"Andre Norton & Lackey, Mercedes - Elvenbane 1 -The Elvenbane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

The Council lasted eight months. Would that it had lasted longer! I would
have been free of this burden, and none the wiser!

Lord Dyran had left before Serina realized she was pregnant.

As soon as she knew, she had been in a panic.
To be pregnant with an elf-lord's child, a halfblood, was a death sentence
unless the lord was very lenient. And even if Dyran didn't kill her, he'd have
cast her off.

That would be as bad as death. To be given to some underling, or to the
fighters as a breeder--or worst of all, given to Leyda as a servant--

No, never, not after what she had been, all she had fought to achieve--

All she had fought to achieve... for so long, and so hard...

Serina pinned an errant strand of russet hair back in place, and surveyed her
image in her silver-rimmed mirror critically. She nodded a little, and turned
her attention to her makeup. She was in competition with the best, and that
left no room for anything other than perfection.

The current standard of beauty in Lord Dyran's harem--as set by the style of
his favorite--was for an ethereal, innocent, fresh look. Serina knew very
well what Rowenie was using as a model, even if the other girls hadn't
figured it out yet. She was trying to be as elvenlike as possible, fashioning
herself after the highbred maidens she'd seen being paraded before Lord
Dyran in hopes of a marriage alliance.

That meant pale gold hair worn loose, or garlanded with artificial flowers
made of gemstones; creamy rose-and-white complexions; wide, childlike
blue eyes; sylph-slim figures. Serina went counter, wildly counter, to that
standard. Her hair was a fiery red; her eyes so dark a violet as to be nearly
black, and seething with carefully controlled emotion. Her mother called her
figure "generous," but that was an understatement, and said nothing about the
slim waist, kept that way by years of dancing lessons, the hips that could
distract even hardened gladiators from their practice, and the high, proud
breasts that did more than distract them, to the point that her father had
forbidden her the practice ground since she was thirteen.

Serina smiled at her reflection, and examined the smile with careful
detachment. It would do. She kept the smile, and continued to examine her
own handiwork, tossing tiny brushes down on the floor beside her when she
was finished with them. The drudges would clean it all up as soon as she was
gone.
While the other girls being groomed as concubines bleached their hair,
dusted their cheeks with powder, and starved themselves to fit into the
delicate skirts and tunics Rowenie Ordone favored, Serina flaunted her
differences and learned to enhance them. She found rinses that made her hair