He mostly slept. He didn’t dream. Not really, not in the usual way. Sometimes, though, in the deepest quiet of the night, he would open his eyes to the dark cavern ceiling, and blink, and be somewhere else. Back on the shores of Irek, back where he belonged, the wind laughing across the wide ocean, gulls dipping low. He watched the waves swell, felt their salty spray. The water misted his face and dried on his skin, sticky. He closed his eyes and touched his tongue to his lips. Freedom had a taste, Venick thought. Like this, he thought.
He heard a voice. Female. Lorana? He saw her face then, the curve of her mouth as she smiled and begged him back to bed. Venick smiled too. He reached out to take her hand.
Do not die, human, she said.Don’t you dare.
“I won’t,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t.”
But then, the smell of her. Warm, woody. Elven, certainly, but not Lorana. It couldn’t be, could it? Because Lorana was…
His heart thumped hard as this dream melted into another. Black night. Moonless. Screams that clawed into his skin, angry shouts, a desperate plea. He ran toward her voice, kicking the door open, ripping it right off its hinges. And there, Lorana in the corner, a broken vase clutched in her bloody fist. It was pitiful, that makeshift weapon against green glass swords and the trio of elves who wielded them.
Venick’s heart was in his throat. He’d forgotten how to breathe.
Let her go.
An elf nocked an arrow.
No.
He pulled it tight.
Lorana. Lorana, look at me.
She did, and held his gaze for every moment after. As Venick reached for his sword. As the elf released his arrow. As it pierced her heart and the life raced out of her,thatquick. Gone.
Gone, or dead?
Say it Venick. Go on.
Dead.
Venick had killed men before. Men were soft, slow. A sword to the gut, the throat. He knew the way it felt to press steel into a man, to feel the resistance and then the give, to see the warm gush of blood.
Killing elves was not like killing men.
They were faster. Stronger. Well-trained and honed for the purpose. Their green glass weapons were light as air and held a wicked edge. But elves, like men, were afraid to die, and in that moment Venick was not.
He killed the three elves with frightening ease. Then he went home and killed his father.
???
It was the rain that woke him.
He heard the first light drops across the ground, the soft patter that grew into a steady hiss. There was no thunder—it was too late in the season for it—but the rain waslikethunder as it echoed through the cave.
The cave. Venick blinked and pushed himself up. He blinked again, this time to clear his head from the last of the dream.
Nightmare, you mean.
Memory, he meant. He had fought three long years to keep those memories away. He fought again now as he took a quick survey of his surroundings. There was a tiny fire that couldn’t possibly be for cooking or heat, but maybe for light to illuminate the dark cavern, which was small and empty save for him. And Ellina.
She sat with her back against the wall opposite him. Her shoulders were bare, her armor propped on a nearby stone. She looked different without it. Smaller, somehow. Less predatory. Her hair, too, gave this impression. It was dark, almost black, which was different than the usual moon-white of most elves. Her face, though, was classically elven: high cheekbones and golden eyes that narrowed, now, as she caught him staring.
He cleared his throat. Didn’t sayI’m alive. Wasn’t sure that he was. He sat up farther and tested his leg instead, rolling it this way and that, and was relieved to see that the swelling had gone down. He tested the rest of himself, too. He flexed his hands, felt along his jaw and ribs and found, with a blink of surprise, that his knife had been returned to his belt.
“I cannot have you completely helpless,” Ellina said. Her lip pulled back in what might have been a smile, and was that—humor? Gods.
“You could have let me die.”
