"Not tonight," he said aloud as he set her gently on the floor. "As you are."
She reached for the buckle of her swordbelt and cast the elven weapon aside. It was an instinctively protective gesture, for even a casual touch from the moonblade could burn the careless. She let it fall without care or concern. The sword was her elven destiny, but tonight, she had another pledge to fulfill, just as sacred.
Danilo put her hands aside and tended her himself. He gently smoothed away the indentations on her forearm where the bracer and knife sheath pressed against her. Her skin fascinated him, and he explored it with exquisite, torturous delicacy.
"Moonlight on pearl," he murmured in a reverent tone, easing her shirt away from her shoulders.
Arilyn began to experience a very human level of impatience. Had she possessed any magic, she would have dissolved all impediments. She began to tug at the laces that bound the side of her leathers.
He caught her mood, and moved to help her, but urgency made them both fumble-fingered. Finally she pushed him away and bent, pulling a knife from a sheath hidden in her boot.
This she handed to Danilo. He deftly cut the laces, and she kicked the ruined garment aside. She kicked her boots off so emphatically that one of them hit an oil lamp. The blue globe rocked wildly, and the flame guttered, then disappeared.
The darkness suited her. Moonlight was all that was needed. It filled her, in a very tangible sense. Its silvery light began to gather, burning ever brighter as it rose. Her mind washed clear. There was nothing but this, no time but now. Elven rapport melded with very human urgency, but there was no discordance, only completion, and a shared sense of homecoming so poignant and sweet that she knew the memory would stay with her long after her life essence melded with the moonblade.
Later, they curled together before the fire and watched the patterns in the flames. There was no need for words, for those served to bridge a gap, and the communion they had shared made this unnecessary. Whatever came, Arilyn felt that neither of them would ever truly be alone again.
* * * * *
The morning came in slowly, for the sun was curtained with clouds and a faint rain whispered over the roofs and rustled the falling leaves.
Danilo turned to the sleeping woman beside him and woke her with a kiss. "As much as I hate to say this, we should rise. We have business outside this room."
She stretched, looking as smug and languorous as a cat. "Had I known what was awaiting me, I would not have waited so long."
He caught up her hand and kissed it. "My fault entirely," he said ruefully. Four years ago, when they had declared their love, he had been determined that all would be done as tradition demanded. Their union would be blessed by clerics of Hannah Celanil, the elven goddess of love. There would be a splendid ceremony, a lavish celebration. Theirs was no trivial fancy to enter into lightly.
"You just wanted to do things right," she consoled him.
"I picked a damnably foolish time to start," he said with a wry grin. After the depth and shattering communion of their joining, ceremony and tradition seemed paltry things. They were bound for life and had been for a very long time.
Nevertheless there was still a part of him that yearned for the ceremony, the symbol. He reached for the bedside table and took from the drawer a small box. Four years ago he had purchased a hoop of sapphires and moonstones, which he had planned to give her at the Gemstone Ball.
"You don't wear rings," he observed. "Perhaps I could persuade you to make an exception."
She held out her hand. "At the moment, I find myself more open to persuasion than is my usual custom."
He slid the ring onto her finger. "It's almost a shame that I can't take advantage of that! But I can think of nothing in this world that I wish to ask for, that we do not already have. With the possible exemption of a new pair of leather breeches," he amended, nodding toward the ruined garment.
Arilyn frowned as she tried to follow his reasoning. Then she remembered, with a smug little grin that delighted him. He chuckled and reached for the bellpull. Monroe came promptly to the call. The steward opened the door a discreet crack, and asked how he might serve. Danilo sent him off in search of a gown that might fit Arilyn.
Monroe returned with admirable haste. He draped a linen shift and kirtle over the back of a chair. "Simple garments, but they should suffice for the present," he announced as he left the room.
Arilyn eyed the practical garments with approval. "Your steward has sense. I suppose I should feel odd, though, wearing clothes that belong to another woman."
Danilo regarded her with astonishment. "There are other women?"
She sent him a mock glare. "Keep thinking along those lines, and we shall get along fine."
The peace and unity of that morning lasted until they were on the streets. Arilyn's eyes turned hard and watchful. An aura of battle-ready anticipation rose from her like mist.
"You're as nervous as a squirrel," Dan observed. "What is wrong?"
"I'm not sure." The half-elf looked genuinely puzzled.
"What of the sword?"
He spoke easily, with none of the resentment that had shadowed him for so long.
"There is no warning, but I feel as if we're being followed. Why, I couldn't tell you. I don't hear anything. I just sense it."
They skirted an open gutter, mindful of the attack that had followed the last time Arilyn had a presentiment of danger, and hurried onto a more populated street.
So close to the market, street vendors did a brisk business. Small meat pasties scented the air, and fragrant steam rose from baskets piled with small loaves of fresh bread. People ate these as they walked and stopped to wash down their meal with a mug of ale poured from the keg or fresh milk dipped up from a pail.
A woman's scream froze them in midstep.
Before Danilo could turn toward the sound, Arilyn already had her sword out. No fey light limned its length, but Danilo's attention was captured by the runes carved along it—one for each elf who had wielded the sword and who had imbued it with a new level of power. One of these markings glowed with eerie white light.
Never had Danilo seen the moonblade respond in such fashion. This was nothing like the blue glow that warned of coming danger, or the soft green luster that led Arilyn to aid her fellow elves.
The woman gave another cry, this one closer to a strangled sob. Danilo tore his eyes from the moonblade. A dairymaid stood beside her upturned stool and pail, her hands at her mouth and her eyes enormous, oblivious to the spilled milk pooling at her feet. The girl seemed to be in no immediate danger, but Danilo tracked her gaze to the source of her distress.
Behind Arilyn, almost indistinguishable from the play of light and shadows cast by the milling crowd, was the ghostly image of an elven woman.
Though the form was faint and as translucent as a soap bubble, Danilo made out the ghostly elf's stern expression, the sapphire-colored hair braided tightly in a practical, battle-ready fashion.
"Thassitalia," Arilyn murmured.
Danilo had heard that name, and he knew at once what it meant. This was an elfshadow—a manifestation of the moonblade's magic and the symbol of the spirit-deep link between elf and sword. Thassitalia had been one of Arilyn's ancestors, one of the elves who had wielded the moonblade and whose spirit lent magic to the elven sword.