Farah and Raffan exchanged a glance. Something wordless passed between them. “No,” Farah agreed. “And nor I to you.”
???
Ellina was not being careful.
This was unlike her. When had she become so careless? Yet she thought of how she had stormed through the palace, threatening guards, confronting her sister, and she knew that shehadbeen careless. Reckless, even, in her anger.
Ellina slowed. She was in a faraway corridor. There was a set of narrow doors. A balcony. She went to it and emerged into open air. The day was just as she knew it would be: brilliant. The sky was a wide canvas. The wind, high and strong.
Ellina dug a nail into the balcony’s stone railing, let the wind toss her hair into her face. She remembered again how she had found Venick in the stairwell, felt again her terror. She had been avoiding him, but after a time avoidance had begun to feel futile…and cowardly. So she went to him.
And was met with a gruesome sight. Venick, there, seemingly dead on the stairs. His skin had gone grey. His blood was everywhere, but it was the smell of it—ashy, burnt—that alerted her to the poison. Ellina’s heart plummeted as she ran to him. She was certain her screams could be heard throughout the palace.
That moment would cost her. Ellina could no longer pretend indifference. Her concern for Venick—not merely for his life price, but forhim—was obvious to anyone who cared to look.
Farah should care. Raffan should. Ellina considered it again: why had they not insisted for the truth in elvish? What were they waiting for?
This thought seemed to open a corridor of other thoughts. Whatwerethey waiting for?
Ellina peered out across the rough landscape and decided that whatever their reasons, one lucky thing would come of it; it bought her more time to practice her elven lies. Clearly, she needed that.
And Venick. He was lucky, too. It was sheer, stupidluckthat the assassin had not killed him outright. That the poison was slow-working, that Ellina had found him when she did. But Ellina was not so naive as to believe their luck would hold. Assassins could try again. Rumors could persist. Farah could decide to push for answers, or Raffan could, or her mother could, as they should have done from the start.
Ellina had been careless, had been a fool, to leave her fate up to luck.
She would do better.
THIRTY-SEVEN
He woke in a bed in an unfamiliar room. Dark, because there were no windows. A fire crackled in a small fireplace, fanning warm light.
Ellina was there. She knelt at his bedside, arms cradling her head, which rested beside his chest.
Venick became very awake all at once. Ellina must have felt him stir, or else felt the sudden kick of his heart, because she lifted her head. There was an imprint on her cheek from where it had pressed into the folds of his bedsheets. Her eyes were hooded, sleep-heavy.
“Ellina.” Venick swallowed thickly. His voice was hoarse. Snatches of the past few hours flashed by in a discordant stream. He cleared his throat and tried to say more, but his tongue felt strange. Too heavy. He tried again. “Ellina…”
“Shh.” She moved her hand over his, and Venick felt the contact deep in his belly.
“I’m so sorry.”
“There is nothing to be sorry about.”
“There is. Everything.” Venick wondered if some of the poison still lingered in his veins. His thoughts looped dizzyingly over one another. Yet he was lucid enough, and in the following silence his mind went where it always did: to Ellina and Lorana and all his deepest regrets. “I meant what I said. In the dungeons.”
Her grip on his hand tightened. “We can talk about that later.”
“No. Now.”
“You need rest…”
“What happened to Loranawasmy fault.” Venick pushed himself up, then wished he hadn’t. His head swam. A thousand little needles jabbed his eyes. He closed them, but this was no better, because behind closed lids he saw Lorana as she had been on the night of her death. The way he’d fought to reach her, the frothy terror. Her blood on his hands, caked into his clothing. “You cannot forgive me for it,” Venick said, and hell, his voice was breaking, but that wasn’t going to stop him because he needed her to listen, tohear. “There is no reason for you to forgive me.”
Ellina leaned forward. Her face was all shadow, except for her eyes, which glowed. “But I do forgive you,” she said in elvish.
Venick froze. Those words.
She forgave him.
