“The trap,” Venick said, and hated the desperation in his voice. “Please. Help me out.”
“We will—how did you put it?—let fate take things from here,” Raffan replied. They turned to leave. All but Ellina.
She stood frozen. Her golden eyes met his. It was foolish for her to hesitate. Foolish, for her to ignore her leader’s command. And anyway, Venick was a dead man. If the wolves didn’t get him, fever and rot would.Look at that foot, the male had said.He is as good as dead.
But.
But. If they couldn’t help him, maybe they would give him the mercy of a quick death. Venick’s eyes went to her arrows, the blood-red currigon feathers. She followed his gaze and understood.
She nocked an arrow and pointed it at him.
So this was it. Venick blinked and tried to feel glad. An arrow to the heart. Not a bad way to die. Better than the alternative, which howled again, closer now.
Venick looked up into the canopy. He saw the afternoon light filter through the trees. The leaves glowed, their veins thrown into perfect relief.
He heard the twang of the bowstring. The whiz of the arrow.
It hit the trap’s spring, which shattered and released.
His foot came free.
TWO
They ran.
Venick didn’t make it far.
His foot was useless, the blood-stained boot swollen so tight he thought the leather would rip. He hobbled after the elves who went deer-swift through the forest, who were soon out of sight. Except Ellina. She hovered back, uncertain, watching as he heaved and stumbled. Venick saw her calculation. He saw her gaze shift behind him to the fresh trail of blood there.
“Go,” he told her through clenched teeth. But she did not.
Venick was glad not to remember much of what came next. How the wanewolves appeared, a young pack of females. How Ellina descended upon them, killing them swiftly with arrows and a shortsword. The high cry of the animals as her green glass found their soft bellies. The silence of death. The way Ellina’s face became sorrowful, and a slow memory tugged on Venick’s mind. Different elves, different arrows, another forest. But he had no time for memories, no time to think of anything but the elf with himnowas Ellina crouched beside him and cut away his boot. As she used needle and thread that she got from—where?—to stitch together the wound. Quickly, in a way that might worry him, might warn that the danger was not over yet. There was no poultice to numb the pain, no salve. Not even a swig of ale. Not that he would ask.
Proud, are we now?
Stupid, more like. The pain became overwhelming, every dig of the needle, warm blood peeling over exposed flesh. Light popped across his vision, which tunneled and darkened. Venick struggled to hold to consciousness. He knew what would happen if he didn’t. He had imagined this moment, the way it would feel to cling to the ledge. The dark chasm spanning beneath. How he would spend all his strength, and the pain of holding on would became worse than the pain of letting go.
But hehadlet go. He had let go of his old life, his dreams. Whom he’d loved, who he had been: a warrior, a lowlander, a son. Honorable. Venick remembered the feel of honor, how he’d worn it like a cloak. Proud. Capable. That was who he had been.
And now?
Now Venick had only the stretch of empty days, hunting when he could, scavenging when he couldn’t, warding off the bitterness with thoughts of ending it all for good. In the mainlands, the penalty for murder was banishment or death. Venick had escaped death. Three years later, he wasn’t sure banishment was the better choice.
There was, of course, a third option: redemption. Soldiers who committed crimes otherwise punishable by death could redeem themselves by making a sacrifice. The nature of the sacrifice was up to the soldier to choose, and the outcome—whether that soldier was absolved of his crimes—was determined by those he had wronged.
Venick thought of his mother. He wondered what sacrifice would be enough to absolve him in her eyes. If any sacrifice would be.
“Stay with me.” Ellina’s voice broke through the haze. Her face swam in his vision.
But Venick wasn’t with her.
He was again hanging from the cliff. Again, feeling his muscles strain, peering down into the void. He began to lose his grip. His fingers slipped loose, one by one.
???
Venick cracked open an eye, then the other. The campfire burned low. Its golden-red light spread just far enough to touch the first ring of trees. Beyond that: black, as if the world only existed inside the fire’s halo.
Venick shuffled upright. He gave a cough, heard it rattle in his chest. Heard his captor—
