“Like I hurt you,” Ellina replied. “By choice, again and again, when I could have done otherwise.”
Venick’s voice went hard. “That was different.”
“I am not so sure.”
“He’s a traitor. He wanted this war. He chose Farah’s side.”
“He regrets it, I think.”
“Are you saying that you want to hear him out because he feelsguilty?”
“I am saying that he was given a choice, and he made the wrong one, and now he is asking to speak to me.”
“He doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”
Ellina was angry then, too. “I never said he did. But if not for him, I might still be trapped in that prison.”
“If not for him, you wouldn’t have evenbeenin that prison.”
“I know. I can know that and still want to speak with him.”
Bournmay pressed harder into Venick’s leg, echoing his agitation. He gripped the scruff of her neck, not so much to control her, but more like a child gripping a favored blanket.
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Venick said. “He shouldn’t be setting the terms. He should never again order you to do anything.”
Ellina saw how Venick struggled to restrain himself, and how the mere act of his restraint revealed the depth of his anger. Her own outrage drained. She was reminded that their histories with Raffan were different, and that if she was in Venick’s place, she would hate this, too.
Ellina reached for the hand that clutched Bournmay’s scruff, opened his palm to the sky. “I have upset you.”
“Yes, I’m upset. It’s upsetting to hear you defend someone who has hurt you.”
“But that is not the only reason.”
Venick watched her trace the lines of his palm with her finger. He looked miserable. “You and Raffan share a past. You were close, once. And he was your bondmate. He has a certain…claim to you.”
Ellina brought Venick’s hand up and kissed it. “He did once. But not anymore.”
???
The prison was a cool, rough-walled building with cells spanning its entire length. The floors looked recently swept, but the lamps were dusty, cobwebs clogging the ceiling’s high arches. If there had once been other prisoners kept there, they had since been moved. Every cell was empty, save the last.
Raffan sat on a three-legged stool at the back of the farthest prison block, watching Ellina approach. Though Venick claimed that Raffan had come quietly, this could not be entirely true. There was a cut across his left cheek, the skin around his eye the color of an eggplant, and though Ellina saw no evidence of blood, his once perfect nose now jutted right.
“That will need to be set,” she said.
He wheezed a little, what might have been a laugh. “I do not suppose you are offering?”
No, Ellina wanted to say, she was not. Let his nose heal crooked. Let him bear the reminder of his fights, as she bore hers.
Yet this vengeful thought quickly dissolved into another. She thought of Raffan coming toherprison cell. How he had risked exposure and possible punishment to tend to her wound in Evov…a wound that he himself had inflicted.
I wonder why you have risked coming at all,said the memory of Kaji’s voice.
It was never supposed to be this way.
Ellina’s pulse was in her head. It was in her hands. She saw Raffan as he was then, face marred but golden eyes untouched. He was looking at her like he still knew her, like she was the same elf she used to be, which made her feel like the same elf she used to be. It was something Ellina had once longed for, but no longer did.
She halted a few paces away from Raffan’s cell so that even if he came to the bars and reached all the way through, he would not be able to touch her. “Why are you here?”
