And Venick…
Ellina pulled her hair into a quick braid, tugging harshly at her scalp. She considered what elves must be saying about her, their assumptions, all the many choices that had brought her to this moment…choices from the forest, and before.
No, Ellina thought. Not even Venick kneweverything.
It had happened in this very palace. The queen’s unexpected announcement that Miria would soon take her place. Miria’s fear, her despair. After, how Ellina had gone to Miria, had found her alone in her suite. Ellina remembered it all again.Do not take the throne, she had told her sister.Leave the elflands. There is a little city on the border. Near the ocean. You will be safe there. You can make a new life there. And again, those words, the ones she had regretted ever after.I will help you. Together, she and Miria had forged the southern summons and plotted her sister’s escape: the path she would take, the things she would bring, who she would become.
Lorana. A name they had chosen because it was common and simple and safe. Irek, a city they had chosen for the same reasons.
The memory squeezed the breath out of Ellina. She remembered their hurried plans, their whispered goodbyes. The morning of Miria’s departure, Ellina had smiled, even as she knew what her sister’s leaving meant. She would never see Miria again. But was this not a small price to pay for her sister’s happiness? Was it not what Miria would choose for Ellina if their roles were reversed?
It would be years before Ellina was to learn what became of Miria. That she would fall in love with a human in Irek. That she would die there. Word of an honor suicide traveled quickly.Another southerner, the rumors said.In Irek. Forced to kill herself for falling in love with a human.
But Ellina knew it was not simply another southerner.
When news of her sister’s death had come, Ellina stormed out of the palace, out of the city, into the mountains. She pushed herself as far as mind and body would allow, then pushed herself farther. She allowed grief to rule her. Rumors of these forced honor suicides had been slowly growing for years, but she had never once thought of Miria, never considered. Her own sister.
Ellina never bothered to ask what happened to the human Miria had loved. Years later, as Ellina fought and killed humans along the border, she scarcely gave him a thought. Dead, she assumed. Gone. It was not until she saw her sister’s necklace hanging on Venick’s chest that everything solidified, beading to a point, a crystal drop on a razor’s edge. This was the human Miria had loved. She was dead, because ofhim.
Murder gripped her. Ellina would kill him.
But then something inside Ellina had shifted. A door creaking open. Not much. Enough. And through it, another thought emerged. Miria had wanted a different life. She had chosen it, risked everything for it. And she had loved this human. Miria, who gave her love easily, who forgave, who broke the rules and defied their mother and laughed and laughed. Ellina thought of what her sister would have wanted, and she knew she could not kill him.
She hated the human, but she would spare him in Miria’s name. She would save him, mend his foot, then leave and forget him. But somehow, slowly, Ellina began to know him, and hate turned into curiosity, turned intotrust, turned into…something else.
Ellina cinched her belt a notch tighter, strapped on her weapons. It was difficult, knowing what she knew now, to reflect on her choices. She wondered, as she so often did, what Miria would have chosen for her. What Miria would think, could she see her little sister now.
Ellina finished dressing, then ran a hand down her front, spreading the fabric flat. She did not check her expression in the mirror again.
She exited the room and went to meet her mother.
???
Ellina hated to feel nervous. It was an emotion she avoided whenever possible. Yet as she walked the long corridor towards her mother’s private chamber, she could not help but feel it: a tender sort of angst.
She inhaled a hard breath, tried to concentrate on other things. The whisper of her feet against cold stone. The twist and turn of this corridor. The sight of the chamber door coming into view, and the two guards stationed outside it.
The door was familiar. The guards were not. That in and of itself was not unusual—the city’s guard numbered into the hundreds, and there were always new recruits—but there was somethingdifferentabout these two. Ellina peered at them as she approached, and for a moment she truly did forget her nervousness as she tried to place the difference. The guards stood at parade rest, boots knee-high and buckled, armor gleaming. They wore the same uniform that all of Farah’s guard did. Their hair was cut the same way, ears pierced the same way…
“Cessena,” said the guard on the left.Princess. “The queen is expecting you.”
Maybe there was nothing unusual about these guards. Maybe it was Ellina who was different. Maybe she was seeing that difference reflected in the guards’ eyes as they looked at her.
She pushed through the door without a word.
The queen’s private dining hall was located deep in the belly of the mountain, which meant there were no windows. Instead, dozens of sconces and candles lined the walls and table, casting everything in an orange glow. The queen was there already, seated at the head of the table. Farah, as heir to the throne, sat to her right.
Ellina’s troop was not present.
“Daughter,” the queen said in elvish. Rishiana was dressed simply, white hair trailing down white robes, fingers and wrists free of ornamentation. Her ears, by contrast, were adorned in extravagant gold, bearing every one of the fifty rings that signified her rank as queen. “Please. Sit.”
But Ellina had halted. “Where are the others?”
“Your troop?” Rishiana’s eyes were steady. “They were not invited.”
It was not unusual for the queen to open conversations in elvish. Unlike most elves, Rishiana did not merely use that language as a tool but generally preferred elvish over mainlander. Still, as Ellina glanced around the near-empty chamber, she knew the queen’s choice of language could not be an accident.
Her nervousness returned.
