He half-wished someone would.
The second piece of him was calculating. It examined the elves like players on a board game. He saw again his story, but this time it was complete. He understood why Raffan had not seemed bothered by the vanished cities or the southerners’ growing power. Why Farah had not believed Venick’s warning—hadpretendednot to believe it.
The answer, now, seemed obvious. It was because they knew. About the southern army. About the plot to overthrow the queen. Hell, they hadplannedit. They had stalled to buy themselves time while they smuggled southerners into the city, feigned indifference to gain the advantage. Farah had wanted Venick dead, had tried to have him killed, because she knew his warning was real and did not want the queen to hear his revelations in elvish. And then when Farah couldn’t kill him she changed her strategy. This summons, which brought the queen and the legion and Farah’s guard together under one roof. Which left the rest of the city vulnerable. This coup, the queen’s death. It was oftheir design.
The final piece, the piece he held close to himself, was falling. It was toes over the edge of a mountain ledge. It was closed eyes, dark imaginings.
Ellina was a liar.
She was the punishing grip of a hand over a windpipe. She was the slide of a knife between ribs.
The truth Venick had long sought was finally there for the taking. The question he’d wondered had been answered. Ellina did not love him. Did not—apparently—care about him at all.
She fought her own battle at the far end of the hall. Through the haze of shock and hurt and chaos, Venick caught glimpses of her fighting,trulyfighting, with the intent to kill. Ellina moved like she was made of her weapon. She shifted exactly in time with the thrusts and swipes of her attackers, striking and ducking and parrying with grace. Killing—despite all her resistance to it—appeared to come effortlessly to her. It was a dance, the cries of fallen elves the merry tune. She drove her sword into elf after elf, moving so quickly it was impossible to see every attack clearly, to separate Ellina from the blur of green glass around her.
Yet it was impossible not to notice—the vision unexpected, unwelcome—how uneven the battle was. How easily the southerners surrounded her. The few loyal northerners battling by Ellina’s side began to fall. A space appeared at her back, undefended. Venick started towards her, intending to cover that gap. His body pulled him in her direction. But her words reverberated through his mind—I do not love Venick. Kill him, if it truly matters that much to you. What do I care?—and he felt gutted all over again, like the blood pooling on the floor washis, and his heart was flailing uselessly in his chest, pounding furiously even as his lifeblood left him.
She had tried to tell him. He had asked, and Ellina had answered, but he hadn’t believed her. Part of him still couldn’t believe her. After everything, it seemed impossible that he could have been so wrong about her. As the battle raged around him, Venick’s mind reached for some explanation, something that might explain how she had said such things in elvish…
And he remembered Lorana instead. Venick remembered how he had loved her, had spent years loving her, yet he hadn’t ever really known her. Lorana wasn’t a common elf. She wasn’t even a southerner. She was the lost heir to the northern throne, yet she’d managed to keep the entire truth of that identity hidden from him. Venick had always thought there were no secrets between him and Lorana and had been so, critically wrong.
He thought of his father. The clues had been there, but Venick ignored them.Loyalty to family first, his father used to say. Venick had always thought that even if his father discovered the truth about Venick and Lorana’s relationship, he would never betray them. But he had.
Maybe it was Venick. Maybe he was the kind of person who saw only what he wanted to see. He’d wanted to believe Ellina loved him, so he convinced himself that she did. He invented meaning where meaning didn’t belong. But this wasn’t a story, and Venick was too old for fantasies.
It was time he stopped pretending.
He’d lost track of the fight. Venick blinked back into his own body as he spun and drove his sword into flesh. Saw it split, felt warm blood splatter his face. He yanked the sword out and swiped again at another southern elf, this one short and wiry. She wore a belt of throwing knives, mostly gone, two left. She skirted backward out of range, threw the first. Missed. Threw the second. Venick brought his sword up, deflected it. He heaved his weapon up and over, flat-side down. Into the elf’s skull. Smashed it, the dent fracturing her forehead. Venick stepped over the body, raising his sword to parry another attack.
But he wasn’t watching his flank. He saw the sharp slide of green glass coming in on his exposed side, too late to block, to dodge, andfinallysomeone had noticed the opening.
Venick waited for the blow, for the clean hand of death to finally take him.
It never came.
Dourin was there, turning away the attack, thrusting his own sword into the elf’s gut. He ripped his weapon free with a huff, moving so that he was back-to-back with Venick. He looked how Venick felt: wild, brutal, alive with the fight. “We are outnumbered,” Dourin said over his shoulder.
“I noticed.”
“We have been betrayed.”
“Noticed that, too.”
“The southerners are winning.”
“Are you going to—” a grunt as Venick blocked a mace, thenkicked, sent the elf flying “—continue to state the obvious?”
“We need to retreat.Now.”
Venick scanned the stateroom. Elves were dead and dying all around, but there seemed to be more coming, and endless amount ofmore. Somewhere in the chaos, Venick had lost sight of Ellina.
Dourin was right. This was not a fight, it was a slaughter. And now they were outnumbered, a few loyal northerners battling to hold off the southern attack. They would not win this fight. There was no hope of it.
“Venick,” Dourin snapped.
“I hear you.”
“Thendosomething.”
