Farah’s face seemed lit from beneath, all shadows and bones. “This is the end, sister.”
???
When the Dark Army passed their location in the trees, Venick and his party emerged.
The storm rolled overhead, the wind tossing dirt into their faces. The cloud cover wasn’t the same as nightfall, but it gave Venick an excuse to keep his head down, his hood drawn as he slipped from the trees into the southerner’s ranks. Behind him, each on a short delay, Dourin and his four other soldiers did the same, choosing gaps in the caravan, picking their moments carefully. Within a bare minute, they were in.
Venick had done this before. He remembered a windy mountainside, the push and call of an elven market. He’d once smuggled his way back into Evov to hunt for Ellina, doing his best to blend in with the elves, to hide his obvious humanness.
And how’d that work for you?
Poorly. Not that Venick expected it to go much better this time. He knew the risks, knew that even with the storm, his upraised hood did more to announce his presence than to conceal it. Their plan was a desperate one, the kind that had been forced upon them at the last minute when no better options were available. Venick’s jaw ached from clenching it, his shoulders creeping to his ears, certain that any moment he would be noticed…
Except?
Except…these elves were exhausted. As Venick and his team slipped into their midst, blending among their unorganized ranks, he could see their downcast eyes, the heavy drag of their feet. Then Venick remembered that this contingent had been sent on a suicide mission, tasked with carting and later detonating their supply of black powder, and things began to make more sense. Venick had expected a bunch of zealots, but what he saw was a band of southerners who hadn’t recovered from the battle at Hurendue, who were running on the last of their strength, and walking to their deaths besides.
Venick risked a glance behind him. He caught the eye of his five waiting infiltrators and twitched his hand:now.
In unison, each resistance member slid in a different direction and approached one of the supply wagons, which were manned by an elf in the front but unguarded at the back. Venick did the same, peeling sideways, stationing himself behind a wagon. Once in position, it was a simple matter of waiting for a moment when no one was looking to grab the handrail and hoist himself up through the curtain and into the wagon’s cabin.
Which Venick did, swiftly, with as much elven-like grace as he could muster. Once inside, he flung back his hood. Before him was a heaping pile of black powder contained within cloth sacks. Working quickly, Venick cut small holes into the corners of the sacks, directing the flow of black powder down through cracks in the wagon’s planking. The sacks would slowly drain through the floor as the wagon moved, the powder blending with the dirt road below. Once the sacks had all been bled, Venick turned his attention upwards, slicing several notches into the wagon’s canvas ceiling. Before, he had hoped the storm would hold, but now he wished for rain. It would handle what the leaks did not—black powder, when exposed to water, was rendered useless.
Venick was sheathing his knife and redrawing his hood when a voice said, “Hello?”
He looked up.
A southerner had appeared at the back of the wagon. His golden eyes slid from Venick’s knife up his arm, to his face. He said, “You.”
Venick moved, ramming the pommel of his dagger against the elf’s temple to knock him unconscious.
???
“You lied.” Ellina’s voice threaded high as she watched the guards secure their position, blocking her sole escape path. “You said we were alone. The door—”
“Wewerealone,” Farah replied. “These eight were waiting on a launch hidden in the moat behind the manor. It was only after we were inside that they returned. As for the lock,” Farah tipped her chin, “did you really think this door had only a single key?”
Ellina’s heart was trying to batter its way out of her chest. Her plan was sand through her fingers, scattered around her feet. She thought of Branton and Lin Lill waiting outside, the odds that they had seen the guards enter the manor, whether or not they might try to follow. She glanced at the candle, burned halfway down its final notch.
She needed more time.
“What will you do once I’m dead?” Ellina asked. “Killing me will not end this war.”
“Killing you holds its own appeal.”
Farah, despite having every upper hand, still looked unwell. Her eyes had gone bloodshot, her completion shifting from white to sickly grey. When she took a step forward, her thigh trembled, as if straining to bear her weight.
“You have always had everything you could possibly want,” Farah said. “Every advantage, every opportunity. You were bondmated to Raffan—”
“Against my will.”
“—and you turned up your nose at him. You were a highborn princess—”
“Not by choice.”
“—yet you renounced your status to join the legion. And still,somehow, you were our mother’s favorite, and Miria’s. All those years, I had to watch the two of you together, the best of friends. You never cared to invite me into your games—”
“You hated games.”
