There was an edge to his voice, one that hadn’t been there just a few minutes prior, one that made her stomach flip-flop. He looked perfectly calm sitting beside Silva with one long leg stretched out, his heel resting on a chair back from the next table . . . but he had been perfectly calmthatnight as well. Ris shivered, and she wasn't sure if the room had actually changed temperature or if it was simply the drink going to her head.Or maybe it's because Tate is half feral and you think he maybe almost killed you once before. Take your pick.
"When I was a lad, I got it into my head that I would go live with me da’."
Beside him, Silva straightened up, her eyes widening.
So much for Tate doesn’t share of himself. Why do you get the feeling you’re going to regret thinking that in the first place? Should have never put it out into the universe. He probably heard you and is sharing this out of spite.
"I was no more than twelve or thirteen, having trouble at school. Iwasthe trouble at school. So I convinced myself that all my problems would be solved if I went to find my father and live with the orcs. I didn't know him. He'd never taken responsibility for me, not once. Never took responsibility for the baby he got on a teenager, never once. But I was a fucking gobshite little idiot, and I thought since I didn't fit into my Elvish school or with anyone in my Elvish village, I'd do better with the orcs. After all, that'swhyI didn't fit in, yeah? And all I knew about orcs was what they said about themselves.”
Tate’s lip curled in a sneer as he spoke. Beside him, Silva looked as if she were holding her breath. Ris could only imagine what his experience at an Elvish school had been like. He had the arrogance of an elf and there was something decidedly un-Orcish about him in general, but Tate was undoubtedly an orc.I understand why he went to live with them.
“All the talk about the values of their clans, how close knit they all were, how they took care of each other. Well, I thought, fair play. That’s the right place for me. So, one day I left. They took care of their own, and I was one of them.”
Ainsley, for the very first time since the night she had met him, was silent beside her. All three of their drinks were forgotten — all but Tate, who filled his rocks glass to the brim, sloshing a bit of the amber liquid to the table as he lifted it to drink.
"Did you meet your father?" Silva asked in a hushed voice, laying a small, lavender hand against his arm, preventing him from draining the glass in one. He gave her sardonic smile in return, his mouth stretching back farther than it had the right to do, ear to ear.
“I tried, dove. There I was, this runt compared to the two thick-headed bruisers who met me at the gate. I've never been anywhere outside our village before, I’ve never talked to anyone I didn’t grow up knowing. And here I am, practically pissing myself, asking these two strangers if I can come onto clan grounds and look for my father. Orcish values. They take care of their own, after all. But that’s not what they told me. 'You don't belong here, lad. There's nothing for you here.’”
She got the impression his words were a recitation, likely the exact phrases he’d been told.That’s not the kind of thing you forget. And that’s why you go to therapy.
“‘You've got no kin that will claim you. Be off with you now, before we help you away.'"
Tate paused, smiled widely, his crowd of jagged teeth making Ris feel as if she were trapped beneath an overturned glass. Silva lifted his glass to her lips, draining the remainder before pushing it to the center of the table, out of reach.
"I'mclearlytheir fucking kin. I'm clearly an orc. There's no other Orcish village around within two day's ride. There’s nowhere else Icouldbe from. There’s Castlemartyr and Dunmaragh, and a human town a good distance away. That’s it. 'You don't belong here, lad. You've got no kin that will claim you.' So there’s your fucking Orcish clan values. Fucking nothing. They'll take care of each other as long as it benefits them, and the second it doesn't, you're on your own in the world. So I hope your pretty blonde friend has a contingency plan in place for her children, because that's all their father's promises will be worth. Fucking nothing. Faic na fríde."
When they left a short while later, Ris let her head fall back against the seat in Ainsley's car, closing her eyes. She wished for the hundredth time they had just stayed home that night.
Tate had left the table shortly after his uncharacteristically personal disclosure, the good mood they’d found him in thoroughly evaporated. Justmaking himself visible, he told Silva as he rose, his thumb stroking the apple of her cheek as her slim eyebrows turned down in one of her disappointed kitten-like expressions.
"We need your help this week at work," Ris told her, watching Silva's eyes follow Tate's back out of the room. "Wedding planning. You need to be our Pro. I'm hopeless, and Lurielle doesn't even know where to start."
"Oh, um, okay! I can do that. I'll bring in one of my binders, we can look over it during break. Has she already booked—"
"She hasn't done anything yet, Silva. She legit doesn't know where to start. Weneedneed you. I already dropped the ball tonight. I was supposed to pester Khash about his proposal plans, butsomeone railroaded the evening," the last said with a pointed, narrowed look at Ainsley.
Silva nodded decisively. "Okay, count me in. We can girlboss this until it's perfect. I have a whole filing cabinet drawer full of options.”
Tate and Silva walked out the door with them a few minutes later, and as Ainsley's car pulled away from the curb, Ris waved from her window. Silva waved back, standing beneath the security light just outside the Pixie’s doorway, haloed in white. Beside her, Tate was swallowed up by the darkness of the building, invisible in the shadows, the orange glow of his cigarette the only sign he was there at all.
Now her head was heavy, woozy from the alcohol and the aggravation the entire evening.
"Nanaya, we're home."
Ainsley's voice was warm huff against her skin, his long arms curling around her back and under her legs, scooping her up. It didn’t seem possible, for they’d only just pulled away from the Pixie.
“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty. You were out before we even made it around the lake.”
"Yeah, this is the least you can do," she murmured sleepily against him, feeling the vibration of his laughter against her side as her arms snaked around his neck, holding on as he carried her. She didn't open her eyes until he was struggling with his key at the door, letting herself tumble from his arms and pirouetting over the threshold. "I amcompletelyexhausted from this night. My capacity for other people has been sucked dry. I don't want to be woken up tomorrow until breakfast is made, got it?"
"Heard and understood."
When she was stretched out in bed beside him, Ris replayed their conversation in the Pixie’s back room. Tate’s confidence left her discomfited, the same way she was left feeling upset anytime she read a news story about children being mistreated. Something he’d said niggled at the back of her mind, forcing its way out. "What doestwo day's ridemean in this context?"
Ainsley said nothing for several long minutes. Ris wondered if he had fallen asleep. Her supposition was proven wrong when he turned, enfolding her in his arms and rolling onto his back, keeping her pinned against his chest and tucked under his arm.
"Nanaya, the first rule of Tate is don't ask questions if you don't really want the answer. That's one of them."
