“What choice?”
“Join their new regime, or die.”
“And so you wish to avoid death by joining us?”
“Yes,” the elf answered on a breathless exhale, pressing away from Dourin’s sword. “I am not a fighter,” he added quickly in mainlander, “but I have other skills.”
Dourin and Venick exchanged a look. Rahven wouldn’t be the first non-soldier to join their group. Plenty of stateroom evacuees were former senators or scholars, too. The refugees were a burden on their army’s speed and supplies, but Venick and Dourin couldn’t exactly turn them away, not when saving northerners was the wholepoint.
Dourin seemed to share Venick’s thoughts, because he withdrew his sword and held out a hand to help the elf up. “A scholar, did you say?” Dourin asked.
“A chronicler, actually.” Rahven brushed the dust from his trousers.
“A chronicler,” Dourin repeated, making up for the rough treatment with a voice gone soft. “Well. We could use a distraction. Maybe tonight you can tell us some stories.”
???
Venick was careful the rest of the way down the mountain. He didn’t trip again. Still, the incline was steep, the path dusted over with fragmented rock. It made for treacherous footing. When they came into view of the campsite where the rest of their party was hiding near the base of the mountain, he felt a wash of relief.
Dourin took charge of the report.We could not find Ellina, he explained in mainlander.We do not know where she is. We can only hope that she escaped… If the other elves noticed the way Dourin’s mouth turned down slightly as he spoke, or how he folded and unfolded his hands at every pause, it was not mentioned. Only Rahven, who had recently come from the palace itself, might have been able to correct Dourin’s claims, but after Dourin was finished he pulled the chronicler aside to speak privately, and in the end Rahven said nothing either.
Night came. The elves were ordered to light no fires. The air was bitterly cold, but Venick found that he wasn’t bothered. He didn’t huddle into himself, didn’t grit his teeth against the wind’s chill. He was glad for the cold, the discomfort. It was a distraction. It kept him from thinking of other things.
But the cold could not distract him for long, because though it was a distraction, it was a reminder, too.
It was a reminder of the mountains where Venick had been exiled. He remembered it: the shuddering grief, the bitter days, the way his lips would crack and bleed. At night, the endless shivering, the certainty that he would never again be warm.
It was a reminder of the tundra where Venick had promised himself to Ellina. He’d wandered that barren land alone, lost, half starved. He had been so determined to reach Evov that he’d hardly noticed his wrecked body, his terrible weakness, the way his mind had become like a sunken hole.
It was a reminder of the forest where Ellina had saved his life. Where he’d pulled her into his arms and dug his fingers into her hair and kissed her. She’d kissed him back, and Venick had felt a savage sort of hope.
He’d known there could be nothing between them.
He’d clung to the idea that there could be something between them.
Venick rubbed a hand over his face and peered around their small camp. Even in the dark, he was aware of how the elves watched him. They stole glances as they gathered water or brushed their horses or hunched under cloaks. These elves didn’t trust Venick, not entirely. And yet, each time he caught them looking, there seemed to be this silent expectation. They knew who he was. They knew what he had done. Humans weren’t allowed inside the elflands, but here Venick was, fighting for them, befriending them. Their gazes lingered, and Venick had the sense that they were waiting for something more.
He put some distance between himself and the camp. He climbed higher into the foothills. Here, the shrubs were gnarled by the wind. The rock looked chalky and white.
The cold was a reminder of how Ellina had been cold, and how she had warmed for him.
He saw her bend to pick a flower. They were rare in the forest, but these had bloomed in a swath of dappled sunlight. Their petals were a shock of purple. Star-shaped. He remembered the way she glanced up at him. She held out the little green stem.
Venick had taken that flower from her fingers. He hesitated, shy, not yet understanding what was changing in her, what was changing between them. He’d brought the flower to his nose and inhaled. Her mouth fanned a smile.
He could see again that smile, and all the ones that came after.
Her trust in him. How strange trust was for her.
Fire in her gaze. Secrets whispered and revealed. Her willpower, utterly unbreakable.
Venick closed his eyes and remembered how it had been in the palace, teaching her the human art of war. He would move to her side, brush his shoulder against hers, just to see if she’d pull away.
He thought again of the stateroom and the balcony. Ellina’s confessions in elvish. All her lies revealed.
Venick wondered if there was a part of him that was drawn to lies. He felt like a moth beating himself dizzy against a lantern’s glass. Even now, he could not fully wrap his mind around what Ellina had done. It went against everything he knew about her…or thought he knew.
Venick came upon a ridge. A dark valley spanned beneath him. The night was thick—he could not see the valley’s bottom. There could be an entire ocean down there. A forest. An army. There could be a whole other world and he wouldn’t know it.
