a little longer. Here—take this."

Marcus reached inside his cloak and pulled out a slim scroll, twin to the one Amara carried.

"You can only use it once a day to send a message to the other scroll, and from here on the less you know about our mission the better, in case you get captured and questioned. But at least you and Amara can use it to keep in contact while you're here, without her having to use her spells."

Zelia took the scroll, feeling none the better about her situation for being able to be pen pals with her friends while they went on adventures.

She bid goodbye to Marcus, who shook her hand firmly and dashed off with the energy of someone who had important things to get to, and walked back into the shadows of her new home.

***

The weeks Marcus had promised stretched into a month and more, and in the world outside, spring was beginning to give way to summer. Inside the temple of the Raven Queen, however, the air was as still and unchanging as ever.

Zelia sighed, leaning back in her chair, and rubbed her eyes. A treatise on the history of plagues throughout the world, and the Keepers who had cared for the dead and dying through each epidemic, lay open on the table before her.

The sunlight that filtered into the temple library through its enchanted walls was wan, as ever, which in Zelia's opinion did nothing to help the dreariness that was the task of reading.

"Ugh, can I be done yet?"

"You're not even at the Pox of the Red Weep! That's when things get crazy for awhile."

Keeper Martel mussed Zelia's hair affectionately as he leaned over the desk and flipped the pages of the heavy tome. Martel was Tess's best friend and companion cleric. When Zelia had first met them she'd thought they were twins, or at least related. It turned out they had only been in the middle of a ritual process that, while they wore their regalia, had bound them to move through fate in unison for a predetermined length of time.

Once they took off the masks and you got to know them, they actually looked nothing alike. Nonetheless, the two may as well have been siblings, and the filial affection Martel felt for Tess had been extended to Zelia since she'd come to the temple.

"Sounds thrilling," Zelia said.

Martel shrugged casually.

"You're the one who decided you wanted to finally do the standard readings. These are them, friend."

"Yeah, but that's because I thought doing the readings might help pass the time, not make it last even longer. Are you sure there's not some kind of time dilation spell in this room or something?"

Martel sat on the desk and crossed his arms.

"Ok, let's go do something more fun, then. C'mon, wanna get out of this dustheap for awhile?"

Zelia crossed her arms right back at him.

"Don't be a dick, Martel. You know I can't leave."

Martel tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.

"Yeah, well, I may have a workaround. Are you in, or out?"

Zelia closed her book with a dull thud, dispersing dust into the surrounding air.

"I'm listening."

A short time later, Zelia and Martel descended the grand staircase and made their way toward the doors. Both of them were wearing the figure-obfuscating black robes of a Raven Queen priest, and as they neared the door, Martel slipped on his white mask and raised the hood.

"Ready to go get some fresh air?"

"Fuck yes," said Zelia, adjusting her own mask.

Together, they pulled on the handles of the great doors, which swung open heavy on their hinges. Outside, the sky was brilliantly blue, and Zelia inhaled as deeply as she could through the mask.

As she took her first step outside the temple in a full turn of the moon, a voice called out behind them.

"Where are you two going?"

Tess.

Martel and Zelia turned, their masked faces anonymous, but Tess was used enough to reading body language beneath Raven Queen regalia that she plainly recognized them. Martel looked back and forth between Zelia and Tess and then waved Tess over.

"Field trip! You coming?"

"It's not safe for you to go out there," said Tess, looking squarely at Zelia as if she could see straight through her mask.

Martel danced over to where Tess stood and slipped his arm around her shoulders, guiding her toward the door.

"Yeah, well, we kind of borrowed Keeper Orun's robes, ok, so let's get out of here before somebody sees us."

Keeper Orun's robes, as Martel had revealed, were like all other Keeper's robes in appearance, but unlike them in that they contained several enchantments, one of which, like Amara's pendant, made the wearer proof against scrying spells. Martel had kept a lookout while Zelia had transformed herself into a fine mist, seeped underneath the door to Orun's chambers, and stolen the cloak.

Tess did a double take.

"You what? No, you know what, never mind. I don't want to know about it. I will, however, be coming with you."

Craning her neck to ensure no one else was within eyesight of the doors, Tess shooed out the other two and hurried after them.

Birdsong filled the sweet air outside, and the boughs of the trees that lined the main roads of the Pews District were laden with fragrant flowers. As they strolled through the streets of Faramon, witnessing the life and bustle of the city, Zelia's heart sang with her first taste of freedom in far too long.

They came to one of the canals and stopped along its busy bridge to people watch. Zelia noticed the way small children stared at her and Martel in their solemn garb, and how grown folk turned their eyes away, hoping, she supposed, not to catch the notice of the Raven Queen. From behind the mask, she eyed Tess, who'd come undisguised, as she stood in contemplation the murky depths of the canal.

There was another reason Zelia had resorted to book reading to pass the time of late. Sharing a small bed each night with Tess had become a nightly exercise in torturous self-discipline, and spending time with her during daylight hours did nothing to help the problem. Tess was sexy, intelligent, and clearly interested in her. The distance Zelia had once thought wise to keep between them was a lost cause.

But the last person she'd let her loins run away with had been exiled as an end result, and since hearing what had happened to Ignatius, Zelia had sworn to herself that she would use the time that she was forced to spend within the temple for personal growth, and a reexamining of the ways in which her actions affected other people.

And so she had stayed celibate, pretending she did not see the way Tess looked at her, those deep grey eyes framed with long, dark lashes; that smile, as capable of laughing at a game of cards as at the grand joke of life and death. The way she moved her hands when she spoke, direct and elegant at once; the way she moaned as she turned over in her sleep, disturbed by dreams that Zelia wanted to wake her from and ask what they were of.

She noticed all these things. With nothing else to pass the days but stalking the same halls and eating the same meals with the same people, she'd become an expert on all the little ways in which Tess drew her, all the things that—had she permitted herself to acknowledge her desires—she desired.

As if she could feel Zelia's thoughts, Tess turned to look in her direction, when something in the distance seemed to catch her eye instead. She laid a hand on Zelia's shoulder, and pointed.

Across the canal, they had a view of one of the city's larger plazas. It was a place of which Zelia had fond memories, having been the site where she and the girls had kicked the snot out of a wild beast once that had thrust up through the ground there, under hypnosis of some dark spell or other and intent on ravaging the city.

An enormous statue had been recently erected in the square, its subject clear even from the bridge: Chrysmer Eneris, Regent of Faramon.

"You've got to be shitting me," said Zelia.

"I believe I shit you not," Tess said.

Once she'd seen the statue, it was as if Zelia saw through glasses that brought a different aspect of the city into focus. As they left the Pews and headed deeper into Faramon, they passed more than a few shops that had been boarded up or abandoned. There were far fewer street performers than Zelia ever remembered seeing, especially on so nice a day, and even the songbirds, whose presence she had noted near the temple, seemed less numerous, or else less inclined to sing, the closer they got towards the Palace District.

A growing sense of unease plagued Zelia as they made their way towards the Crossroads, the central city hub whose mythological significance as the site of two gods fucking once upon a time meant it was sacred ground, and enshrined as politically neutral, outside the laws of the surrounding city.

The Crossroads was a famous haven for the homeless, and penniless, and voluntarily impoverished. It was where Zelia had lived out of her tent for nearly the past year, before Leda took her in. It was also where Carys Dreamweaver, the tiefling proprietor of the infamous Crossroads establishment Dreamweaver's, held court as the foremost Madam, nightclub owner, and purveyor of a certain kind of rare goods and substances in the city.

The Ladies of Warsong had spent many an evening at Carys's, both for business and for pleasure; Carys had been one of the party's first allies when they came to the city. In fact, it was through doing some work for them that Zelia and her friends had ended up with the deed to Warsong in the first place.

Because of all these things, it came as quite a shock to Zelia when she came to the familiar knoll on the Crossroads Commons and saw that the little tent with its small painted sign that was the entryway to Cary's palace of dreams was nowhere to be found.

"Hey," said Martel. "Isn't this where that crazy brothel used to be?"

"Dreamweaver's," said Tess, looking at Zelia. "You know the owner, right? Do you know if they got shut down?"

Zelia felt numb.

The news from her supposed network had all but completely dried up since Marcus's visit a month ago. As he'd warned, Amara hadn't communicated much of import via the enchanted scrolls, and had often seemed to be rather unavailable. Zelia used her end mostly to send bad jokes and crude drawings, in lieu of any news from within the temple.

"If my friends know, they haven't thought to mention it to me."

As she looked around the familiar green expanse of the Crossroads Commons, it was clear that even this place had felt the tightening of Chrysmer's grip around the populace. Fewer tents, fewer lovers huddled under trees. A town crier passed them, singing praises of the Regent's latest policies and proclaiming loudly of their popularity with the people of Faramon.

Zelia felt a distinct greying of the group's mood as they looked around them.

"We should be getting back soon," said Martel. "Before Orun notices his robes are missing."

Zelia nodded reluctantly.

"Ok. I just need to make one stop first."

That evening, as they readied themselves for bed, Zelia was still dwelling on the disappearance of Dreamweaver's and the other changes to the city.

"I just can't believe it's gone," she said, reaching into her small silvery bag for the prize she'd brought back with her to the temple. "Carys always was a little outside the law, sure, but Dreamweaver's was an institution. I didn't even think the crown had jurisdiction to shut down businesses in the Crossroads."

"It seems like Chrysmer has decided otherwise," said Tess, kneeling on the bed. She peered curiously over Zelia's shoulder at the thick white fabric she'd pulled from her bag.

"Hey, that's beautiful. Is that what you went to Leda's old shop for?"

"That, and memories, I guess," said Zelia sadly. It had pained her almost physically to return to the Golden Spool and see it boarded up, its half-bare shelving covered in dust. But she'd found what she came for, wrapped up together with her staff of fire and tucked beneath the bed in the attic room, as if Leda had known she would come looking for it.

"It's a cloak I was working on. For Thodorlun," she explained, smoothing her hand over the well-made fabric, feeling the enchantment alive within it still.

"So many boyfriends," Tess sighed, stretching to her full length along the bed.

Zelia turned toward her, noticing, as she always did, despite her efforts not to notice, the contours hinted at beneath the loose fit of Tess's nightgown.

"Tess," she said, in the same tone of regret that was always in her voice when Tess looked at her that way.

"I know," said Tess. "You're still figuring things out."

But as Zelia laid down on the bed, small enough that it was an effort not to touch the other person in it with her, Zelia felt Tess's eyes on her, and felt the air between them, charged with wanting. She turned her head on the pillow and met Tess's eyes.

Lightly, Tess raised a hand and tucked the hair behind Zelia's ear. She trailed her fingertips down along the side of Zelia's face, and the desire it ignited within her was visceral, almost dizzying. Zelia closed her eyes to steady herself before replying, in a choked whisper,

"I can't."

With difficulty, Zelia rolled once again to face the other way, as she had every other night, and snuffed the light. But she lay awake a long time in the dark, staring into the stillness of the room and waiting, hoping.

And when she stirred awake again in the wee hours, Tess was awake too, and shifted in the bed until her body fitted against Zelia's back and her hair fell loose over Zelia's neck as she leaned in to whisper,

"...But you want to, don't you."

Zelia bit her lip, breathing hard to keep from giving in to every impulse in her body. Behind her, she felt Tess's hand slip quietly beneath the covers and travel down along her body, coming to rest at the small of Zelia's back.

"What are you learning, torturing yourself like this, hm? Don't you think the people in your life are there because they want to be? I am," she whispered, sliding her hand over the curve of Zelia's hip, the swell of her ass, along the slight scratchiness of the linen shift. "I want to be."

Nearly out of her mind with need, Zelia's back arched, her hips pressing backwards into Tess's palm seemingly of their own volition. It was all the invitation Tess needed to follow the curves of her behind down lower, until two knuckles were pressed up against that warm soft place between her legs, not moving further, but with enough pressure that their presence could not be denied.

"And... you are so wet. Already I can feel you soaking through this fabric."

Zelia's body was rigid in her aliveness to the touch, caught between decision and desire. She couldn't—wouldn't—let herself change her mind now just because the moment was upon her. She had promised herself.

"I can't Tess," she pleaded again.

The knuckles moved, just slightly, pressing inward, and a spasm went through Zelia, sending her hips grinding back into Tess's lap. Tess inhaled slowly before saying, smoky magic in her low voice,

"Alright. But, I could just keep my hand here, just like this. It's innocent enough. Should I?"

The question hung there in the air, burning every place where skin touched skin, or skin touched clothing.

"Ok," said Zelia at last, her voice barely more than a breath.

Eventually, she fell back asleep. But each long moment before consciousness deserted her was an exquisite torment as they lay there, not doing anything, yet Tess's hand nestled in so near her cunt, so close, not close enough.

***

Tess was gone when Zelia awoke the next morning, and she saw no sign of her throughout the day. She studied in the library with Martel, even more distractible than usual, and tried to work on Thodorlun's cloak but found she couldn't focus on that either.

Lust, unfulfilled, consumed her thoughts, and the day passed in a dreamlike trance. Wherever she walked, the movement of her thighs put her in mind of Tess's hand there as she slept. Each time she heard footsteps in the halls, her pulse raced until she was certain it was someone else.