Ellina was skeptical. Dourin’s color did not look any better to her.
“Come on.” Venick still held her hand. The thought occurred—ugly, unwanted—that he might have held Harmon’s hand like this. He saw her expression and let go. “Let’s find you something to eat.”
She allowed him to guide her through the castle. It was the first time she had taken a true look at this place. The colors were dizzying, so different from home. Light seemed to ooze from the castle’s pores, ricocheting off gilded hung shields and framed ochre paintings. And the smells: cinnamon and straw, perfume and bread and horse and wood. Ellina wondered how the humans could stand it. She felt as if she was drowning in sensation.
Venick guided her up a flight of stairs into a wide, low-ceilinged parlor. She realized that this must be his bedroom suite. “I figured you didn’t want to eat in the great hall.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “The Elder’s staff leaves meals for me by the tableful. I don’t know how they expect me to eat it all.” This was true. There was a buffet piled with dishes: meats and cheeses, bread and pies, stew, eggs, porridge, and something that looked like cake but smelled suspiciously fishy.
Ellina’s stomach turned. She had no appetite for any of it. Instead, she motioned for parchment and ink.
Venick disappeared briefly into another room, returning shortly with the supplies. Ellina sat at a table for writing letters and began scribbling. She thrust the finished page into his hand. Venick stared at the words for a long time.
“The southerners can control the dead.” It came out flat, but Ellina could sense his fear. How would they defeat soldiers who could not die? “You learned this in Evov?” Ellina nodded. Venick dragged a hand down his face, then began asking questions. How does the conjuring work? How long does it last? How many conjurors have this power? What, exactly, are we up against?
“Can they control more than one corpse at once?” A frightening thought, but Ellina did not think so. She made the elven hand motion for uncertainty, then rubbed her eyes. They had been talking for what might have been hours. Her mouth tasted like ash. She had not slept since the night before last.
“We’ll need to call a meeting.” Venick had propped himself against the nearest wall, jacket unbuttoned, arms crossed. His hair was ruffled from running his hands through it, his eyes sharply focused. The sight of him like that, disheveled and determined, did something to her. “The Elder will want to bring the generals in. I’ll ask our elven commanders to come, too. We’ll need to begin preparing. This changes everything.” He sighed. “I don’t think the mainlands will ever be able to repay their debt to you.”
Ellina turned her face to the window. The late morning sun was bright. The windows had been dressed in silver and white curtains shot through with random bursts of red. It reminded Ellina of blood on armor.
Venick would call a war meeting the following afternoon, he told her. He said he wanted her there. Ellina nodded, though she was not sure how she felt about attending that meeting when she could not speak. She imagined how it would be, the wary eyes of the humans, the Elder’s daughter at Venick’s side, Ellina forced to bear it all in silence. She was a spy, not a war general. She would rather advise from the shadows.
She thought of Miria. Her sister would have fit in well in this world. Shehadfit in well. Ellina remembered how Miria had seemed to shine with the prospect of her new life. Yet Miria had worried, too. On the day of her escape, she had taken Ellina’s hands, and Ellina had seen the thought in her sister’s eyes: what will become of you? Miria had pulled Ellina in close and whispered,Be happy.
Ellina had not been happy. She still was not.
Her exhaustion was catching up to her. She blinked blearily out the window and remembered the stateroom battle. She thought of Venick’s heartbroken face across the hall.
The pen was still in front of her. The parchment was. There was more she should tell him. She should explain her lies, what she had said that day and why. She had claimed not to care about Venick, had all but called for his death. Later on Traegar’s balcony, she had threatened to kill him herself. She should explain her reasons. But reason felt suddenly distant. She thought it again: she was so tired.
“I’ve kept you too long,” she heard Venick say. His voice was murky. “You need sleep.”
She thought she might have nodded. Sleep. The craving for it seemed to crack into her and spread, runnels in a riverbed.
She felt him tug her upright. There was a dizzying shift that meant she was being lifted, her legs swept out from under her. Then: a soft bed. Covers pulled to her chin. A warm hand on her cheek, and a prayer for soft dreams.
FORTY-TWO
She woke to darkness.
Ellina sat up. The sheets shifted around her torso. The room was empty, the curtains stiff. It must be past midnight or no—near dawn. The sky showed the faintest color. She realized with an uncomfortable jolt that she had misplaced him from his bed.
She stood, smoothing the covers as if to erase her presence. She had not showered since her escape, except for quick washes in freezing streams. Her cheeks burned as she arranged pillows, feeling all at once the ugly tangle of her hair, the dirt caked beneath her nails. She was filthy. She could not understand why he had allowed her to sleep here.
Ellina set her feet into worn slippers, glancing over her shoulder as if expecting to find Venick watching her. She poked her head around corners, listened at the door. She did not find him, but she did find the bathing room, its polished surfaces, the tub gleaming bronze. Ellina stared at that tub and considered, for a shimmering half-second, a bath. But not yet. There were more important things.
She crept out of the castle. Overnight, temperatures had plummeted. She shivered in her thin clothes, her breath smoking the air. The sky had lightened. Everything was swathed in shades of blue.
She made for the city’s gates. As Ellina moved down the quiet path, her foot crunched into something. A puddle, she saw, crusted over with ice.
She pulled back, horrified.
Isphanelwas a miraculous little plant with one important power: it could quicken the healing process, enabling a body to regrow bone and reknit muscle at speed, and in doing so the plant could save lives. Ellina knew that whileisphanelcould grow this far north in the right conditions, it would not survive a frost.
She stared at the cracked ice puddle. Time seemed to warp. Winter was reaching the highlands at last, and the first frost had arrived. If there was anyisphanelto be found, she needed to find it now.
It was this thought that drove Ellina out of the city and across windy hillsides, deeper and deeper into the highlands. She moved on foot, ignoring her lightheadedness, the empty hunger. The land was scattered with bushes, and each time she came upon a new clump of growth her heart seemed to leap between her ribs. She searched the shadows under yucca and foxtail whereisphanelliked to grow, tearing plants up with random, careless haste, her fingers clumsy in their fervor. She wondered how she must look, and gave herself the answer: like a human.
Not a human, a little voice reminded her.
