Yethadshe known? Venick had defended her, stood by her, put his trust in her. She had done the same for him. She remembered his voice as he watched the whip fall: furious, horrible. She expected his anger. He would insist that she should never have offered to take his punishment.Do you think I couldn’t handle the sentence for my own actions?he would demand.You are not responsible for me.
Yet if Dourin was to be believed, Venick was not angry. He was not going to insist on anything. He was not even there.
“That makes no sense,” she said. “He would not just leave.”
“Why not? He was going to cross back over the border anyway. He does not belong here.”
“It is not like him to run. Not after…” She let the thought trail.
“You are seeing what you want to see.”
Ellina frowned. “I see things clearly,” she said in elvish, and she did. She saw Dourin. She saw the little ways he had changed during their time with Venick. She saw it even more starkly when placed against the backdrop of the rest of their troop. His mouth had become more expressive. He had the habit of cocking one eyebrow. His hands were restless. Those hands. She watched them fold, then refold. She saw the way he fidgeted and felt a pinch of doubt. “Tell me again in elvish. Where is he?”
The challenge cut. Dourin’s face became grave. “Gone, Ellina. He is going home.”
The words were not feathers. They were the black strap of a leather whip. They were flesh torn off her back. They were not expected. She had not known.
She had no right to feel betrayed. It had been her choice to take Venick’s punishment; he owed her nothing for it. She thought again of their last words to each other. His lies. Hers. Despite all that had happened, there was no honesty between them, no real basis for trust. They were not partners. Not…something more. And it was like Dourin said. Even if Venick had wanted to, it was illegal for humans to travel the elflands. He never could have stayed. Ellina knew that.
But it hurt her all the same.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was strange, to travel alone again. Stranger: the silence. A man could get used to the company of elves. He could get used to the quiet patter of their feet, the hush of their braids trailing their backs, the conversation, when they were in the mood for it. Now silence hung over everything. It made every crunch of his steps too loud, every clink of Dourin’s sword at his hip, every sigh he tugged through his nose.
Venick looked down at himself. He saw weeks of travel stains and blood stains and stains that came from he didn’t know where. He saw the weariness, too, as if the exhaustion had seeped into his clothing, turned it ragged and worn. He had walked straight through the night, into the morning and deep into the next evening before hunger and fatigue forced him to make camp. Though,make campwas generous. He’d fallen into the first alcove he spotted, curling up under a fallen tree and succumbing to a restless sleep. He was up again before dawn, moving on.
The sky waned yellow. The air was hot and sticky. Through the silence emerged the high cry of a cicada. It was quickly joined by its brethren. Their song rang in Venick’s head.
He cursed the bugs. Cursed the wet earth, the slop of it at his boots. Cursed his own fatigue, and his lingering headache, and the sweat that dripped down his brow into his eyes.
Could be worse.
Hell. Venick inhaled a deep breath and tried for patience, tried to feel glad. He managed the first, mostly. As for the second. Well. He was alive. He was free. Heshouldbe glad, and maybe he was, but he was also grieved. He thought about Ellina. He thought of the way the whip had cut into her skin, and how watching it cut her cuthim, and what that meant. He remembered her lies, all of them, especially the ones she told on his behalf. He thought of how he had left.
You didn’t abandon her.
But it felt like he had.
He focused on the forest. He considered his path. How far he’d come, how far he still had to go. The border was just to the west. If Venick turned and looked, he could envision the edge of the trees justthere, and beyond it, the stretch of grasslands that marked the beginning of his homeland. Venick breathed in the stench of mud and wet forest and allowed himself to imagine crossing that tree line back into the safety of the mainlands.
But Venick was not returning to the mainlands. Not yet.
He turned south. He shaded his eyes and held his breath andlistened, really listened, past the pitched song of the cicadas. He heard nothing else and couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad.
Good, for now.
He walked. A liralin bird flashed overhead. Venick caught a glimpse of the orange throat, the dusky feathers. He imagined what Ellina would say could she see what he planned. How anger would furrow her brow.Are you trying to get yourself killed?The way that anger would mask her worry. In his vision, he cupped Ellina’s cheek in his palm. He reassured her that he wasn’t dead, he was here, right here, as he always would be.
Venick wondered if he hurt himself with such imaginings. He wondered at how cruel his own mind could be, feeding him impossible lies.
That night Venick made camp in a clearing, apropercamp with a fire. He should worry about southern elves. About wanewolves and bears. But he didn’t. He lay on his back, watching the flames jump and bite the air. He thought about his choices. His mistakes. Old and new swirled together, clouding his mind. Hazy, a building storm.
???
The rain returned.
It worried Venick how the rain seemed to follow him, a somber shadow trailing overhead. It misted the earth, leaving a dewy path. The forest seemed greener. The ground, browner. Frogs chirped, their calls a cacophony of highs and lows.
