Venick made no noise. He clenched the sheets and his breath as Ellina loosened the stitches and the wound reopened. As she pulled a needle from her braid and threaded twine through it, then began at it again.
Needle and thread and a wound sewed tight. They’d done this before, too.
“Do you know why we elves do not kill each other?” Ellina asked after a time. When Venick didn’t reply, she said, “It is because our race is dying.”
Venick blinked. He drew his gaze back to her. “That’s only a rumor.”
“Ish nan amas,” she replied in elvish.It is no rumor.Then again in his language. “More elves die each year than are born. Elven children are rare. Elven partners are. We live long lives. Elves do not marry like humans do. To commit to one elf for hundreds of years…” She shook her head. “We do not. And a child? For two elves to form that sort of commitment is…complicated. A child islikea marriage for us. And so elves do not do that either. During the hundred childless years, only a handful of elven fledglings were born. Our queen began to worry, so shemadeus have children. She forced bonded pairs, arranged births. And she prohibited elves from loving humans.”
Venick had gone very still. Ellina paused to look up at him.
“It was easy for elves to love humans,” Ellina went on. “With a human, there is no fear of a lifelong commitment, because elves outlive humans. There is no fear of siring a child, because elves and humans cannot bear children. It became more common for elves to find human partners than elven ones. And so the law was changed.”
“I know the law.” His voice was like ice. His heart was.
“Then you know it is nearly impossible to enforce. The best chance is to keep humans and elves separate. You understand the border was drawn for that reason. And you understand the danger.”
“No. I understand why I’m not allowed east of the border, which I knew already. But you still haven’t told me why you were attacked.”
“I am a northern soldier. I was caught in southern lands.”
“That’s hardly a reason.”
“Maybe not. Unless we are at war.”
“Andareyou at war?” No sense in pretending he had answers now. She knew he didn’t.
“Yes.” Ellina didn’t smile, not quite, but he heard the irony in her tone. “This time, though, it is not a political war.” And now she definitely wasn’t smiling. Her brow knit, face suddenly somber. “The north and south both agree that these laws—the ones that keeps elves and humans separate—are for the best. What we do not agree on is what happens to elves who break them. In the north, if you pursue a relationship with a human, you are banished.”
“And in the south?”
“You die.”
“But you just said—”
“An honor suicide,” Ellina interrupted with a hand. Venick drew back.
“An elf will kill herself?”
“Yes, but often under pressure. And that is the issue. Forcing an elf to commit suicide—it is no better than murder. And it makes no sense. Why create laws to protect our race, only to kill elves who disobey them? The southerners are working against their own goals. Honor suicides help no one, but the south…” Ellina let out a breath. “They are unstable. They have no ruler, no sovereignty. That is why our queen chose to step in. Queen Rishiana does not rule the south, not truly, but she has always had power over the southerners simply because the north is strong. She threatened to act unless the southerners stopped pressuring each other into suicide.”
“Which they haven’t,” Venick guessed.
Ellina nodded. “Reports of these suicides have continued to rise. That was our mission here. To investigate the rumor of another honor suicide in Tarrith-Mour, to spy on the southerners, and to stop them where we can.” Simply. Which it wasn’t.
It would be easier to leave it at that. Easier to nod and sayI seeand go back to not asking. Harder, to imagine what forced honor suicides meant for elves. Harder, to picture Lorana, to see her face in his memory. Terrible, impossible, to remember the way she had died, to know exactly the price of these elven laws.
Venick’s anger returned, not bright like before, but dark, serpentine. He hated to remember that night. Hated that no matter how he tried to forget, he couldn’t forgetthis: that Lorana had been a southerner, and she had loved a human, and she was dead because of it. Venick remembered the broken shard of glass she’d held in her hands as the elves surrounded her. How it cut into the meat of her palm, bled down her wrist. He had always thought that weapon was a last attempt to live, but Ellina’s story made him see things differently. Maybe Lorana hadn’t intended to fight.
Maybe she’d been forced to make a different choice.
Venick closed his eyes. He was unraveling, coming apart at this new and frightening thought. He remembered that night, suddenly, starkly, but also other nights. Lorana on Irek’s shore. Lorana handing him a little pressed flower. Lorana in the market, dodging the playful nip of a horse. Venick couldn’t imagine her taking her own life. He was repulsed. He repulsed himself, that he would even consider it.
And yet, the shard of vase. And yet, the law. He remembered the look in her eye, the hopelessness that was too much like resolve. As if she knew she was going to die. As if she accepted it.
Venick opened his eyes, tried to pull himself out of the syrupy web of his own feelings, tried to keep his voice calm as he spoke next. He reminded himself that whatever Lorana intended, shehadn’tended her life. A southern arrow through her heart did that.
“You can’t know what the southern elves would do,” Venick insisted. Ellina raised a brow. “If they capture you.” He closed his eyes again. Opened them. He saw Ellina’s face, which was elven, which wasn’t so different from Lorana’s. “You said it yourself. You are a northern solider spying in southern lands. You are their enemy. And the southerners don’t honor your queen’s laws. You can’t know that they won’t kill you.”
