But all Venick did was rake his eyes across the hall for Ellina. He’d lost sight of her. The wall of enemy elves had become too thick. And then Dourin was cursing him, invoking gods he didn’t believe in as he growled at Venick and grabbed his arm and dragged him away.
FORTY-FOUR
Ellina stared blankly at the walls of her makeshift prison. Pasty silver rugs, a wide-open window. The books of her childhood lining the shelves.
Her bedroom, turned dungeon.
Her wrists were bound. Her ankles. She had taken a knife to the thigh. The wound had not been tended. It burned, bleeding freely into her bedsheets.
Farah was there. Raffan, too. They were speaking, but Ellina was not listening. She closed her eyes.
Their betrayal numbed her. Her mother’s death did.
And Venick.
Ellina dipped her head. She remembered his unsteady breath as she spun her lies. After, she had sought him across the room. She had tried to reach him through the fighting. She struggled, and was reminded of how she had struggled in the river in Kenath. She felt like that: the spinning terror, clawing for breath. Frantic kicking that got her nowhere. And yet, in the river—though she had not understood this then—there was a feeling. A warmth. But small, like a candle.
Later, she would remember the feeling and understand it. It was the certainty that Venick would come for her. That she was not alone, that he would not let her die. Even as she clung to the sewage grate, teeth clattering, limbs locked, she had known he was coming. And he had.
She did not feel that way in the stateroom.
She tried to battle through to him. Her sword into an elf’s neck. Torn out. Up, shearing another’s arm off at the elbow. The gush of blood. A cry that might have been her own. Her eyes were only half on the fight. She scanned the room. She spotted Venick fighting his own battle on the other side. She saw him see her.
And realized thathewas not trying to reachher. The cruel truth of it. Ellina had frozen. She tried to speak.No, she wanted to say.Listen, she wanted to say. But Venick was not listening. And then it was too late.
Raffan had come for her instead. She watched him stalk across the stateroom, dodging swords and daggers and axes. Their gazes locked. She had thought,now. She had thought,yes. Murder pulsed through her. She would kill him.
She had not.
He overpowered her. Maybe it was his size and strength, the many hours they had trained together, how he knew her tricks. Or maybe it was her own wretched heart, still reeling from Venick’s broken trust and what she had done to deserve it. Raffan disarmed her, then forced her to the ground.It is over, he had said.It is over, Ellina.
She thought he would kill her, but instead he bound her hands and dragged her away. Ellina struggled. The fighting was mostly finished. It had been swift. Even if the north had heeded Venick’s warning, even if they had prepared their defenses, no amount of planning could have prepared them forthis.
Ellina came to learn the truth in pieces. The southern conjurors had entered their hidden city through shadow-weaving. It was a loophole, a way around Evov’s magic. Enemy conjurors threaded their shadows onto Farah and her guard and were guided inside. They then used that power to guidemoresoutherners inside. Those elves posed as members of Farah’s battalion. They gathered in the palace, waiting for the moment when they would strike.
And what a strike. Farah had made mistakes early on—summoning Ellina to the stateroom, attempting to kill Venick in secret—but she had recovered. And she was clever. She saw Venick’s trial as an opportunity to stage the coup she had been planning since—when? Since Miria’s disappearance? Before then? When had Farah allied with the southerners? How long had she been plotting her rise to power?
When Raffan had come to haul Ellina away from the stateroom, she had not expected to escape, but she dug in her heels and frantically scanned the room for Venick. And then, unwillingly, almost as if it was nother, she moved her eyes to the bodies on the floor, searching for a dark-haired human, that strong face, those winter eyes. Nothing.
Ellina’s hope was nearly as fierce as her despair. He had survived. Dourin, too.
“—use her. We need the unwavering support of the city.” Farah was saying now. Sunlight streamed in through her bedroom windows. Somewhere in the courtyard on the grounds far below, Ellina could hear the muffled sound of boots on the pavement, elves storming the palace armory. The city’s store of green glass weapons would now be in the southerner’s hands. The knowledge was a bitter fruit. “We cannot risk revolt.”
“We will kill any living witnesses who do not side with us,” Raffan soothed. “For the rest of Evov, we are spreading the rumors of Rishiana’s ill ability to rule.” He smoothed back Farah’s hair. Ellina was too numb to feel surprised by the intimacy of the gesture. Instead, her mind worked like a lock, the key sliding through the pins, the click of the tumbler as the lock released.
“You love him,” she said. Two pairs of golden eyes cut to her.
“Excuse me?” Farah asked.
“You love Raffan. You are in love with my bondmate.” Ellina was startled by her own words. She was surprised she was speaking at all. “Is that why you did it?”
Farah’s tone was flat. “No.”
“You did not have to kill our mother for him. You canhave him.”
“Rishiana’s death was unavoidable,” Farah said evenly. “I regret that it had to happen this way. But her death was a mercy.”
“A mercy,” Ellina repeated.
