Ellina’s attention swung to Harmon.Harmon,who was supposed to be safe in hiding, had somehow been discovered, and was now being dragged forward by the coven leader. He threw her to the ground. His claw-toed boots looked disturbingly lifelike as he drew up his foot, aiming the talons at Harmon’s head.
Later, Ellina would think back on this moment. She would imagine how things would have gone had she made a different choice, ignored the woman’s cry, finished the task she had come to finish. Ellina would touch gentle fingers to her throat and think of her own voice, the mid-range tones, and how she did not miss the ability to speak so much as she missed the way speaking made her feel: like she was limitless.
Ellina switched her single arrow away from Balid and towards the coven leader. She let the arrow fly.
A clean hit, straight through his skull.
The elf jerked from the force of impact, collapsing like an under-stuffed doll. Harmon was nearly crushed beneath his weight, but she managed to shove out of range, panicked and scrambling.
The darkness lifted. Like a dissipating fog, the sky was suddenly revealed, bluer and brighter than before. The sounds of fighting trickled away as the conjurors spotted their fallen leader, the lifting sun. Their hands fell. Their summoned shadows faded. Whatever spell had been reversed with the leader’s death, it severed their momentum, leaving them exposed.
The enemy retreated, and Balid along with them.
ELEVEN
Venick felt like his mind had been blunted. The conjurors were gone. The land was still. Yet the silence had come abruptly, like the plop of a stone into water, and the sudden quiet was jarring to his battle-heightened senses.
Ellina stood nearby, staring into the distance. Not necessarily in the direction the conjurors had fled. Not really at anything. She was wearing only a band of fabric around her chest, one bicep smeared with blood, her left hand held awkwardly at her side. As the sky pushed past dawn into a labored sort of daylight, the sun touched her face, and Venick’s heart thumped painfully at what it showed.
Grief. Ellina looked the way she had in Irek when they’d stood on the beach, and she’d tried to explain things, and he’d drawn his sword on her. Or—no. She looked like she had when she’d taken a beating for him in the forest last summer. There was that same tight mouth, the same too-large eyes. A hard choice, and all its consequences.
Venick started towards her. He didn’t yet know what he’d say. Didn’t really think it mattered. This had been their chance to win back her voice, and they’d lost it, and now she was hurting.
He couldn’t stand to see her hurting.
Before Venick had taken three steps, however, Harmon was there, drawing Ellina’s attention with a word.
Venick halted. Sun reflected off the stones, a white contrast to the earlier dark. The air was crisp, a little dusty. Quiet enough to carry voices, even distant ones, even those pitched down to whispers.
But Venick shouldn’t strain to hear what Harmon was saying. He shouldn’t worry about the obvious emotion in Ellina’s face, or the choice she’d made, or how it might change things between those two. Slowly, with effort, he pulled his attention back to the clearing where three dead conjurors lay. He focused on those bodies, the tangle of ghostly limbs, the way death stripped the elves of their menace.
A victory.
Right. A victory. Three dead enemy was better than no dead enemy. And yet, Venick couldn’t quite ignore the chill that crept under his skin, prickling up his spine, over his scalp. They’d tried to spring an ambush and had been ambushed instead.
Not your fault.
Except that it washis fault. Venick didn’t know if Inra had tricked him, or if the conjurors had merely figured she’d been captured and made to talk. Either way, Venick should have anticipated something like this. He should have created a contingency plan in case things went awry. Instead, he’d blazed forward with all the finesse of an angry bull. It was a mistake that belied his experience.
“We will burn the bodies,” Lin Lill said, appearing at his side. There was a slice along her bicep, weeping blood. Another across the back of her hand. She seemed to notice neither. “So that the dead may not rise again.”
Venick was glad for the task. For any task. He got to work searching for twigs and branches, dried grass, anything that would burn. Branton, Artis, and Lin Lill joined the effort, and soon they’d managed to gather a sizable pile of kindling. It wouldn’t be enough to cremate the corpses, not like a true pyre, but it would prevent the dead from walking.
When Artis began dragging one of the bodies forward, however, Branton stopped him with a hand. “Look.”
Branton crouched down and pulled something from around the elf’s neck. It was a slim glass vial attached to a silver chain, filled with what appeared to be a pale green liquid. Branton uncorked the bottle. Sniffed.
“Don’tsniffit.”
Venick swung around to see Harmon marching forward, Ellina following closely behind. Harmon swiped the vial from Branton’s hand, then shook it in his face. “This could be poison.”
Branton raised his hands in defense. “So?”
“So,not all poisons must be ingested. Some are airborne. Some carry lethal fumes.” Harmon looked around the group, seemingly baffled by their blank expressions. “Don’t you know that?”
“Elves do not have to worry about poison,” Lin Lill said. “We are immune to most toxins.”
“Oh, fineexcuse.”
