ONE
When Venick heard a rustle inside his tent and woke to a shadowy figure looming over him, he thought it was a dream.
By all logic, it shouldhave been a dream. Venick’s tent was pitched in the center of a military encampment. There were soldiers there, soldiers everywhere, six hundred elves and men with eyes and ears out for trouble. And Venick was no mere grunt among them, either. He was Commander, the god-touched, battle-born human who controlled the resistance and the highland army both. He had his own squad of soldiers to watch his back, his own personal team of fighters to guard him day and night. No one could just wander into his tent unannounced. No one would have the chance.
And so of course when Venick woke to the sight of a stranger hovering overhead, his mind resisted. It said,dream.It said,not real.
Venick had become better at separating fantasies from reality. He’d made mistakes early on, surely. He’d questioned himself, and questioned himself again, until his head was so full of doubts that he thought it would burst. But Venick saw things more clearly now. He knew he could trust his instincts, that his hunches often turned out to be true. Like: the Elder would rather give up his army than admit his daughter had outsmarted him. Like: elves and humans could set aside age-old differences to work and fight together. Like: Ellina stood beside him, had always stood beside him, had risked everything to stand beside him.
These were the truths Venick took to bed each night. They were the truths he woke with, too, as he blinked and frowned and told himself that the stranger in his tent must be a dream.
The figure produced a dagger.
Venick reacted. He rolled to his feet, reached for his knife. He’d been smart enough to keep a weapon close at hand while he slept, yet not quite smart enough to keep afightingweapon. A knife. Good for whittling wood and chopping carrots.
So much for your instincts.
But Venick hadn’t anticipated an attack like this, not here, not by a lone assassin. If anything, he was expecting battle. A full-blown, high-scale charge with all the perfunctory force to go along with it. It had been six weeks since Venick freed Ellina from Evov, another three since he’d left the highland capitol of Parith with his new—
Stolen.
—army in tow. Plenty of time for the Dark Queen to plan an attack. Plenty of opportunities to execute one. Venick’s caravan was exposed out on the western plains, and they were still a day away from their rendezvous point in Igor where Harmon and the majority of their men waited for them. If Farah was wise, she would send her army to meet their contingent now, while she had the upper hand. Venick had expectedthat.Not this…sneak attack.
The figure lunged. Venick folded sideways, hit the ground. Used momentum to roll and come up again. His tent was dark and cramped, too dark and cramped to fight the way Venick wanted. Yet there were tricks he’d learned about close-quarters combat, tricks like: use the walls to your advantage. Keep your hands up, your head down. Strike hard and strike quick and be done with it already.
His attacker had not, apparently, learned the same tactics. As Venick drew his knife up in preparation for the next strike, he realized the stranger wasn’t turning to face him. Was not, it seemed, following the fight at all. Rather, the figure stumbled forward into the space Venick had just vacated, dagger swiping through air and nothing.
Blind, or just stupid?
Didn’t matter. Venick knew an opening when he saw one, and he wasn’t about to let it go to waste. He flipped his grip on his knife, drew the green glass overhead. His eyes had adjusted enough by then to make out the shape of his attacker, the slender build, the long slope of each shoulder. Venick watched the elf—wasit an elf?—stagger another step forward, his feet tangling in Venick’s bedroll.
Venick brought his weapon down. The elf spun at the last second, lifting his arm to block the blow. No shield. No gloves or greaves. Just a pale hand jutting between them.
Stupid, then.
Venick heard more than saw his own knife whistle through the air, thesnipas it pierced the elf’s outstretched wrist. He expected his attacker to cry and jerk back, had planned to use that opening to step in closer, jab his blade into this stranger’s throat. Only, the elf didn’t recoil. Didn’t react in any way, like Venick hadn’t just sunk his weapon into flesh, like he hadn’t delivered a wound that would leave anyone reeling.
Venick’s mind was slow. He’d been acting, reacting, adrenaline overriding his ability to think. By the time his brain caught up with the rest of him, the thought was already there, waiting like a stage actor behind the curtain.
This wasn’t right.
None of it was. The stranger in his tent, the absence of his guard, the odd, ineffectual fighting…
That’s when Venick noticed the stench.
It was subtle, an acrid mix of foul breath and rot. Again, Venick’s mind was slow. It strained, pulling against the end of its own chain, metal rattling. As the elf tore his wrist free and Venick fought to keep hold of his knife, the shackles of Venick’s mind broke free, and he remembered.
He remembered the elven city of Evov, that high and forbidden place, overtaken last summer in a coup orchestrated by Farah, the Dark Queen.
He remembered Ellina, so brave and so strong and sofoolish, who had used her powers of stealth and deceit to uncover the Dark Queen’s secrets.
He remembered those secrets, each its own horror, but one more horrible than the rest.
The elf seemed to have forgotten his dagger. The blade hung uselessly by his side as he stretched out his injured hand to grab Venick’s throat. Venick beat the hand away and moved in again, low this time. A strike to the thigh, in and out, a gash that should have left anyone incapacitated. The elf didn’t even flinch.
Understanding burned through Venick. He tasted it on his tongue.
In the elflands, there were two types of conjurors: northern conjurors like Ellina, who could break through ancient magic and learn to lie in elvish, and southern conjurors like Youvan and Balid, who could move shadows and summon storms and, according to Ellina, control the dead.
