But—she forgave him?
He saw her expression, earnest and imploring. He saw the curve of her cheek, the set to her mouth, all the little details that made her. She’d spoken in elvish, but…that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.
Because?
Because…
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
Ellina’s gaze dropped to their interlocked fingers. “I think…” She faltered. “I think you have held onto your guilt for a long time.” Her eyes lifted. “I think you have always blamed yourself. But you are not to blame. I believe you, Venick. That Miria did not take her own life, that the southerners killed her. And it is terrible, what happened, but it is not your fault. Do you hear me? It isnot.”
Venick stared at her. He couldn’t comprehend it. Not her understanding, or the way she was looking at him now: tenderly.
His eyes grew heavy again. He was so tired—and confused, and pained, and unable to piece it all together. He didn’t know what he’d expected now that Ellina was here, speaking to him again for the first time in days, but it wasn’t this.
Yet he felt it. Ellina’s forgiveness was there. It blanketed him, and Venick knew that it was a gift, this moment was a gift, because he hadn’t thought he would live to see it, or even if hehad, he thought he had done too many things to push Ellina away, had wronged her too many times.
“I wish…” he started to say, but sleep was there again. It pressed him down. It was dark and warm as it pulled him back into unknowing, Ellina’s hand still in his.
???
The next time Venick woke, Ellina had put some distance between them.
She hovered by the fireplace, her fingers skimming a row of glass jars on the mantle. The motion was unhurried. Absentminded, which was unlike her, which made Venick realize that she wasn’t even looking at the jars. Wasn’t reading the labels.
What, then?
Gathering herself, if he knew her. Tucking away her feelings, burying her thoughts as she prepared to turn and face him.
Which she did, slowly. The tenderness he remembered from before was gone. Now there was only that elven mask, which he hated, and that cool gaze, which he also hated, so even and controlled andfalse.
“You know that doesn’t work on me,” he told her.
She hitched a smile. “No,” she agreed. “I suppose not.”
But even her smile was false. The lie of it nettled him. Venick wanted to tell her to cut it out. Stop pretending, be honest, and weren’t they past that now?
He didn’t say those things. Drew his eyes up and around the room instead, surveying the tall cabinets, the neatly made bed on the opposite wall. The former was filled with vials and plants and all manner of things Venick didn’t recognize. The latter was empty.
A healer’s room. Venick plucked this knowledge out of a tumbled wave of combating thoughts. That’s where they must be, which meant that Ellina’s cries for help—the ones he remembered, vaguely, from the stairwell—had worked. It meant that aneondghi, a real one this time, had agreed to come to his aid.
Ellina returned her attention to the jars. She picked one up, examined its contents. “I will set you free,” she said. “As soon as you are strong enough, I will help you escape. There is only one path in or out of the palace, but it is not heavily guarded. If we are careful…” She set the jar back with an almost-silentclink, then turned to look at him. The mask had fallen away, though Venick wasn’t sure he liked this alternative any better. Her expression had hardened with an emotion both darker and more familiar: remorse. “I should have done it before. You should never have been held prisoner here.”
Venick managed a wry smile. “Is that what you want? For me to leave?”
“I want you tolive.”
“If I escape, they will know it was you who helped me.” Ellina didn’t deny it. Hell, shenodded, like she knew it and didn’t care. Venick sat up a little straighter, ignoring the way his bandaged hip began to throb. Ignoring the bitter taste in his mouth, anger and argument both. “You have to stop. You cannot keeprisking yourselffor me.”
“I will not see you killed at the hands of my country.”
“It won’t come to that.”
Ellina gave a dry laugh. “Has the poison addled your brain?Lookat you.”
“I’m alive.”
“Barely.”
