She was unsteady at first, clumsy on her feet, which were bare and frozen. Every step spiked pain up her heels, the gravelly road like needles in her flesh. She pushed past the pain, forced herself to focus as she mentally tallied all the many places Dourin might have gone. The green glass mines, she thought first, then the legion barracks. Yet the guard said they were spotted east of Gold’s Row…
Ellina changed course. She climbed. She was up on the roofs now. From this vantage point the houses all looked the same: shapeless, pocketed by shadows. Smoke winnowed out of skinny chimneys, and Ellina imagined families sitting by warm fires below. Elves unaware, safe inside, surrounded by loved ones.
She paused on that imagining. She thought again of Dourin.
She knew where to go.
SIX
Venick settled into the kitchen chair. He crossed his arms, tipped back his head. Dourin and Traegar had moved into an adjacent room—a bedroom, Venick presumed, or a study—and were now speaking in low tones. The wall muted their voices so that Venick couldn’t quite make out the words. Couldn’t hear what they were discussing. But he could guess. He remembered Dourin’s false calm in the foyer. Traegar’s guarded eyes. Those two had old arguments between them. And now, a chance to work them out.
Venick set his hands against the table. He thumbed the wooden edge, then pushed, tipping onto the chair’s back legs. He balanced there, thinking of old wounds. Of wrongs made right. He thought of his mother and imagined speaking to her as Traegar spoke to Dourin now. Would their voices be soft, or raised? Would his mother point and accuse, or agree to listen?
Sometimes Venick could still see the boy he’d once been. He envisioned the way he would dig his fists into his mother’s skirt, bury his face in the fabric. He felt the warm weight of her hand on his head. He used to do this all the time. Child-Venick would make a mistake, would come to his mother tearfully and hide his face in her dress and apologize into the cloth. His voice would come out muffled. Woolen. He knew now that his mother wouldn’t have been able to understand him, but the words themselves had never really mattered. It was the act of his apology that counted in her eyes.
If only things were still so simple.
Venick tipped the chair back farther still, testing its limits. He had long dreamed of a chance to return home. Soon, he would have it. Venick had been banished from the lowlands for murdering his father, but as a former soldier, he was allowed a chance at redemption—a single opportunity to undo his crimes and reverse his exile. Tradition dictated that he must first make a sacrifice, and that those he had wronged would decide if that sacrifice was enough to absolve him. Venick thought that allying with the northern elves and fighting to protect his homeland might be enough to earn forgiveness from his mother, but now…he wasn’t so sure. Ifhewere his mother, he didn’t think he could ever forgive himself for what he’d done. Him? Excused for the murder of his own father? Never.
In an instant Venick would have avoided if he could have, his mind jumped to Ellina. He remembered again how she’d been in the stateroom. The way her mouth had moved as she uttered the words that would break him.He is human. Kill him, if it matters that much to you. What do I care?Venick saw the way her fingers gripped her sword’s pommel. Her face had closed along well-worn lines.
Yes, Venick thought. Some wrongs could never be forgiven.
Except, his heart seemed to stumble on the thought. It pulled like fabric caught on a nail, unraveled and saidwait. Venick frowned. He again pictured Ellina’s face as it had been that afternoon: the empty eyes, that tight mouth. Cold. She had seemed so foreign to him in that moment. Yet also, oddly, familiar.
Venick dug into the memory. He raked his fingers through the earth of it, pulling up roots. He’d always been able to read Ellina. Even before she’d lost her ability to hide her emotions, it was her decidedlackof emotion that gave her away, the concentrated absence of any tells. During their time together, Venick had seen Ellina do this many times. She would empty her expression, smoothing her features until they were as calm and still as glass.
A thought. A slow idea. Because there was only one reason Ellina ever shut down like that. And he realized that ithadbeen familiar. It was an expression he’d come to know, because she’d used it both on him and for him. That was how Ellina looked when she was lying.
Venick let the chair fall forward. Its legs slammed down.
He was furious with himself.
He shouldn’t do this. It was painful, the way his mind reached for some alternate explanation for what had happened that day in the stateroom. When Ellina said she didn’t care about him, that he was merely a tool at her disposal, she hadn’t been lying. Gods, she’d spoken those words inelvish. Ellina might be a skilled deceiver, but no one could lie like that in elvish.
Dourin reentered the kitchen. “What did you break?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard a crash.”
“It was just the chair.”
Dourin pursed his lips, and Venick had the sense of being scrutinized. He knew what his face must show: a strange mix of hurt and frustration and anger.
“I think—” Dourin started, but a sudden shuffle upstairs interrupted him. It was a light patter, as if something had alighted on the roof. A small creature.
Or a conjuror.
Venick and Dourin exchanged a look.
“Is there anyone else in this house besides us?” Venick asked.
“No.” Dourin’s hand was at his sword. Venick started to stand, but Dourin waved him back. He still had that look on his face, the one that told Venick he knew exactly why the chair had slammed down, even if it was impossible for him to know it. “You stay. I will check.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Venick said.
“This calls for a bit of stealth.”
