“Farah sent me.”
“Whatever message she asked you to deliver—”
“Not with a message. She sent me here to scout.”
“That is a lie.”
When Raffan merely looked at her, Ellina groped for the right words to explain. “I saw the way you two were in Evov. My sister favors you. She likes to keep you close.”
“Does she.” He spoke as if they were sharing a private joke.
“Besides,” Ellina went on, “Farah has enough spies. She would not have sent you on a scouting mission. You are too valuable to be doing her grunt work.”
Raffan touched the side of his broken nose, an absentminded gesture. “Your sister has been…displeased with me. She has begun to doubt my loyalties.”
Ellina eyed him. “Why?”
“Hesitating to kill you outside of Hurendue might have something to do with it.” He dropped his hand. “Farah has been attempting to punish me by assigning me tasks that are below my rank. But I wanted to come.”
Ellina ignored the question pushing at her ribs. It was a wide funnel, dark, sucking in all the light. She was not yet ready to face it.
Instead, she repeated her earlier question. “Why are you here,Raffan?”
“I wanted to speak with you.”
“And here we are,” Ellina said. “Speaking.”
Raffan twitched his mouth, then winced, as if the movement caused him pain. “You despise me.”
“Is that what you came to ask? If I despise you?”
“No.” He stood from the stool, a great unfolding of his limbs, then stepped carefully closer, his hands curling around the bars of his cell. His broken face reminded Ellina of a living corpse, all deep gashes and purple bruises. It was difficult to look at him directly.
He said, “I came to ask that you surrender to your sister.”
Ellina laughed. She turned to leave.
“Ellina, please. Hear me out.”
“You have gone mad.”
“I am begging you.”
She glanced back, then spun all the way around. He had dropped to his knees.
“This war has been more costly than Farah expected,” Raffan said, hands still clutching the iron bars, knees pressing into the stone floor. “Our losses in Hurendue were heavy. Most of our conjurors have been killed.Youkilled them. Your sister is…worried. She is beginning to think that she cannot win this war.”
“And yet you ask usto surrender.”
“Because Farah never will.” Raffan’s voice went sheer. “She will turn this war into a massacre, for both sides. She has been gathering black powder from every human city we conquer. I have tried to warn her that it is not safe to keep so much black powder in one location, but Farah does not wantto be safe. If victory becomes too hard to grasp, she will detonate her entire supply at once. The explosion alone will level everything for leagues, and the ensuing fire will do the rest. She would rather destroy us all—elves and humans, her enemies and her allies—than live with the humiliation of defeat. You have not seen the way Farah has been acting lately. How this war has…consumed her.”
Yet Ellina had seen this. She remembered facing Farah outside of Hurendue, her sister’s strange smile, the harsh, shrieking quality of her voice.Deranged,Venick had said, though Ellina was not entirely sure that was true. Farah was awake to her own desires and their consequences. She merely no longer had any reason to hold herself back.
“You can change our fate,” Raffan insisted. “If youproposed a peace treaty, you could surrender on certain conditions. The mainlands would have their freedom. Farah would own the territory, and humans would recognize Farah as their queen, but they could govern independently.”
“You would have them answer to a queen who aimed to steal their homes and kill their families?”
“It would be better than sure destruction.” Raffan worked the bars between his fists, his shoulders bunching under his shirt. “Farah is currently hiding out at Revalti Manor. It is an elfland estate surrounded by a moat, just inside the border.”
