But he couldn’t hold long to any one thought. Words glowed and then pulsed away, a firefly’s light. He felt borne on silent black wings, and he drifted.
Venick thought of his exile. The mountains. The cruel chill of the wind. How he had climbed high just to find it. How he’d climbed and climbed, fingers aching, muscles on fire, higher than the clansmen or their goats until there was nothing but sun and sky. The wind howled around him. It tugged him forward.Just a little farther, the wind would whisper.Just a step more. He feared the wind. He feared what it tempted. And it would be easy, wouldn’t it? He worried how easy it would be to step a little farther. No one would mourn him if he gave the wind what it wanted. No one would even know.
His pain had been vicious. He had known the price of killing his father was banishment or death. He had known he might spend the rest of his life an outlaw. He’d scraped together a meager living in the mountains, thought about ending that living—hell, he’d lost count how many times.
It was, he’d once thought, the price of his betrayal. He convinced himself that misery was no less than he deserved.
Butdidhe deserve it?
Hadn’t his father betrayedhim?
And for what crime, but to fall in love?
Venick, came that voice again.
Wake up.
You must wake up.
He saw Ellina then in his mind. Her hard stare. The hardness of the whole of her, and how she softened for him. He remembered the way he had drawn her close, inhaled her scent, kissed her and claimed her. The grip of remorse, after, when his mind cleared and he saw what he had done.
He wondered if this was normal, the way his mind and body had two separate sets of intentions.
He wondered if he would ever escape these anguishes of his own making.
Please, Venick.
You have been poisoned.
You are injured.
Venick became more aware of himself. He tried to open his eyes. His lids were too heavy.
Do not die, she said to him.Don’t you dare.
This felt familiar. Those words. Hadn’t he heard them before?
A bear trap. He had been caught in a bear trap. He remembered this. A cave. A fire. But—poison? Was the bear trap poisoned? He could hear her fragmented pleas, a stream of them as she pulled and pleaded that he wake.
“I’m here,” he mumbled, cracking open an eye. There was no cave. No fire. Only a dark stairwell and Ellina, who froze for a single beat. Her face came into focus, then blurred again. When she sprang back into action, the quality of her movements changed. A pant leg was ripped. Pressure applied. A high call for help, orders snapped in two languages.
Venick’s country would be ashamed to see him now. Weak, vulnerable in the hands of their adversary. A good soldier did not allow himself to be captured. Reeking gods, a good solider did not willfully walk into enemy lands andgethimself captured. He should have known better. This was no way to earn his mother’s forgiveness, and it wasn’t his place to meddle in elven affairs. Who washe, that he might both care for an elf and care for his people? Who was he, to think he could fight for Ellina and fight for redemption? Had he not killed his father because of an elf?
Had he not learned his lesson?
???
A dim white light. The smell of candles burning. A metallic clatter, the shuffle of robes.
Voices, too. Softer, growing loud. Angry words spoken in elvish.
I will not tend a human.
You will if I order it.
Cessena, please. He is not one of us.
Do as I say, eondghi.
