“Right here, andfine.” Dourin emerged from the shadows. His torso was bare, his hair loose, shirt flung over one shoulder. His mouth curled with amusement. “You worry too much. Has anyone ever told you that you worry too much?”
Venick rounded on him. “Where have you been?”
“Bathing.”
“You shouldn’t be wandering off alone.”
Dourin cocked an impish smile. “Who says I was alone?” He surveyed Venick. “You still have all your limbs. I take that as a good sign.” But when he met Venick’s eye, he sobered. “You three are dismissed,” Dourin told the soldiers Venick had been accosting. He waited until they’d scurried away before looking at Venick and saying, “Tell me.”
So Venick did. He started at the beginning and explained it all, doing his best to describe everything that had happened since they’d parted ways. When he came to the part about his mother’s accusations, however, a thick knot of anger clogged his throat.
You have always been fascinated by the elves.
“Venick?”
I know about the elven princess.
“What is it?”
“If not for Ellina—” Venick broke off, staring hard at the dark gaps between the trees. He didn’t know how he’d planned on finishing that sentence. Didn’t know how else his redemption could have possibly gone. He only knew that he blamed Ellina for all of it.
He still dreamed of her. Sometimes, as he rode through his army’s ranks, he imagined that he saw her face. He’d spin around, heart climbing, only to realize that it wasn’t Ellina at all, but someone else. Venick wondered if his mother could sense it. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t granted him redemption—because she could feel the way Ellina’s presence still lingered, clinging to him like a scent.
Dourin looked concerned. He spoke cautiously, as if to a cornered animal. “Ellina made her choices. And she has her reasons, even if we do not understand them. I think we need to accept that.”
But Dourin hadn’t been there during those long hours when Venick and Ellina had stayed up late, pouring over books and maps, learning about war and each other. Dourin hadn’t felt how the room would grow warm and deep and wine-rich, or seen how Ellina would linger, or lain awake long after she’d left, wondering if that soft light in her eye meant what Venick thought it meant. Dourin hadn’t been haunted by the ghost of it, or been gutted to learn that none of it was real. Ellina hadn’t cared for Venick. She hadn’t felt anything for him at all. She was a legionnaire, trained to hunt and kill humans who entered the elflands. Her apparent affections had merely been part of her plot.
“Ellina sold herself to the highest bidder,” Venick growled. A cornered animal after all. “She’s worse than her sister.”
Dourin inflated with argument, only to let it go in the next breath, on an exhale. “That is not the only reason you are upset.”
Venick gave a tight shrug.
“What else is upsetting you?”
Venick thought again of the highland prisoners. He thought of how easily Theledus had spoken of their torture. How his mother had stood by and said nothing. He thought of the way his own skin had prickled, a mix of revulsion and anger and wrongness. Venick rubbed at his neck. “The lowland soldiers took enemy prisoners tonight. They’ll be executed.” At Dourin’s raised brow, he added, “Burned alive, actually.”
“Ah.”
“I asked for them to be spared. The council said no.”
“Are there no other options?” When Venick shook his head, Dourin sighed. “You can’t save everyone.”
Venick shrugged again. His jaw ached. His blood seemed to grasshopper inside him. He was angry, yes, but anger wasn’t the whole of what he felt. He felt betrayed—by his own people’s callousness, by their infuriating closed-mindedness. He was only trying to do the right thing, and they’d held it against him.
Would it always be this way? Would the differences between their races and countries always lie in such deep, rigid lines? Venick remembered the suffocating fear as he lay trapped in the bear trap last summer. The fear had clogged his throat. It darkened his vision. Venick hadn’t thought that the fear could get any worse, until the elves appeared, and it had.
In his mind, Venick saw those highlanders, bound and imprisoned. He saw himself, chained to a dungeon wall. He saw southern conjurors materializing in a crowded market, and how he’d kicked over a brazier, sending coals sparking.
He saw the Golden Valley up in flames, the air reeking of black powder.
Venick saw, suddenly, an idea.
It took shape within him. It was fluid. Opaque, viscous. But growing clear.
He heard Dourin’s words.Are there no other options?
Venick met the elf’s eye. “I’m going to need your help.”
