She took the letter from his hand, undid the creases he’d made, then pulled a quill and ink from her jacket’s breast pocket. It took a moment for her to uncork the miniature ink bottle, dip the nib. The metal tip scratched and splatted as she scribbled.I will not accept the throne.
Venick frowned. “You wouldn’t?”
More scribbling.I see now why Miria chose to escape to the mainlands. Power destroyed my family. I do not want to end up like my mother, or Farah.
“What do you want, then?”
Ellina stared at the page. Her eyes became distant. Venick had the sense that she was gazing into the past as she wrote,I want to be free.
Venick looked at her looped cursive. Thin ink, longp’sandy’s,all the empty space around the writing. “That’s what I want, too.”
She set down the supplies, dropped her chin into her palm. Overhead, the stars wheeled on their axes.
Venick’s eyes fell to her lapel. He kept his voice light. “Whose jacket is that?”
Her smile turned coy.
He shrugged. “Just a question.”
Sure,her face seemed to say.
“It’s new. I wonder where it came from.”
Maybe it was a gift.
“Wasit a gift?”
And if it was?
Venick gave another shrug. Quietly, with that same sense of saying too much, yet holding himself to honesty: “You could wear my jacket. You can have anything of mine.”
Ellina’s smile softened. She reached again for the quill.The jacket is Erol’s.
“But it’s not white,” Venick blurted. Ellina blinked, and then they were both laughing—he, in a loud burst, and she, with silent shudders. And even after they’d quieted again, and Venick asked Ellina another question, something lighthearted that had nothing to do with the war, that laughter seemed to hover in the air around them for a long time after.
NINETEEN
What is going on here?” Lin Lill demanded.
Venick woke with a start, squinting into the morning light. His clothes were damp, his boots tightly laced. To the left of his vision, his tent swayed in the wind, unoccupied. To the right, Lin Lill’s head loomed like a black eclipse, a moon to block the sun.
Venick pushed to his elbows, glancing over to see Ellina looking similarly disoriented. He remembered, as if waking up again, how he and Ellina had talked late into the night, lying back on the blanket and staring up at the starry sky. They’d fallen asleep like that, side by side.
“Did you two sleep together?” Lin Lill asked.
Venick choked. “Lin.”
“You know what I mean.” The ranger crossed her arms, fingers drumming along her biceps. Her hair was plaited in three long braids that day, each end knotted with a strip of leather. Venick had the fleeting thought of a head of snakes. “The soldiers are all talking,” she continued, throwing Ellina an apologetic glance, “and I hate to be the one to bring this back up—”
“So don’t.”
Lin Lill gave him a narrow look. “You would have me shirk my duty?”
“Babysitting me isn’t your duty.” Venick spoke around the rising heat in his cheeks. “And even if it was, you’d have already failed.”
She blinked, open-mouthed. “What?”
“Ellina and I have been here all night. As the head of my guard, you should know that. Yet you seem surprised.”
