Ellina had noticed. In the dungeons, she had peered into his eyes, saw the hazy gleam. She guessed the reason—
A fortnight on the tundra, a fool’s journey to reach her.
—even if she hadn’t said so. He’d seen her anger that was not anger but worry. He’d come to know it well.
He needed to speak with her. He must. What she had done—what had shedone? Angst stitched up his spine. She had to take it back. All of it. He wouldmakeher. Yet after Ellina and Farah’s argument, a trio of guards had materialized between them to shove Venick away.
Breathe, Venick commanded himself.Wait. Ellina would come. Later. When things were quiet. She would come for him then, and when she did he would explain everything in a way she would understand, would force her to see that he didn’t need her claiming him, didn’t need her protection. Reeking gods, this wasn’tabout him.
The guards moved him through the palace, but Venick hardly noticed. He was so caught in the web of his own mind that he was barely aware of the elves who guided them, their angry murmurs, disgust half-hidden. Barely aware, either, of the path they took: through hallways, an atrium, up a stairwell.
Up, Venick. That mean anything to you?
It might have. Had his mind been clearer, he might have questioned why they were goingupwhen the dungeons weredown. But Venick’s mind wasn’t clear. It was back in the stateroom with Ellina. It was listening to her claim him. It cupped around a frantic feeling. Barbed, like poisoned stingers.
One of the guards said something, which startled Venick. “What?”
“Isaid,” the elf replied, “move.”
He was pushed into the receiving room of a bedroom suite, which was expansive and far too rich. Venick looked around, peering up at the vaulted ceiling, the wide windows. “But, the prison…”
“This is your prison now.” The elf crossed his arms over his hammered steel breastplate. He had high cheekbones, small eyes, a deep mouth. A pendant peeked over the elf’s cuirass, black and red. “This door is iron-backed. You cannot burn it off. And we are in the palace’s tallest tower. It is a long way down from the window.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The only wayoutis through the window,” the elf insisted. Hinting at something, Venick realized. Not that hard to guesswhat. “You might take a look. See if you can fly.” The guard’s mouth tipped, just slightly. A sneer.
They left, and locked the door behind them. Venick stared at that door for a long moment.
He forced himself to move.
He wandered from the receiving room into the sitting room into the bed chamber. He checked the drawers first—all empty—then went to the open window to peer down. He confirmed the guard’s not-so-subtle suggestion: the tower was high and steep. If he fell from this height he would hit the rocks far below. His body would shatter.
He returned to the door. Solid, oak and metal. He tested the lock, which was bolted from the outside.
There would be no easy chance of escape, then. No weapons, either, except for a curtain rod he managed to unscrew from the wall. Venick hefted it in one hand. Heavy. Iron. A pointed whorl at the end like a spear.
He set the rod next to the bed.
He waited.
???
She didn’t come.
Venick was restless. He should sleep, he knew that he should, but he couldn’t. He paced the room. He tried tothink, but he couldn’t do that either. He could only replay in his mind a string of visions. Ellina in the stateroom. Ellina’s eyes cutting to his. Ellina bargaining for his life—and in doing so risking her own.
A rush of anger. He beat it back, tried for calm. Managed it, mostly, until he remembered Ellina again, and his anger surged again, and he beat it backagain. His thoughts eclipsed.
Venick considered his prison, the jeweled sconces, fireplace large enough to fit a grown man. This was undoubtedly Ellina’s doing. He wondered if she’d argued for this change in accommodations like she’d argued with her sister in the stateroom. He wondered if word of his pampered prison would travel like murmurs ofhumanhad through the city. He thought of the guards who had led him here, their hands at their weapons, ready—no,hoping—for Venick to misstep, to give them a reason to strike. Their ears had been heavily adorned in gold, each ring significant. One elf had worn a pendant.
Venick glanced again at the door. Anxious. He was too anxious.
There was a writing desk. A hard-backed chair. He sat, and shut his eyes, and watched the morning ripen from behind closed lids. His body sank, muscles relaxing one by one. But still his mind could not. He scanned the events of the past day, raking his memory for the error, as if there was but one, and if only he could find that single, fatal mistake, he could undo everything that had gone so wrong.
But there was no single error. Or if there was, the error washim. A human in an elven city. A human meddling in elven affairs. A human who cared when he shouldn’t.
He was fighting sleep now. Yet he thought if only he could stay awake a little longer, maybe the door would open and Ellina would come. In that final moment.
