“You do not understand…”
“I know you’re afraid. I am, too, but—”
“Venick.” She cut him off, horror mounting. “There is nottime. We cannot be caught here. The queen—”
“I don’t care about the queen!”
His outburst, rather than halting her, only fueled her panic. Ellina glanced around the quiet garden, expecting to see the queen’s summoners rush around the corner at any moment. She felt time slipping away. They needed to leave,now. She tried to step past Venick, but the attempt at escape seemed to light something inside him. His face became a mask of denial. He blocked her path, his hand coming to grip her arm. “Stop it, Ellina. Stop pretending to be cold.”
“I am not pretending—”
“Iknowyou. I know when you’re trying to hide from me.”
“Venick.” Ellina strained against him. “Let mego.”
Venick glanced at where he held her arm. He blinked, releasing her. “I didn’t mean—” He took a startled step back. His face was awash in shame. “I’m sorry.”
Later, in Ellina’s mind, she did things differently. She explained the situation to Venick, who did not know what the horn meant and misunderstood her fear. She put aside the gnawing dread for just a few moments more so that she could tell him everything: her feelings, her heart. The way he had opened her eyes to the world, forced her to see the true color of things. In Ellina’s version of that moment, she would reach out, place her palm to his cheek.I love you, too, she would say. She would tear down the last boundaries between them, and give him the whole of her, and be glad of the giving.
But that was fantasy, and this was reality: Ellina’s fear made it impossible to think. Her urgency became all that she knew. She moved again to flee, and Venick, rejected and ashamed, let her go.
???
Ellina moved through the palace towards her suite. The hallways were eerily quiet. Farah’s guards—inexplicably, miraculously—were nowhere to be found.
She felt something slipping from her grasp. It was something she had always held close. She was afraid to let it go. She tried to draw it back. It turned to liquid and poured through her fingers.
She rounded a corner, then another. Her heart beat too fast, hard and hurting. She buried her hands in the folds of her robes.
Those robes. She remembered donning them in the privacy of her suite. Then she had gone to find Venick. That invitation, his quick smile. She had asked him to teach her how to swim.
It was something she had thought about for so long, but it seemed insane now. Worse: what followed. Him, moving closer. Him, kissing her. She should have known this would happen. Shehadknown. And if she could admit that, then she could also admit this: she hadwantedit.
Was that the unnamed feeling slipping free? Was it Ellina’s want, which she had always buried? It was not buried now. It pushed free. It dug through the earth and bloomed.
Ellina scanned the halls as she walked. The horn sounded again, closer now.
She quickened her pace.
FORTY-ONE
Venick returned to his suite. The sun was high now. It streamed through his window in garish beams.
He heard the horn again in the distance: a long, sorrowful wail. Venick ignored it. He kept at what he was doing, which was pulling on a fresh shirt. He didn’t know what the horn meant. He didn’t care to know.
Dourin found him like that, there in his bedroom. The elf pushed through the door without preamble. His face was grave. “The queen has returned,” Dourin told him. “You are being summoned to the stateroom for your trial.”
Surprise wasn’t quite the right word to describe how Venick felt at that news. Acceptance, maybe. Resignation, because they’d been waiting for the queen’s return, and he should have anticipated this.
Still, this moment felt a little like his dream from last night. There was a sense of things unremembered. The lingering glow of it.
Dourin had not come alone. He was flanked by six of Farah’s guards, three on either side. They watched Venick with blank eyes as he gave a nod, then stooped to retrieve his sword. He took his time, belting the weapon deliberately, pushing the prong slowly through the leather hole, adjusting it until it sat exactly how he wanted.
By the time Venick straightened, the guards’ expressions were no longer blank.
Dourin shook his head.You idiot. But he said only, under his breath so the other elves wouldn’t hear, “Be careful.” Then he turned and led the way.
???
