Venick’s mind was quiet. He scrubbed the floor, the walls. Weeded the little flower bed. Straightened the furniture. When he was finished, he found a small hand shovel and went back outside. The afternoon had ripened, split open like a fruit. Sunlight streamed long through the trees.
Venick pulled Lorana’s necklace from his pocket. Its silver links glinted. This necklace had been the start of everything. It had saved him. Or maybe it had ruined him. He hadn’t quite decided.
He dug a hole. Set the necklace inside. Covered it over again.
Venick had so long dreamed of returning to Irek. Once, it had been all he’d wanted. But what was this city, devoid of those he loved? What happened to a place, stripped of everything that made it a home?
Later, Venick would think back to this moment. He wouldn’t remember his thoughts exactly, except for the last: he was never coming back here.
He set his palm flat over the freshly dug earth, stood, and said his final goodbye.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ellina rode alone. Her horse’s hooves pounded the earth, to match her beating heart. They drove into her, hammering her thoughts as a mallet hammers metal, forming and folding and bending into something new. Or, really, something old.
Grief etched deep lines into her heart.
Fury did, too.
Ellina’s fury was like a living thing. It paced inside her, an animal with an appetite. Ellina imagined all the ways she might feed it. She had killed Youvan. She would ride north and kill Farah. She would set a great fire to the palace, and watch it burn, and all her anger with it.
And yet, Ellina had always had a predator’s sense for when to strike and when to wait. She knew how to tamp down her animal fury, to shush and corral it into a corner of herself, to be released later, when the time was right.
The time was not right.
Irek was burning. Venick’s mother was dead. Dourin—she did not know what had become of him. These things were set like roots under rock, grown full into being. Killing Youvan had not changed them. Killing Farah would not, either. Ellina could not undo the terror that had been done to that city, which was home to the human she loved and the sister she had lost. She could not bring back the lives of the men and women and elves who had died there.
But there was still more shecoulddo. She thought of Evov. She thought of Farah, and the crypts, and some secret yet to be uncovered. It seemed suddenly vital that Ellina uncover it.
Outside the burning city, she had saddled her horse to ride north. The southerners eyed her warily. “Where is Youvan?” someone asked.
She felt the weight of her dagger at her hip. She had retrieved it from Youvan’s body but had not yet cleaned it well. The blade was flecked with his blood.
Ellina had shrugged and said in elvish that, truly, she did not know.
Now, she spurred her mare towards Evov. Her hair came loose from its braid. It whipped behind her like wings as she flew across the shadowed earth.
The silver moon rose.
???
She requested an audience with Farah. The hour of Ellina’s arrival was late, as was her request, but Farah made no complaints. She invited Ellina into her private chambers. They stood alone in what had once been their mother’s library, and Ellina felt it again: the animal of her fury. The swift, sweet longing for Farah’s death.
How would Ellina do it?
She would draw her dagger across Farah’s throat. Her sister’s body would become dead weight. Her blood would shine thickly against the floor.
Or maybe she would kill Farah in a different way. Ellina saw it: her hands at her sister’s neck. Squeezing tight. The life draining from Farah’s eyes.
“I have returned from Irek,” Ellina said. A nearby lantern guttered. Outside the window, the moon had waned away. “It is as you feared. Rahven is dead.”
It was no more or less than Farah had expected. She made some reply, perhaps thanking Ellina for her duty, or giving further instructions. Ellina did not know. She was not listening, and then Farah had dismissed her. Ellina was almost to the door when Farah asked, “Why have you returned alone? Where are Youvan and the others?”
Ellina thought of her journey back to Evov, flying across the grasslands, then the tundra, into the mountains. She had pushed her horse to its limit, stopping only when the animal’s lathered muscles began to tremble. Even then, she had not allowed much time for rest, for either of them. The other elves were likely days behind.
Ellina did not know what Farah would do when she learned of Youvan’s insubordination, or his subsequent death. Would she dismiss Ellina? Punish her?Thankher? Farah would not like that the southerners had attacked Irek against her orders, but the matter of Irek itself was of little concern to her—Farah had never truly cared about those humans.
The real issue, if Farah cared to find one, was their bargain. Farah had promised Irek’s safety in exchange for Ellina’s support, but she had failed to control the southerners and therefore failed to uphold her end of the deal. Their bargain was off, which meant Ellina no longer had any reason to show her sister loyalty.
