Venick did not at first notice the shadows.
He was watching Ellina and these strange elves and so he didn’t notice how darkness seemed to rise out of corners and crevices, creeping over the forest, shifting dawn back to twilight. He didn’t notice how the elves were becoming fainter, harder to see. Even when Venick did notice, he didn’t understand. Thought it was the clouds moving back in, which they were. Thought a coming storm explained the encroaching dark. And listen, he could even hear distant thunder.
But then the elves seemed to still. They lifted their heads, sniffing the air like a pack of wild dogs. The hair prickled on Venick’s arms, his body understanding what his mind still did not.
It began to rain. Lightly at first, a grey mist. The storm was closer than Venick thought, then. He looked up and finally saw what he hadn’t before.
The shadows were moving.
All around them, a black fog descended. It crept between the trees, snaked across the ground, billowed up into empty air. Venick inhaled sharply and took a step back, hand going for his knife, eyes darting to Ellina, who had noticed the fog, too, who was barking orders at the other elves.Go. Find cover.
Venick abandoned his hiding spot then. He started towards Ellina as the camp disintegrated, elves grabbing hands and belongings and darting away. But then the shadows seemed to thicken, darken. The forest morphed back to night, and Venick lost sight of Ellina and the camp altogether.
His pulse doubled as he broke into a run. Overhead, the storm was strengthening, light rain evolving into something more. The wind picked up. Lighting fizzled. Venick reached the spot Ellina had been moments before, but too late. She was gone.
Venick blinked into the empty space he’d expected to find her. Blinked again through the wet and dark and dread, the same dread that had claimed him when he lost Ellina in the river: an ugly twinge in his gut, the sharp pain of nails dug into palms. The urge to call her name. The urge to run until he found her.
You know better.
He did. He was more likely to get lost if he went tearing off after her. More likely to find hisowntrouble. And there would be trouble, oh reeking gods, he believed that. Venick spat rainwater from his mouth. This storm was not normal. The fog wasn’t. It drew a cloak across the sun, solid black stretching between the trees, broken only by the occasional burst of lighting. But it was late in the season, too late for lighting. And this darkness. Venick didn’t understand it. Whatwasthis? It was like a nightmare. Like magic. Like—
Conjuring.
The word came unbidden to his mind. It rose and consumed him. Conjuring. That meant southern elves. Close.
Here.
Venick lifted his knife, spinning from side to side as his mind worked, all the things he’d missed sliding neatly into place. Venick knew from his conversation with Dourin that the southerners didn’t just hunt Ellina because she was a northern spy. They hunted her because she was the queen’s daughter. If caught, she would make a valuable war prize. If killed, her death could be used to send a painful message. Ellina had evaded the southerners thus far, but they were getting smarter. Stronger. And now these shadows, this storm…they had found her.
Worse. They could use the darkness totrapher.
Venick took a step in one direction. Changed his mind, started in another. Stopped again and ground his teeth. It was suddenly again the night of his father’s murder. That had been a trap, too. Venick remembered how he had stabbed his father in the gut. The gurgle of blood. His sword, oiled red. His father fell to the floor. His breath shuddered as he struggled to die.
Venick had fled north to the mountains. There was a hunt. Word of what he had done spread quickly. His father was a renown military general. Well-loved. Venick had been loved, too, a son following in his father’s footsteps. But not anymore. To kill one’s own people was a terrible crime. And one’s ownfather? Venick remembered the panic then, too. His people had fanned out. A chase. He was cornered in the northern foothills with nowhere to go.
Except, notnowhere. Venick had stared at the sheet of rock. He saw the trap, and he saw the way out.Up. And so Venick had climbed, sweating and shaking and dizzy with grief, with the knowledge that his entire world had changed, that he had changed it and his father had changed it. He climbed, and left his old life behind.
Venick climbed again now.
He grabbed for low branches, then hauled himself up into the nearest tree, working his way high into the canopy. Twigs scratched his face, tugged at his clothes. His hands stung raw. The darkness was no less here. He went higher still.
When he could climb no farther, Venick stopped and listened and tried to calm his pulse. He waited for the lighting.
It came, illuminating the forest. Venick caught a split-second glimpse of trees and rain and earth.
It came again. A flooded creek, ferns, the splay of moss.
Again. A glimpse of black hair. The flash of a hand.
A green glass sword, the quick sheen of it through the downpour.
Three tall figures cloaked in black.
Another figure, smaller, brown leather armor.
Ellina.
Venick was down in an instant. He dropped to the ground and sprinted in the direction of the movement, boots digging into soft earth, trees appearing and then vanishing as he flew past. He cursed his hunting knife for its uselessness, but it would have to be enough. If his aim was good—
