"Miranda loves the elf lord!" Sable exclaimed with contempt, as she gave Catspaw and his lieutenants a report on her latest visit to the elf camp.
Catspaw didn't speak for a moment. He merely stared at her from behind his desk, expressionless as the shock of her words jolted through him. His Miranda, in love with that elf lord! In his mind's eye, he could imagine her smiling up at him, her brown eyes alight and eager, ready to debate some point with him. Could she truly look at that ridiculously pretty elf the same way?
"Loves him?" Seylin repeated. "She must know the elf lord has no genuine interest in her, except perhaps as a slave."
"Or a weapon," Richard added.
"Don't you think I told her that?" Sable said. "I told her she was nothing but a slave and that he couldn't possibly care about her at all. She didn't believe me at first. Poor Miranda!"
The king saw Seylin's handsome face crease in confusion. The elf goblin began to pace, his arms folded behind him. "This is all very strange. Miranda was raised to be a goblin King's Wife. After all those years of care and preparation, I thought for certain she could only be happy married to a goblin. How could her head be turned by some fruitless infatuation with an elf?"
"You're certain about this, Sable?" Catspaw asked, once he trusted himself enough to speak. "What did she say exactly?"
He knew Sable wasn't lying. But perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps she misunderstood. Having grown up suffering from abuse at their hands, Sable's hatred for elf men ran deep. She could be exaggerating something she heard and interpreting it as more than it was. But her response quickly relieved him of that hope.
"When I explained your plan to rescue her, Miranda refused," Sable said. "She told me she loved that elf lord and wanted to stay with him."
The truth of her words hit Catspaw like a fresh blow. His Miranda, in love with her captor. In love with his enemy. In love with a man who meant to exploit her. The king's paw flexed and the claws protruded. It was ludicrous. Positively absurd to feel this hurt, this betrayal. He had no right to it. He was married now. Their betrothal was dissolved at his own hand. Wasn't he the one who cast his Miranda aside in favor of a stronger bride? Wasn't he the one who reduced that self-composed and dignified young woman to furious tears? The betrayal was his own. Yet, he felt the pain of it keenly.
With an unusual amount of effort, the dignified king reined in his emotions. They should have no bearing on any of this. He must look at this rationally.
"You said she didn't believe you 'at first,'" Catespaw observed. "You were able to convince her then?"
Sable scoffed in frustration, shaking her head. "Yes, I convinced her that she was nothing but a slave to the elves, not that it matters. The poor girl tried to argue with me at first. She told me I was wrong, that he did care for her. Miranda thought that because he fed her and let her sleep in his tent, that she must mean something to him." Sable scoffed. "I told her he only looks after because, to the elves, she's still a child. So she knows it will all end at the full moon when she's a woman. Miranda was devastated."
"Did she think he intended to marry her?" Seylin asked.
"I don't know. If she did, I made it clear he never would. Not unless that elf lord is insane."
Catspaw turned this over in his mind. In his studies on elves, he knew that giving elf women food and providing them with shelter helped to secure their dependence on their fiancé or husband, and often even their affection as well. It worked not only for elf men, but for goblins who captured their women. But he had thought that tactic only worked on elf women who grew up in a properly taught elf camp. His own mother, strongly elvish though she was, hadn't needed such treatment. Yet here his Miranda was, a full human woman, falling into that elvish manipulation.
The king silently cursed the elf lord. This was his doing. All of it. This could very well be part of his plan somehow. Well whatever his plans were, Catspaw intended to smash them.
He examined the sharp points of his claw, imagining them slicing through that malicious elf. "Now that she understands that nothing can come of her… love for the elf, is Miranda ready to work with our plan to help her? I want her out of that camp and back in the kingdom as soon as possible."
Sable shook her head. "She refused. Even knowing she's nothing but a slave, she wants to stay in the camp with the elf lord."
His sensible and practical Miranda was completely under that elf's sway. Not just physically with those stars he shackled her with. But her heart was his as well, even to the point that she would relinquish all the sense nature had blessed her with just to stay near him.
"Sable, you must return to the elf camp tonight," Catspaw announced. "Mongrel tells me their lord will be out hunting again. Now that Miranda will have had another night to think this through she may have come to her senses and be ready to cooperate. I want her out of there as soon as possible. I won't have her caught in the crossfire of any struggle the elf lord's planning."
A time would come, very soon he hoped, when his claws would cut clean through that pretty elf's arrogant face, when he would dismember him bone by bone. He couldn't do that merely because the elf lord had claimed Miranda's affection. But that would certainly be the reason he would enjoy it immensely.