“He almost—” Ellina broke off. She looked as shaken as Venick felt. “He would have killed you.”
“You should have let him.” Venick wasn’t sure he believed that, but he wasn’t sure he didn’t, either. He searched her face and saw it again: the flash of the elf’s green glass, the certainty of death. In the seconds before the sword fell, a feeling had claimed Venick.Ah, said the feeling, which saw death, and opened its hands, and nodded.At last.
Then: the shock of Ellina’s arrow. Bright blood. Disbelief.
“Your laws,” Venick managed. “Elves don’t kill elves. You wouldn’t break those laws even for yourself. Why, then, forme?”
Ellina was silent.
“Ellina.”
Her eyes went to the dead southerners. “Please,” Venick said, then shut his mouth, because he didn’t want her to see how he was coming apart, how his mind had become a scroll unfurled, and written in him was the wrongness of everything she’d just done.
He suspected she saw it anyway. Her eyes became sharp, almost fearful. Then she forced her gaze away and her expression shuttered. “There is nothing to explain,” she said simply. Her hair clung to her face, water dancing in rivulets down her neck. “I agreed to see you safely home. I am not one to break my word.”
“You had no reason to give me your word.”
Ellina hesitated, then turned. She spoke with her back to him. “I did not need a reason.”
“I don’t believe you.” But she was already striding away.
Venick wasn’t fooled. Not by her tone or that empty expression. Not by her words, either. Because he remembered, didn’t he? He remembered standing in the forest outside Kenath. The distant chime of the alarm bells, the blur of two homing horses across the dark valley. Dourin had begged Ellina to spare them, yet she killed them anyway. Venick remembered thinking, even then, that this was like her: to calculate the risk, to weigh each outcome. To choose with her head and not her heart.
But she had lost her head when it came to Venick. She must have, because it made nosense. It made no sense, how willing she was to throw her laws aside for him. How she put herself at risk to do it. What spurred this obligation to him? What had he done to deserve her loyalty?
Venick quickly retrieved his hunting knife and followed her through the forest. Though the storm was over, the evidence remained. Trees hung damaged and limp with rainwater, branches strewn across the ground like bones in a boneyard. It was a sickening reminder of the southerner conjurors’ power, the lengths they would go to capture or kill Ellina. “You risked too much to save me to not have a reason,” Venick said.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. She caught his eye and her expression changed, seemed to show itself for what it was: not the careful mask of an elf trying to hide, but the slow wariness of someone who realized theycouldn’thide. Not from him. “You saved me, too.”
Venick let out a short breath of laughter. “That was different.”
“I do not see how.”
“You were only in dangerbecauseof me.” Because she chose to stay behind to mend his foot while her troop forged ahead. Because she exposed herself by bringing him to Kenath. The conjurors had caught her trail, had attacked her, nearly killed her, because ofhim. Venick moved into her path, forcing her to halt. “Please, Ellina. I feel—” He dug frustrated fingers through his hair. “I just need to understand.”
“I have already explained.”
“Not well enough. Is there something you’re not telling me? Some—secret reason you had for saving me?” Even as the words left him, he knew how ridiculous they sounded. His face heated, but he had already damned himself, so he let the rest come. “Why break your laws for me? I’m human. Our two races have been at odds for centuries. And I’m the one who chose to cross the border. That was my decision. My risk. You are not responsible for me.” It was the same thing she had said to him in the brothel. He saw her remember it, too.
A flash of defiance. The lift of her chin. “I have not done anything for you that you would not do for me.”
Which was true. Venick knew if their roles were reversed, he wouldn’t hesitate to give himself to her. He had already. But this was wrong. He knew it was, had grappled with the consequences of that since leaving Kenath. He feared things would be worse for her if he stayed. Worse if he left. Worse, because he couldn’t decide whether to stay or go.
Heshouldgo. He could have left for the border already. It was close enough. Yet when he imagined leaving Ellina, he felt his heart on a string. It pulled. Tightened, dug deep.
Venick wasn’t being honest with himself. If he was being honest, he would admit that this wasn’t about wanting protection, not about repaying a debt. Maybe it never had been. But how could Venick explain? He couldn’t tell Ellina how it had felt, when he’d woken in a small cave and she had worked to save his life, to see the fierce burn in her eyes, or to know that she saw something in him worth saving. He couldn’t explain the cold agony of exile, or how his life no longer felt like a life, or how he’d wavered between a choice: live an outlaw, fight for redemption, or die and be free.
But Ellina reminded Venick that the world was not divided into citizens and outlaws. She reminded him what it felt like to fight for someone and to be fought for. What it was tolive.
“I have a reason,” Ellina said quietly.
“What?” Her words pulled Venick from his thoughts.
“You are right,” she said. “I have a reason.” He waited for her to explain, but she seemed unwilling to say more. Venick saw her lowered eyes, her hair coming free from its braid, the dip of her mouth.
“Look at me,” he said. She did.
A feeling. It bloomed low. As Venick gazed at Ellina, he saw it in her, too. He held this shared feeling between them. It occurred to Venick that maybe Ellina did have a reason for saving him. Maybe her reason wasn’t so different from his.
