He held her gaze. “I did, once.”
Ellina shut her mouth.
“The resistance stands no chance,” Raffan said quietly. The sun angled into his face, accentuating the line of his brow, the plane of his nose. “Farah knows that those elves plan to rise against her. She knows how they gain confidence. They are even learning to strategize in the human way. It makes no difference.” His voice was blunt. “Farah cannot be beaten. If there is land to conquer, she will conquer it. If there is a war to win, she will win it. It does not matter how strong the resistance grows. She will crush it—and anyone who dares stand against her.”
Raffan’s eyes were back on the fight. The knife-wielder had discarded most of his knives. He had only one left. He could throw it, and risk missing, and surely lose. Or he could keep it and attempt to fight his brother hand-to-hand. But a knife was no match against a sword.
The knife-wielder balanced on the balls of his feet at the edge of the ring, watching his brother. Out of options. Cornered.
Like Ellina was.
“Consider this my last warning,” Raffan said. “If you are so determined to act against your own best interests, I cannot help you.” He stalked away.
Ellina stared hard at the spot where the crowd had swallowed him, hard enough that her eyes began to water. Back in the ring, the knife-wielder cocked his arm. He took his chance—risky, potentially ruinous—and threw his final knife. The sword-bearer dodged the blade, which sped past his neck, barely missing.
Or so it seemed. The sword-bearer blinked. He brought a hand to his skin.
He drew it away, bloody.
???
Ellina had not quite forgotten Raffan’s warning when she met Farah in her parlor the following afternoon, but rather set it alongside all his other warnings, to be taken out and examined at a later, more convenient time. She entered the queen’s chambers from the south end, winding through a reception room, a reading room, an atrium. These chambers had played host to each queen of centuries past, but in Ellina’s mind they belonged only to her mother, then and still.
One memory seemed to stand out above the rest. Ellina could still recall the night Queen Rishiana had called her three daughters into these chambers to announce that Miria would take the throne. It might have been the queen’s right to decide when her daughter was ready, but Miria was clearlynotready. It was not only that she was young, though that was part of it. Miria was just…different. It was her laugh, which was too wild, and her smile, which was too free, and her pastimes, which were, frankly, too human. Miria was more willful than most elves, more spirited. Quick to yell, quick to joke, eager to break the rules. She struggled with social expectations. She hated to hide herself. The throne was not meant for her. Perhaps it would never be meant for her. And so, rather than accept her fate, Miria—with Ellina’s help—had chosen to escape.
Together, they contrived a plan that would make it appear as if Miria had died while on a diplomatic voyage to the south, when really she was escaping into the mainlands, into a little city named Irek. There, Miria had found the life she always wanted. She fell in love. She was happy.
Ellina wished the story ended there. She did not like to think of what came next: how her sister was discovered by the southern elves, and ambushed in her home, and killed. Ellina shoved those thoughts away.
But this was like discarding a dagger only to pick up a throwing knife. Because there was Venick, in the everpool of Ellina’s mind, and there was her reading room, cold with his absence, and there was Irek, and the history he and her sister had shared.
Ellina’s steps were unsteady. Her lungs blazed. She felt a flash of something ugly, an emotion she had never allowed herself to feel before, because to feel it was wrong, and beneath her.
The feeling was jealousy, and Ellina was a fool.
How dare she feel jealous of her sister, whom she had loved, and was dead. Ellina had only ever wanted Miria’s happiness. Venick had made Miria happy. And anyway, that was all years ago. A distant history.
Yet the feeling remained.
Ellina moved deeper into her mother’s old rooms. She wondered if she would be feeling this way if Rishiana was still alive. She thought of Dourin and Venick together on their journey. She thought of the elves who refused to meet her gaze in the hallway. It occurred to Ellina that jealousy felt startlingly close to abandonment.
But this was unfair. If she felt abandoned, it was of her own doing. Dourin had not wanted to leave her behind. Venick would not have, either, had he known the truth. Yet Ellina insisted that she stay.
As she turned a final corner, Farah’s voice sounded from out of sight. She was speaking to someone within the parlor, her tone clipped. Ellina slowed her pace, moving to her toes. She heard her sister’s voice lift with a question.
“My comrades grow restless,” came the reply. Youvan.
“You and your fellow southerners will have everything I promised,” Ellina could hear Farah say. “In return, I want your cooperation.”
“You want ourservitude.”
“Is something about our alliance not meeting your expectations?” Farah’s tone had gone silken. Ellina knew that voice. It was how her sister sounded when she was laying a trap. “Am I not still your queen?”
“The south has no queen.”
“I have been patient, Youvan. I have allowed you many liberties. Do not make me regret—” Farah cut off, and Ellina froze, listening as the silence shifted to footsteps coming her way.
Farah appeared in the doorway. “Sister.”
