???
Venick must have slipped back to sleep, because the next time he woke, Ellina was gone.
He sat up slowly. He was sore, he was stiff, but his head felt clearer than it had in—what? Days? How long had he been like this?
He swung his legs over the bed. His hip was thickly bandaged, the skin around the wound hot and swollen. Venick didn’t like the smell coming from that bandage. Didn’t like the way his bad leg trembled as he stood. He walked the length of the healer’s room just to see if he could. By the time he made it back to the bed, that trembling had spread to hisotherleg.
Amazing, how easily his body could betray him.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
No, not the first. Venick paced twice more to the fireplace and back. By the fourth attempt, he was dizzy and nauseous. Well. He had never fully recovered from his journey across the tundra. Add a dagger wound and a poisoning to the mix, and no wonder he was in bad shape.
You’ll die, you keep it up.
Maybe. But Venick had already made his choice to stay. He wasn’t lying when he said the north could use him, or that he had his own reasons for wanting to stop the southern army. So what if it was dangerous? He’d come this far; he wasn’t going to give upnow. And anyway, better to die here, fighting for something that mattered, than alone in exile.
Something? Not someone?
Venick had worn smooth the memory of Ellina by his bedside, her fingers linked through his, the gentleness he’d found in her expression. Even through the haze of the poison’s aftereffects, Venick remembered that moment. And changed it, a little, in his mind. In his version of the memory, he asked Ellina why she was looking at him in such a way. Was her tenderness forhim, or what had happened to him, or…?
I could not let you die, this imaginary Ellina would tell him.
You still feel obligated, Venick would reply,because Lorana…
Not for her. Ellina leaned in, touched a hand to his cheek.What I did, I did for you.
Venick caught himself. He knuckled one eye with a fist, let out a sigh. He knew better than to do this. He had to constantly beat down the impulse to pick apart these past few days, to invent meaning where there was none. He knew what such fantasies could cost him. What they’d cost him already. And anyway, it shouldn’t matter how these last few nights had changed his and Ellina’s relationship, or where they stood now. Friends. Partners. Call themallies in the warand have done.
Frustrated, Venick crossed back to the bed and sat heavily on its edge, then began working light fingers over the bandaging around his torso and hip, trying to get a sense of the injury, how it was healing. Focus onthat, why didn’t he?
The door clicked suddenly; his only warning that someone was coming. No time to grab a weapon, no weapon to grab even if there had been, and how was he defenselessagain?
But it was only Ellina coming through that door, a thick stack of books cradled in her arms.
He watched her approach. Shoulders back, chin up, that dark braid slipping over one shoulder. Venick couldn’t have said why the sight of it touched him. Maybe it was because of where his thoughts had just been. Or maybe it was because all of this—her posture, her steady stride—was so familiar to him, so typically Ellina, and it pained him to realize how well he’d come to know her.
Yes, Venick thought. He knew Ellina. He often felt like he’d known her a lifetime rather than a few short months. Though, that wasn’t to say she couldn’t still surprise him. She surprised him now with a smile that was unlike any he’d ever seen on her. It was small, almost shy. And this, the way she came to sit beside him, how she dropped the books onto the bed between them, fussing unnecessarily with their covers. The thought came to Venick. Slow, sticky, yet gaining shape, gaining color. Was she—nervous?
“These are for us,” Ellina explained, eyes still on the books. “You said you know about planning battles…”
Venick felt a surge of hope. “You want me to teach you.”
“Well.” Her eyes flicked to his. “You did offer.” She sobered a little. “I have been thinking about what you said. And you are right. We are not prepared to battle an enemy army. I fear we are too late already, but…I want to learn what you have to teach, if you are still willing.”
Relief. A surge of gladness.
Finally.
Venick couldn’t quite help his smile. He motioned at the pile. “Show me.”
She did. She separated the books into two stacks, then three, opening covers at random. “They are from the archives. I brought whatever I thought would be useful. Maps, mainly. A few books about war.”
“Elves have books about war?”
“History books, mostly.”
But elves had only ever fought one war. “Books about the purge, you mean.”
