“How often do you communicate with this envoy?” Venick asked.
“We try to keep our interactions limited. It is not safe to send messages too frequently. And there are few everpools this far south. I am lucky to have found this one at all.”
“Is your messenger someone in the palace? Or the city?”
Dourin was reluctant. “In the palace.”
“Male or female?”
“Venick.”
“Just answer the question.”
“If you are worried about the reliability of this elf, do not be. I trust them completely.”
“I want a name.”
Dourin shook his head. “You do not need a name.”
“I don’t like that you’ve got a contact in Evov and I don’t know who it is. I don’t like that you didn’t tell me from the start.”
“I promised to keep the spy’s identity anonymous. Do not make me break my promise.” Venick crossed his arms, ready for more argument, but Dourin cut him off. “Do you trust me?”
The question startled Venick. Did he trust Dourin?Yes, he thought, andno, andhell. He couldn’t help but think of how he’d put his trust in Ellina. How he’d pledged his loyalty to Lorana and his father and his country. Each time, he’d been given reason to regret it. Venick had a bad habit of sticking his faith where it didn’t belong, of believing in others too blindly. Wasn’t this the reason he hadn’t uncovered Rahven sooner? Wasn’t this why he’d been blindsided by Ellina’s deception, and Lorana’s before that, and his father’s?
It occurred to Venick that it wasn’t Dourin he didn’t trust, but himself.
Dourin finished lacing his boots and straightened, looking very un-Dourin like. He held his arms awkwardly at his sides. His eyes were unsettled.
Do you trust me?
Venick released a breath. Maybe he wished Dourin had told him about his envoy from the beginning, but so what? Dourin was telling him now.
Venick touched a hand to his own chest, then set that hand on Dourin’s shoulder: the elven symbol of friendship. He gave his answer in elvish. “I trust you.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Rahven is believed to be dead.”
Farah stood before the fireplace of her parlor, hands joined behind her back, her attention on the flames. Outside the glassless window it had begun to snow. The flurries were light, fuzzy-looking. Not fat enough to stick. They melted as soon as they touched the windowsill.
Ellina could tell that Farah was furious.
“I do not know how his position was uncovered,” Farah continued. Firelight played across her armor, swirling red and gold against the metal. “He was a crucial emissary, and now he is gone.”
This news was not unexpected. Venick had taught Ellina that in war, even a single advantage could mean the difference between winning and losing. If Rahven was working as a spy for the queen, how many advantages had they lost because of it? The resistance would kill him for his crimes. There was no other option.
Yet the news of Rahven’s death cut deep. Ellina’s mind reached not for the chronicler, but for Livila, that young elf who had no mother, and now had no father either.
Ellina knew what it was to be an orphan. To belong to no one. She knew how it felt to wake in the night, disoriented, the memory of her mother’s death dancing across her skin. How it shaped and reshaped her with each new imagining, and how Ellina realized, only after her mother was gone, all the questions she wished she had asked. The things she wished she had said.
And what of Ellina’s father? An elf she had never known, and never would.
“I am sending Youvan south with a few others to find out what happened.” Farah said. She turned to meet Ellina’s eye. “You will go with him.”
The room, already dense, became oppressive. “You wish for me to leave the palace?”
“And find out what happened to Rahven. Yes.”
