TWENTY-FIVE
Slowly, Ellina came back to the world.
Her back ached. Every piece of her did. But she could sit upright without help. She could speak, and her voice did not break. Eventually, she could stand to dress. She strapped on her boots, slung her bow across her back.
It hurt. The bow chaffed her sore skin. But Ellina knew how to hide her pain.
She was good at hiding things. She prided herself on her ability to wipe her face clear of emotion. She could empty herself of emotion too, if she wished. She could close her eyes and rid her mind of feeling, could become like the forest, or the mountains: steady, still. This was the gift of an elf, this ability to tuck emotion away. It was easy. Natural.
Or so she had thought.
Sometimes, though, Ellina caught her feelings leaking free. They seeped through little cracks in the façade of herself. They billowed around her, a dark cloud, and she was forced to breathe them in. When she did, she realized that she was not empty. She waslying.
She knew what she felt.
She touched the jekkis in her pocket. She remembered the night she and Venick had scoured the brothel’s rooms for supplies, the way he had arched a brow when he saw what she held. When smoked, the plant was hallucinogenic. When boiled and ingested, it was lethal. When chewed, however, it was effective for pain.
One night after her troop had gone to bed, she pinched off one end. It smelled ripe, a little woody. She chewed. She told herself she did not need much. She told herself it was for the pain. A little relief. She deserved that at least, did she not? A small relief.
But when Ellina woke in the morning, head pounding, she saw she had chewed everything she had.
???
Ellina’s mind was cruel to her.
It replayed conversations she would rather have forgotten. It reminded her of things left unsaid. At night in the gooey moments before sleep, her thoughts were in the language of men.
She saw Venick in her mind. She remembered the way he had offered to teach her to swim. The shyness in him. The fear in her, the firm denial. She had thought about his offer for a long time after. Later: a river. The slow creep of water. Venick stood not far away. He felt her watching, and turned, and smiled.Now, she had thought.Ask him now. But she had not. Could not. And now she never would.
???
The air began to change as they traveled north towards Evov. It was crisp, its breath light on her face. Usually, the changing climate changed Ellina, made her feel free, like she could slip into the cool wind and fly high over the world.
She was not high over the world now. She was far below. She imagined she was underwater and the canopy of trees was the surface. She had the sudden desire to climb, to grab the branches and haul herself above the waves.
She touched those branches, felt their rough bark. It steadied her. It steadied the odd sense of loss that had been slowly building inside her. But it did not make sense for Ellina to feel that way. She tried to brush the feeling aside. If she had examined it, she might have said it was the feeling of want. But Ellina knew better than to want. And she had not truly lost anything.
Ellina peered to either side. She and her troop were in a star pattern, the distance between them carefully mapped. She could see Dourin’s tall figure through the trees on her left, Kaji just ahead of him. Over her other shoulder, Branton and Artis, and behind them, Raffan.
He had said nothing more to Ellina about Venick since the whipping. He had said little to her at all. Sometimes, though, Ellina would catch him staring. She would see the flash of his golden eyes, the twist of his mouth when he was about to speak, and a flutter of nervousness would spread her ribs wide, as if she was certain he would say something she could not bear, or ask something she could not answer.
Ellina would drop her gaze. Raffan would lower his, too.
???
Raffan’s suspicion did not ease.
Ellina saw the little changes in his temper. The haughty set to his mouth, the glimmer of distrust. He began to break formation to walk closer to her. He wondered aloud how her back was healing. He asked if she regretted her choices. “You took the whip for the human,” Raffan drawled one evening. “Would he have done the same for you?”
“Maybe,” Ellina said. She did not like the way Raffan looked at her then. As if an idea lurked behind his eyes.
“Whatdidhe do for you?”
“Nothing.” Yet she thought of how Venick had kissed her, and fear made it difficult to breathe. Though Raffan had not yet accused her of the worst, she knew then that he would.What happened between you and the human?he might ask in elvish.Oh Ellina, what have you done?
Ellina shrunk from the thought. Yet she knew that when she was finally forced to admit the truth—that she had fought for a human, and killed for him, and given herself to him—she would deserve every punishment that confession wrought.
???
