24. Silva

Silva

They were in Bridgeton, at some swanky restaurant with a long, gold-plated bar running through the center of the dining room. Silva had no doubt Tate would have found the bar itself rather gauche, but one could not claim the theatrical cocktail mixing skills behind it were not drawing a crowd ringing the shiny, gilded horseshoe.

Berricin and Aubreen were a couple from the club, older than her and Tannar. Silva knew Aubreen from some fundraisers she had worked on in years past, and Tannar had played racquetball with Berricin on more than one occasion. Silva wasn't sure how the invitation to meet them for dinner in Bridgeton had come up, but she'd agreed with a bright, Silva of the Daytime smile, no thoughts of dissension in her head.

"Well, I heard he's trying to join regardless. Going to make it go to a vote. I don't know why anyone would go out of their way for that sort of humiliation, but . . ." Berricin trailed off, shrugging, and Tannar and Aubreen laughed.

Silva looked away, refusing to join in. She knew her reaction wasn't on script, but every theater had an off night. She'd already heard the buzz of this particular bit of gossip in the dining room. A longtime resident of Cambric Creek, having grown up there his whole life, moving away to marry, was now planning on returning to Cevanor? with his second wife in tow, a huldra, and now they wanted to join the club together.

"I mean, if he wants to be the laughingstock out on the pitch, go right ahead, but if I were his parents, I'd be stopping the entire farce —"

A small melodic chime, rising in volume and insistence issued forth from the seat beside her, and Berricin cut off with a slight scowl at the interruption, pursing his lips. Silva flushed, fumbling with the futzy jeweled closure of her bag. Across the table, Aubreen offered her a serene smile, waving off the noise as Silva stammered an apology.

"I'm so sorry, I don't even have my ringer on! That's my alarm . . ."

Beside her, Tannar's thumb flipped open the latch easily, tilting the now open clutch for her. She scooped up the phone hurriedly. Book club w Ris. Silva had glanced down at her phone earlier that day, seeing the calendar reminder on her screen. She'd swiped it away at the time, pushing the thoughts of the things she used to do with her friends away. Her earlier swipe had not cleared the notification. Silva felt the familiar, heavy stone turn over in her stomach before settling back into its comfortable, permanent confines.

She hadn't been back to book club in months.

Tonight was the evening she should have been there with Ris, should've been discussing whatever latest highbrow literary fiction sensation written by some middle-aged, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing goblin who'd chronicled his alcoholism and infidelity with women half his age. 860 or more excruciating pages that she was meant to pretend was somehow groundbreaking and enjoyable, was what would have inevitably been chosen by the werebear in charge.

She had meant to delete this notification already. Every month it surprised her, left her feeling stricken and floundering, and she needed to remove it from her phone altogether. It and all of the photos stored in her cloud that did nothing but lance her heart fresh every time she scrolled to one in the middle of the night, soaking her pillow until she was guaranteed to wake in the morning with a pounding headache. It was a very specific form of self-torture, and she needed to rid herself of the temptation, along with this calendar notification.

"I hope it's nothing serious?" Aubreen offered from across the table. "If you need to —"

"It's nothing," she cut in, swiping away the alarm and setting her phone to do not disturb. "Just a notification I really need to delete. I used to go to a book club once a month with a-a work friend, but I haven't done that in several months. I need to just delete the reminder."

"A book club! That sounds so fun! We should really think of starting something like that at the club."

Beside Aubreen, her husband snorted. "Why do I have a feeling that would be nothing but a wine and gossip hour? You'll spend ten minutes discussing whatever silly bodice ripper the group picked and then the rest of the hour wagging your tongues over who had a better table at the spring fundraiser."

Silva forced lips into an approximation of a stilted smile. Beside her, Tannar chuckled as Aubreen laughed in outrage.

"It's adorable that you're under the impression that your golf outings and squash matches are anything other than gossip hours. You lot are worse than old women! And give us a little bit of credit, we wouldn't be picking any silly romances, right, Silva? This would be a group for serious intellectuals."

"Only the stuffiest Elvish classics allowed," she agreed tonelessly. If they noticed she wasn't taking part in their mirth, they did not let on.

"Oh, we would read more than the classics. I'll be honest, that would bore me to tears. But not romance. They're just so silly!" Aubreen exclaimed as her husband rolled his eyes, draining his drink.

"I suppose you only read highbrow literature, Berricin?" Silva challenged. "Or Elvish mysteries? Those are never formulaic, right?" If they heard the note of defiance in her voice, it was washed away in another tidal wave of Aubreen's bright laughter.

"Silva, don't listen to a word he says. As if he's picked up a book in the last decade."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with romance books," Tannar interjected, earning a fresh round of laughter. "Gives us something to aspire to. We could all use with a bit more romance in our lives. I just wish they weren't all so unrealistic. I mean, how many secret princes are actually traipsing around? You'd think there was one on every street corner for the way they turn up in books."

"Secret princes who are all masquerading as horse trainers," Aubreen tittered.

"Masquerading as horse trainers, and they all have two foot cocks."

The table howled at Berricin's rude addition. She had packed up the books in her apartment when she'd moved, now one of several untouched boxes sitting in the hall closet, waiting to go to the donation bin, and her ereader had been slid onto the shelf in her room and forgotten, left to gather dust. She didn't derive any pleasure from reading anymore.

"They all have happy endings," Silva interjected amidst their laughter. "That's the unrealistic part." Across the table, Berricin was catching their server's eye for a fresh round. "Happily ever afters. That's never the way life goes, is it?"

She waited until the conversation shifted again, until they were all engrossed in club nonsense once more before making her escape. Silva felt as if she were suffocating. She needed to get out of there, needed to go home. After splashing her face with cold water in the restroom, she edged her way back to the dining room floor, looking out across the long expansive tables, watching the back of Tannar's head. She didn't want to ask him to leave. She didn't want to make a scene, didn't want to give Aubreen any reason to go running back to the club with her tongue wagging.

Silva waited until she was sliding into the rideshare before she texted Tannar.

I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well.

I'm already heading home, you don't need to get up and run after me

I didn't want to make you have to leave. Stay and enjoy yourself.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Her eyes closed, fresh tears catching in her lashes as she hit send on the last line. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Such an easy sentiment, so easily taken for granted. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow. Your whole life is going to change tomorrow.

"They spent the entire time arguing over the expectations of the ‘inciting incident.' It was so silly! They didn't care that they were wasting the entire meeting for the rest of us."

Her voice was mournful, over-dramatic considering she was talking about something as frivolous as bookclub.

"We never got to talk about the story at all, not really. They only cared about their giant opinions."

Her head dropped pathetically against his chest in what she knew could only be defined as a pout. Silva couldn't help it. Book club that month had been an exercise in frustration. She had left the shop mumbling to herself, stamping across the little gravel parking lot after saying goodbye to Ris, driving straight through to Greenbridge Glen, but by the time she'd arrived, she only felt sad.

She had read that month's book in plenty of time for the book club discussion, had even gone so far as to write herself notes, potential questions, points she wanted to raise. She had found a darling little annotation set for that exact purpose — dreamy ice cream-colored sticky notes and little flags, transparent squares meant to be placed directly on the page. The little raspberry sorbet-colored folio case coordinated with her e-reader cover perfectly, and she'd been very excited to attend that month's book club meeting. She had never worked up the courage to voice her opinion previously, but now she felt prepared, the little tabs sticking out of her book proof that she was a serious reader.

The loudest voices in the group were the werebear who organized the book club with her sister-in-law and a troll who considered herself to be the smartest person in the room. Silva found them to be obnoxious bullies. They'd turned to her that night when she'd tentatively asked a question, attempting to steer the discussion beyond the first eleven pages, to the bulk of the novel's contents, which chronicled the tempestuous relationship between a centaur and a sylph-like trapeze artist against the intriguing and volatile backdrop of a midnight carnival. The troll had turned to her derisively and the werebear had snorted.

"What, the kissing bits? That's the dross the author had to write in for the lowest common denominator just to get the book on shelves in the first place. That's not what it's actually about."

The dross.

She'd driven to Greenbridge Glenn that night feeling beaten down and sad. Joining the book club with Ris was meant to be fun, a way to find new friends with common interests beyond Cevnanor?'s protective gates. Instead, it had wound up as a reminder that she was unserious, that the things she liked were not valued, and that she was better off not saying anything at all. And if you're not going to participate, why bother going?

"What the fuck was the inciting incident?" Tate's voice was so dubious above her that she giggled, craning her neck back to look up at his chin. "I thought you told me this was about a horseman and his tightrope walker. Does she fall off her little line?"

"She does, actually," Silva laughed. "At the end of the second chapter." Silva sighed, aggravated over the meeting all over again. "They think the book was about the mystery. That's how the book starts, with one of the girls in the circus getting murdered. They think that was the inciting incident, but they're wrong. The murder is just a red herring. The main characters are barely aware its happened. But at the end of the second chapter, the centaur catches the trapeze artist on his back," Silva insisted. "Before that, their relationship was only a possibility. They hated each other! But after that . . ." She sighed again, softer. "After it's like neither of them had a choice. But their relationship is quiet. It's not a big, bombastic thing. The mystery just happened to exist in the vicinity, but that's not what the story was about. But that's all they wanted to talk about."

Tate scoffed, a vibration against her cheek. "They sound like the sort of people who need a cymbal crash at the end of a musical number so they know when to clap. And then they all congratulate themselves on how much they appreciated the performance."

She craned her neck back again, smiling. "See, you would be better to have at book club than any of these phonies. They only want to read books about people's bad childhoods and how sarcastic they are now." She bumped him with her shoulder cheekily. "What do you think our inciting incident would be?"

Her heart trembled as soon as the words were out, delicate little wings fluttering as fast as they could to keep it aloft. Silva considered her own question. She thought he would say the inciting incident for their relationship was the day she'd come back to the resort hamlet, when she'd stood in the center of the dining room and he'd approached her from behind. Or, maybe he would think it was that party in Bridgeton, the one he'd taken her to that previous year.

"Oh, that's easy, dove. The night you came into Clover with your friends. You were wearing a pink princess dress, looking all about as if you thought you were going to be trafficked right there in the middle of the dining room. That was the inciting incident."

Silva's shoulders were shaking in laughter before he'd even finished speaking. "No, it wasn't! You are so silly. That was literally the very first time we met. And we didn't even properly meet, not until later that night! And I was not worried about being trafficked!"

His hand had moved back up her spine, fingers pushing into her hair and cupping her scalp, nails dragging against her lightly before reversing course once more. "No, dove. That was it. You walked through the door and the first domino fell. That was the moment I knew I was done for."

The buzz of her phone beside her head startled her awake, the tingling melody of her ringer forcing her eyes to open. She'd come staggering in once the rideshare had dropped her off, dropping to her bed and going right to sleep. She hadn't even washed her face.

That evening with Tate, on the night she'd come trudging in feeling sad and defeated from the disastrous book club, played in her head like a movie. If she closed her eyes, Silva could still feel the weight of his palm against her lower back, his fingers in her hair, the shiver of her spine as his nail dragged against it with a feather-weight pressure.

Her phone buzzed again, shrill and insistent. She struggled to sit up, answering it weakly. Unsurprisingly, it was Tannar.

She wanted to tell him no. She wanted to tell him that she would see him tomorrow, that he could have a conversation the next morning, anything to make him go away. You would just have to face it tomorrow instead, she reminded herself. You already feel like shit now anyway.

Silva staggered her way down the cook's staircase once more, meeting him in the driveway warily. She let him take her hand, leading her to a bench in the side garden. It was a beautiful night. Weather reports were promising a hot summer, and from the balmy air of early spring, Silva believed it.

"I just . . . actually we never get a chance to talk, you know? Just the two of us. There's always something around, or we're at the club, or at work. I never get the chance to just hear from you. Are you doing okay? I gotta be honest, Silva, sometimes I think you're really not doing okay."

She wheeled for a moment, forcing herself to get her head back in the game. One had to be flexible, needed to be able to shift and slide, pivot to a new tactic to land their story, in order to make their hustle stick. You can do this. It wasn't as if she had any shortage of things going wrong in her life.

"I'm having a hard time adjusting to being back at work," she admitted. "I'm barely assigned anything, so I spend the whole day just feeling useless and in the way. I don't really have much in common with the girls at work anymore. I-I haven't been feeling very well." She tripped over her words, wondering when this laundry list was going to be sufficient.

"You haven't been feeling well for a while," Tannar put in, his eyebrows drawn in concern.

She swallowed hard. Tread carefully. "Yes, well, it's because —"

"You're pregnant."

Her head rose, forgetting herself for a moment, eyes widening in shock. All around them, the sounds of spring were a cacophony. Crickets sang from the bushes, while tree frogs peeped from the trees. A group of small birds chipped and chirped in a nearby bush oblivious to her panic. Fly away, little dove. Her mouth dropped open, no sound coming from her to add to it.

"The ginger. Our housekeeper growing up, she was a goblin. Had like, six kids. And every time she was pregnant, that's all she would sip, for months on end. Ginger water. Ginger tea. I noticed it when you came back to work, but you didn't say anything, so I didn't want to assume . . ."

There was nothing for her to say. She had never said it aloud to herself as it was. She didn't even know for certain. She'd not been to the doctors, and had fast discovered that Ris was right — everything in the stores was for humans, and somehow, she'd never even noticed. Having access to the MediSpa at the club her whole life meant she'd never needed to go to the general pharmacy, but the privilege had left her ignorant of the world outside Cevanor?'s gates, and she certainly wasn't about to go there to find out why she'd been throwing up since autumn, what this flutter beneath her breast was.

"Silva —"

Her eyes filled with tears, realizing she was playing out of her league. This hustle was above her pay grade, and she would have to accept whatever it cost her.

"Silva, I'll marry you. I don't care."

Her breath vanished. If he would've pushed her even just the slightest bit, she would have gone tumbling off the bench, mouth hanging open in shock the whole way down. The frogs in the trees had gone silent, the crickets pausing their song. It was as if the whole world waited, the silvery white moon above them holding her breath, listening to hear what she would say.

Tannar only shrugged.

"I've wanted to marry you since last year. My very first week in the office, I saw you in the break room with your little juice jug, and I told Edzin, "There she is. That's her. That's the girl I'm going to marry."

"But — but if you know I'm —"

"Silva, I was with my ex for a long time," he cut her off. "I told you that once before. Like, three years in school, another two years after that. She never got pregnant. Never even had a close call. Not once." He shrugged again. "It's what our parents want, right? The way I see it, I get to be with you regardless. And we're saving ourselves the hassle and heartbreak that everyone else goes through. Your ex . . . you said he was Elvish? I saw some of your pictures on social media, but . . . but you never had any of the two of you together, or his face. Just the places you were . . ."

She blinked slowly. She had put Tannar on her restricted viewing list the moment she'd accepted his friend request. Unless he was looking at her social media through someone else's account, he'd only ever seen a tenth of the things she'd posted, and even then, she had a certain blog aesthetic she liked for her photo feed. Everything got the same blush-toned filter. And he was right. She'd never posted anything with Tate's face. It had felt a little like a violation of his privacy at the time, and now . . .

"Yes," she heard herself blurt. "Silm?, like me." It wasn't technically a lie.

Tannar pushed to his feet, holding a hand out for her, one she gladly took. "Look, it's late. I don't want to keep you up, it's important for you to be getting your sleep. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I-I'll come by tomorrow, okay? We can talk about this tomorrow, after you get some sleep and some food in you."

When he bent to capture her lips, it took all of her willpower to keep from cringing away. This is a lifeline. Tate told her not to wait for him. Told her to live her life. It was a half life without him, but it was all she had. Whatever you need to do to survive in this world. Silva of the Daytime was a mouse, just happy for the crumbs they threw her. She let the kiss deepen and disappeared inside herself. You're my heartbeat, Silva. I'd like to see the cunt who will make you scream that way for him. She felt him there, close enough to reach, close enough to touch —

Tannar gasped, pulling away, his hand going up to his mouth where she'd bitten him. Silva reeled.

"I-I'm sorry. I don't know how —"

"It's fine," Tannar assured her quickly, leaning in for a quick kiss on the cheek.

They would talk about it tomorrow, she agreed, waving before she disappeared back into the house, watching from inside the doorway as his headlights disappeared. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow. Your whole life is going to change tomorrow.

True to his word, Tannar had come by that morning.

They sat together in the dining room, with the door closed, and Silva had no doubt that her grandmother and mother were on the phone the instant the pocket door rolled shut. I would barter with you for your hand, Silva of Castlemartyr. Tannar had come prepared. She'd not realized at the time that Elvish men had the same binders of preparation as the women. Instead of wedding plans, they had the wedding barter.

Proof that they could provide, financial records, investments, stocks, inheritance. A prenuptial agreement outlining exactly what she would get from their marriage, how she would be taken care of after his death, what compensation she would be afforded if they decided to terminate the agreement. After all, Elvish marriages were civilized. They did not make barbaric oaths before a fire to which they were bound until their deaths. If they wanted to exit an arrangement, they could, as long as both parties came to an agreement to walk away.

Any child born of their union would be similarly provided for. It was not in writing, not a part of any of the carefully drawn plans, and Tannar's voice had dropped to a near whisper, sotto voce, when he told her his plan. They would simply not tell anyone that the child wasn't his. After all, children belonged to the mother. Every elf knew that. They would satisfy their parents, he murmured, get them off their backs almost immediately, as soon as she began to show, and move forward with their lives together. One happy family.

Silva felt as if she were sleepwalking.

It was the best she could possibly hope for. And after all, what choice did she have? He was lost to her. Tate had told her he did not want her to wait for him, had made her promise that she would not. She did not want to find out what would happen if she broke a fae promise. He wanted her to live her life, and she needed the protection of her community to provide for her child. It was the best she could do.

She had been outplayed, she realized, signing her name to the marriage agreement. Outgamed from the start. Sometimes the most important part of the hustle was knowing when to walk away from the table. Cut your losses and recoup what you can. She would keep her respectability, her place in the community. Her child would have her name, a roof over their head. And she would always have someplace to go, Silva reminded herself. He'd made sure of that.

When Tannar left, eager to put their agreement on file, Silva sat in the dining room, staring out the window, wondering how any of this had happened to her. When the pocket door slid open, she didn't need to turn.

"You have no idea how good it does my heart to see you happy, darling."

Silva stiffened at the sound of her mother's voice, crossing the dining room to where she sat staring out the window. She didn't turn to acknowledge her mother's presence, and said nothing to the empty sentiment.

"You are happy, aren't you, dear?"

She would never be happy again. Happiness was like hope — a tenuous thing on delicate wings, and they had both flown away from her. Fly away, little dove.

"No," she said simply. There was no point in lying. "But that never mattered to you, did it?"

"Silva, of course it does."

Her mother's voice was anguished, and Silva bit her lip as tears flooded her eyes.

"Darling, seeing you happy is the only thing we've ever wanted. I know you're still upset with me. I know you might be for a long time. But sweetheart, you don't see what I see. You're not seeing the big picture."

Her words were an echo of what he'd told that night in her bed. The tears overflowed.

"All we want is for you to be happy, Silva," her mother repeated. "How happy do you think you would still be with this man in fifty years? In a hundred years? When he's dead in the ground and you're alone? After you've spent the balance of his lifetime shunning your own community? How happy do you think you would still be then?"

A flutter beneath her breast, reminding her it was there, like a little wing. Not alone.

"I'm sorry that you had your heart broken. It tears me apart knowing that you're in pain, Silva. When you have your own child, you'll know how that feels. I'm sorry you're hurting, but I won't say that I'm sorry it happened. I know this seems cruel to you now, but someday you'll understand."

This all could have been circumvented months and months ago, a year ago. They should've left together, run away someplace where whatever waited on the other side of that pond would never have been able to find him. She'd been too afraid of losing her family, not wanting to make the choice between them and him. She'd waited so long, that the choice had been made for her. And now you're going to tell me you love me, but you're not sorry it happened?

Her mother bent, a hand at Silva's shoulder, beseeching her. "I know you don't love Tannar as much as this other man, sweetheart. I know it. But can you love him enough? Can you love him enough to build a life you're happy with? Because the day will come when you won't be able to remember this other man's face, Silva, but the child you bear will be your joy until the end of your days."

Her sob caught in her throat, an aborted wheeze out of her, leaving her temporarily unable to draw breath. By then you won't care, because you'll have your own pretty little doll of a daughter to fixate on, and you can pour all of your insecurities into her. A beautiful little girl would get the job done. With his mischief-filled eyes, a piece of him she'd hold onto forever. Another of those little wing flutters, a deep, shuddering breath, and then she was calm. As calm as she could be.

She had one play left, she realized, a devastating flex. The massé shot was too flashy for a hustle, he'd told her once, but if one's back was against the wall, it would get the job done.

"You think you know what unhappiness is," Silva whispered. She didn't want a wedding, didn't want the flowers and pomp. No invitations needed to be sent. A contract, a bonding, the consummation. And then she would make her final play.

"But I don't think you do, mother. You might yet learn."