He was there in a breath. He wrapped his arms around Ellina, pinning her arms to her sides to stop the thrashing. In the dim light of dawn, he could see her terror-stricken face. A nightmare. “Ellina. Wake up. Wake up.” Once he started speaking, he didn’t stop. “It’s just a dream. I’ve got you. Ellina, wake up.”
She did wake, yet continued to fight him. Venick gripped tighter. “It was just a dream, Ellina, it’s not real.”
She stilled. Her chest heaved. Her eyes were wide and full of tears.
Slowly, Venick began to untangle their bodies, but froze when Ellina turned and bowed her head into his chest. Her shoulders trembled. Venick wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her close, murmured into her hair that it was alright, that he had her. This time, he didn’t let go.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Ellina was not sure how they escaped. It seemed impossible, but they did.
She had imagined this. Venick, storming north for her. Venick, fighting his way through the palace, bursting into her cell, gathering her up in his arms. He had done those things and more, but it was nothing like she had imagined.
At Venick’s suggestion, they began traveling by night and sleeping by day, finding hovels or hillsides to bed down in, each in their own bedrolls. Never again was it like that first night, and Ellina was grateful. She burned to think of her silent tears; she was alive, she had nothing to cry for. Yet sometimes she would see the sunrise, or a pair of speckled doves, and her throat would close. She did not understand the reaction. She hardly understood anything about herself anymore.
Venick must not either. That would explain why he seemed unable to stop looking at her, as if she was something wholly new, some unfathomable creature. Ellina felt his eyes on her even when he tried not to let her catch him at it. She caught him anyway, and then he would avert his gaze, his cheeks staining red. His shame was something she was coming to recognize, even if she did not understand it. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
She, on the other hand.
Ellina touched her tender shoulder. The wound was clotted and rough. Swollen. Her skin no longer felt as if it belonged to her. She recoiled the hand.
She remembered showing the wound to Venick: the slow rotation, the pull of the fabric up and off her skin. The wind had been stronger then. It rippled goosebumps across her tight flesh.
Venick had sucked in a breath. Though Ellina had not actually seen Venick’s face in that moment, she could imagine his horror at the sight of the gaping flesh…and his disgust. She remembered the way he had paused. His hesitation had melted over her skin.
He had not wanted to touch her. Her wounds must have repulsed him.
They repulsedher. Ellina felt wretched inside. Rotten. She could not stop thinking about how this was all her fault. If only she had been a little stronger, a little braver, a little more clever, things might have gone another way. She would never have been caught, her voice never stolen. She would not have becomethis, this tired, silent husk of a creature.
It was not the first time Venick had seen her back, but it was the first time she regretted him seeing. She thought of the knotty scars, the pink skin, flesh mottled from a dozen prior whippings. Her scars were a map of her mistakes, the dagger wound the crowned king of them all. She would not have wanted anyone to see them all laid out like that. But especially not Venick.
???
They rode together on the blind mare. Often, Ellina slept. She tried not to—Venick had done enough already, and ifhehad to stay awake, then so should she—but she was sore and muddy-headed, and there was really no resisting the gentle sway of a horse.
Or so Ellina told herself. When her limbs grew heavy and her eyes began to droop, she liked to pretend it was the horse rocking her to sleep rather than certain, other things.
Like him, fitted along her spine. Strong arms on either side. How he was warm when she was still achingly cold.
Or the smell of him, comforting and somehow nostalgic, like old summer earth.
The way it felt to sink back into his chest, and rest her head against his shoulder, and close her eyes.
He didn’t seem to mind her sleeping against him, but nor did he appear to welcome it. Whenever Venick felt her body growing heavy, he would stay still, his arms stiff, his breath tickling her hair. Ellina sensed him struggling, and felt—orimaginedthat she felt, it seemed quite possible that her untrustworthy mind had invented this entirely—the way he warred with himself. As if he thought he should pull away but did not. And Ellina, who was hardly clearheaded enough to decide whether it was wrong that she slept against him, and too tired to resist even if she could, did not pull away either.
???
He had something he wanted to tell her. As they rode across the nighttime tundra and she drowsed against him, she would sometimes feel his ribs expand at her back, as if readying to speak. He had done this several times over these past days, but each time he would stop himself, his motions turning jerky and stunted, as if held by an invisible rope. “You need…I should tell you…”
Once, Ellina had twisted in the saddle to look at him. She regretted it. She did not like what she saw in his face, or how his expression seemed to lift the lid off something deep and dark within her own heart. From then on, whenever he struggled for words, she simply waited in silence, eyes forward, unwilling—unable—to push him to continue.
Though, she was not sure shewouldhave pushed him, even if she had still had a voice. She was suspicious of whatever it was that he wanted to tell her. If the halting way he spoke had not alerted her to its danger, then the way he would always sigh afterwards, frustrated, suggested its difficulty.
A secret.
Ellina was wary of secrets. They had cost her much. As she listened to Venick struggle with what he could not say, she felt it, like the pause right before a whipping: the promise of pain.
???
