Branton wasn’t the only one. Mutters seemed to follow Venick through the ranks as they readied to ride. By the time night had fallen, Venick found himself unable to look anyone in the eye.
Dourin found him at the edge of camp. The elf came quietly, his footsteps making no sound. Venick held in a sigh. “I suppose you’re here to tell me what an idiot I am too?”
“No.” Dourin’s gaze was steady. “I am here to discuss what we should do now that you have refused.”
THIRTY-ONE
The cell was small and dark. Stone walls. Damp. A door so perfectly set that when it was shut, not even a sliver of light leaked through its seams.
Ellina had watched Raffan pull that door closed. It scraped roughly against the ground. Then the latch clicked, and the bolt turned, and Ellina was thrown into darkness.
Now, she paced. Her muscles all seemed to gather in a single, tense cord. Her teeth chattered, though Ellina did not feel cold. It was the shock, she thought. Or the fear.
She had tried to call out to Raffan. As he pulled the prison door shut, Ellina had opened her mouth, thinking to reason with him, or to plead. But the words had not come. As before, when Ellina attempted to speak she could make not even the smallest of sounds. It was as if the air from her lungs could find no purchase in her throat, which had become an airless well. The sensation frightened her, worse than the dagger wound in her shoulder, or the prison, or even the reality of being discovered. To be without a voice…
She continued to pace the tiny cell. Her shoulder burned. There was a jagged, too-loose feel to it. Blood soaked through her shirt and into her hair, warm and wet. Better sense told Ellina to stop moving, to hold the wound still, but she had no interest in better sense. She needed to move, needed the sound of her feet brushing the floor, the back and forth rock of her steps, the way that movement made her feel less trapped…
Trapped. She was trapped. Weaponless, injured, silent.
Ellina had always been a strong fighter, but only in the way that all elves were strong fighters—she took to weapons easily, but her skill was nothing special. What Ellina had always been known for, what she had been best at, was her knack for deceit. She had been recruited into the legion for that skill, had earned a reputation for her wiles. It was her strongest and most valuable weapon, this ability to speak past any obstacle, to trick and deceive, to watch her opponent sense the trap and fall into it anyway. Ellina had prided herself on this ability. Even before she had learned to lie in elvish, she wore her cunning like armor. Who was she, without a voice?
She knew her fear now. It came plainly, as the sun comes over the earth. There would be no more mistaking it.
Her head spun. This time, Ellina did stop. She set a hand to the stone wall, forced herself to take deep breaths. Her back screamed as her lungs expanded, pain slicing fresh through the wound. But her pulse calmed a little. Some of the dizziness subsided.
The quiet that followed was solid enough to hold her thoughts, so Ellina began to think.
She was weaponless, but perhaps she could steal a blade from the next guard who entered this cell. She would crouch by the door—low, where they did not expect her—and wait for a prison-keeper to come. She would lunge before the guard could muster a counterattack and grab whatever she could manage: a dagger, a sword. Even a helmet could become a weapon in the right hands. She was trained for this. Ellina’s wound would not stop her. Her fear would not. She would fight her way free, and then she would escape.
???
Yet no guards came.
Ellina sat at the back of her cell. She opened her eyes. Closed them. Nothing changed. Hours could have gone by like this, or days. She had no way of keeping time. She did not trust her body to tell her, either, through hunger or thirst. Shewasthirsty, but the feeling was distant, almost dreamlike. It felt small in comparison to everything else.
The shock had mostly worn off. This was bad. Where before Ellina had needed to move, now she focused all her energy on staying perfectly still. Her breath was a ragged wind. Her throat ached. And her shoulder…
Ellina tipped her head back against the wall. Her eyes pricked. She swallowed her misery, trying instead to count her breaths. Then she remembered that it was Raffan who had first taught Ellina the trick of counting to calm her thoughts, and she stopped.
???
Her condition worsened.
Ellina could not get warm. The stone walls leeched heat from her body. Blood loss did, too. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to quell her shivering. And still no one came.
The dark was disorienting. It played tricks on her mind. Sometimes, Ellina imagined that the cell door was opening. Light would flood in. A figure would appear, his broad shoulders silhouetted by torchlight, his winter eyes lit from within. Venick would enter her prison, his voice storm-heavy.You should have told me.
“I know,” Ellina whispered to the empty cell.
How could you keep the truth from me? How could you let this happen?
“I made a mistake.”
Ellina had thought Farah’s secret vital. She understood now that it was not merely the secret that drove Ellina to return here, but the idea that if she uncovered that secret, she could somehow justify everything that had gone wrong…and everything she had given up. All of her lies would have been worth it.
Or maybe there was another reason. Maybe she had needed the lure of that secret to block out what had happened in Irek, to erase the image of Venick reaching for the lifeless body of his mother. One horror exchanged for another.
You always called me a fool, Venick said. His eyes softened. He came closer.But you are the one making all the mistakes.
