Ellina understood that horror. Venick was remembering the last time she had defended him. Ellina remembered it, too. She could still smell the wet forest, could hear the creak of trees in the wind. Could see her troop standing by, Raffan’s rage, her choice that was not truly a choice, because despite the pain of Venick’s lies uncovered, despite her anger, she could not bear the thought of Venick’s death, or allow Raffan to kill him. She had accepted Venick’s punishment instead and everything that followed: the kiss of air across her back. The peal of the whip.
This conversation was much like that whipping: a calculated risk. Ellina saw each move in play. She saw again what she wanted and how she aimed to get it. When she pulled her eyes off Venick and back to her sister, the heavy weight of her understanding cracked in two. She could hold the separate halves in her palms. Could read, scrawled there in the fissure, how this would end. How tomakeit end. Ellina spoke the words clearly. “When our mother departed, did she give you command of the city, or was that duty to be shared between us?”
Farah went rigid with anger.
“Venick lives,” Ellina said. “We will wait for Rishiana’s return so that she may hear his warning. Until then, the queen is the only one with the power to overrule me, and you, Farah, are not queen.”
Farah’s gaze promised revenge. “Not yet.”
???
“What are youdoing?” Dourin demanded as he pushed his way into Ellina’s suite.
She stepped aside to make room, closing the door behind him. It was fully morning. Her receiving room was bathed in soft light. Ellina felt its warmth, which reminded her that she was not warm, that she was cold and had been cold for a very long time.
Dourin rounded on her. “You have taken things too far. Do you not remember the forest? Do you not remember what Raffan willdo to you?”
Yes, Ellina remembered. Of course she remembered.
“Clearly you have forgotten,” Dourin continued, “or else things in that stateroom would have gone very differently this morning. You would have allowed Farah to kill the human. You certainly would not haveclaimed him.”
“I had to.”
“Youhad to.” She had never seen Dourin like this. “Tell me it is not what it seems, Ellina. Tell me you defended the human because of some sorely misplaced sense of duty, and that you are about to march back down to the stateroom and renounce him.”
Ellina could. She could sooth Dourin with pretty lies, could deny his worries. The old Ellina would have. The old Ellina would have hardened herself, pulled on a face of steel and said what needed to be said.
She realized it was not true, when she imagined herself to be cold. Maybe she had been once, but she had changed.Hehad changed her. And so Ellina began speaking, softly at first, then gaining strength as she told Dourin everything. She started from the moment they found Venick in the elflands and talked until she had said it all. By the time she finished, Dourin was gazing at her in disbelief. “Ellina…”
“I know.” She stopped him before he could continue. “But what else could I do?”
Dourin crossed his arms. Unconvinced. Unhappy. “So he remains a prisoner here until the queen returns to hear his warning, but what then? She might kill him anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Or Raffan might.”
Ellina remembered Raffan’s marble face, the way it showed his anger more fully. “Yes.”
“And if Venick is lying about the southern army?”
“He speaks elvish, Dourin. The laws of our language have always applied to humans, no matter what Farah says. And he has no reason to lie.”
Dourin spread his hands. “Does he not?”
Ellina thought about how Venick had been granted freedom twice, and twice he had thrown it away. She thought of how he had fought for her in Kenath, then killed for her in the forest. She remembered his winter eyes. How they warmed her.
He had smiled to hear her sing. The memory dug into her. Miria had taught her that song. Ellina wondered if Miria had ever sung it for Venick. She wanted to know if he recognized the tune. She had been afraid to ask.
She understood why Dourin might think Venick’s story was just a story, but Ellina knew better. “I believe him. If he says the southerners are building an army, then that is the truth.”
Dourin said, “I hope, for all our sakes, that you are wrong.”
THIRTY-THREE
It was dawn by the time the guards escorted Venick from the stateroom.
His mind was overfull. It held too much, as if his thoughts were a many-sided die. He turned that die over, but he could only see one face at a time. He thumbed the white porcelain. It was fragile. If he dropped it, it would crack.
