“Like?”
“They think you’re a ghost,” Venick admitted with a smile. “Or that your clothes were a gift from the gods.”
Erol gave another laugh. “I think if the men wanted to know the truth, they’d have watched me more closely. But I understand. I also like to believe in magic, even when there are more likely explanations. Makes the world a little more hopeful, don’t you think?”
Venick didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure it was wise to willfully believe in something just because you wanted it to be true. That tendency had gotten Venick into trouble in the past, on more than one occasion.
He thought of his father. General Atlas was a man Venick had respected and admired and, in the end, murdered. Atlas had betrayed Venick by revealing his relationship with Miria to the southern elves, which led to her death. At the time, Venick had believed that killing his father was the only way to ease his own pain. He’d wanted it to be. But it hadn’t eased his pain, hadn’t solved anything, and now that murder would always be a part of Venick, like a cut that never fully heals.
Erol spoke into the night. “What was it like, in Evov?”
Venick looked at the healer, who had turned away from the fire. His face was in shadow. Venick could not tell what it showed. “I thought you already knew.”
“I haven’t been back in a long time. And now it seems I may never return.”
“You think Evov is gone for good?”
“It’s possible. The city was built by human conjurors. Its magic is ancient, and little understood, now that the ones who built it are gone.” Erol stared out across the Taro, whose far bank melted into the dark. “You know what Evov means, don’t you? It’s elven forlost.Over time, elves reinvented the word to meanhidden,but that’s not why Evov was built. It was never meant to be a hidden city to safeguard the queen—it was meant to be a haven for those who were lost.”
Erol’s voice was wistful, and Venick felt a stab of sympathy. He knew what it was like to mourn a lost home.
“The city was beautiful,” Venick said in answer to the man’s question. “But cold.”
“Like the elves themselves.”
Venick nodded.
Later, though, when he was alone again in his tent, Venick found himself remembering Ellina. The flush that sometimes crept into her cheeks. The way she could look at him, and how for the length of that gaze, there was no war and no killing and nothing to be fixed. Nothing but the two of them, breathing each other’s space.
No,Venick thought as he drifted,not like the elves.
It was the last thought in his head before sleep pulled him under.
???
The following morning, Venick woke feeling flat. He rolled to his knees, stared at his hands where they pressed into his bedroll. He made fists of the fabric.
Outside his tent, men and elves had begun breaking down camp, pulling on layers, gathering their tins to stand in line for rations of bread and—for the humans—roasted oxen. They cursed the cold, but the mood was lighter than it had been; the storm had cleared.
Venick went to Eywen. Her winter coat had grown in, which was good for her, but meant extra work for him. He found a coarse comb and started brushing through the most important places: behind her elbows, under her jaw, around where her saddle would rub. As Venick listened to the methodic sweep of the bristles, he remembered his dream, even though he had the sense that it would hurt him to remember. Ellina had been part of it. Most of it. He’d taken her to the cove he’d told her about from his boyhood, and even though it was just a dream, and impossible, he wantedit to be real, wanted her to see the place where he’d learned to swim, which he remembered so fondly, and loved. There was a tide of longing in his stomach.
Venick was absorbed by the frustrating memories of his dream, and so he didn’t at first notice the surprised murmur sweeping through the camp. But then a lowlander said, “Dear reeking gods.” Venick heard a splash.
He looked up.
There, swimming through the river, her hair a black blanket, skin grey, was Ellina.
SEVENTEEN
Venick went to her. He splashed through the shallows, water churning up to his knees, river-grime to mix with the mud. He helped haul her up the shore, their hips bumping, feet tangling in the weeds. Ellina’s shoulders shook. Her hair was plastered to her face. She had been swimming for—gods, how long? Everything about her was stiff and wrong.
Once out of the water, Venick took Ellina by the upper arms, turned her to face him. She carried no belongings that he could see. No spare clothes, no map, not even a water canteen. He tried to tamp down his building panic. “Did you swim all the way from Igor?”
Her golden eyes lifted to his. Her gaze was slightly vacant.
“Ellina, I’m serious.” He could hear his own voice, the raw, grating sound of it. “What’s going on?”
Branton appeared with a water jug, Artis with a blanket. They wrapped Ellina in the coarse wool, then walked her the short distance to Venick’s tent, using their bodies to shield her from curious eyes. Venick dug through Eywen’s saddlebag for dry clothes, a round of hard cheese. He took the water from Branton, pressed all of it into her hands. “Use my tent. Change, eat. We’ll be here.”
