I nod, and he helps me back up into my chair.
“You were only out for a moment,” Seniia says. “Luckily, Vilder here has reflexes of another world, so he got you before you hit your head on the floor.” She cocks her head at him. “Rather sexy.”
“For Mah’s sake, Seniia.” He shakes his head. “Laïna just fainted, and that’s all you can think about? Aren’t you supposed to be a healer if you grew up at the Temple of Briah?”
She waves a hand at him, then places her left palm on top of my heart and closes her eyes as if listening for something. “She’s fine,” she says after a moment, her blue-green gaze meeting mine. “Youarefine, right?”
I nod, even though the anxiety is still clawing at my chest. I take a couple deep breaths to calm myself.
“There is a pull,” I say to Seniia. “Toward there.” I point toward somewhere in the west.
Vilder lets out a low whistle. “That would be the direction of the Arc.”
“What does that mean?” I glance between the two of them.
“It means that your friend Llyr is a fully trained elen, a C’elen,” Seniia states. “And a promise given to a C’elen cannot be broken, as sure as they cannot break a promise given to you. It’s called a soulbinding.”
Soulbinding. Is there nowhere I can go where I won’t be bound? Is there no escape for me? I brace my hand on the table to make sure I’m not falling off the chair again. Secrets. So many secrets. It makes me wonder if anything I know is real.
My destructive thoughts are interrupted by Seniia as she leans in closer, her button nose scrunching in a way that makes her freckles dance.
“You have a strange scent. Not unpleasant, but strange.” She frowns as she leans back in her chair to get a better view of me. “Youlookhuman, but, well, as I said, you smell...” She wrinkles her nose in that feline sort of way again. “Weird.”
“Why, thank you.” I give her a flat stare. Despite washing myself in the river this morning, my travel-worn clothes probably stink.Maybe you should have had the decency to stay away from people until you had a new set of clothes, Laïna.
“No, it’s not that. Or... it’s notonlythat.”
“I think what Seniia is trying to say is that you don’t smell the same as most other humans,” Vilder says, leaning back in his chair.
I press my lips together, face on fire. Are we really discussing how Ismell? “And how is that?” I press out.
“Well, as a mixture of sweat and fear and whatever food they have consumed, mixed with the scent of soap if they have washed recently. Their scent also tends to give away their emotions. Yours doesn’t.”
Not too pleasant, in other words, but I knew that. The nauseating smell of Bronich—a mix of decay and burnt flesh—floods my thoughts. I quickly push the depressing image out of my head.
“You, on the other hand,” Seniia says, gesturing toward me, “smell like you arewearinga smell. Right, Vilder?”
“True.” He stares me up and down. “Perhaps she’s a halfling?” He cocks his head. “That would be sad though, since they are forbidden...” He draws a finger across his neck.
I stare at him. Is he joking? “A halfling? That’s a thing?”
He shrugs. “You tell me.” He studies me with a serious expression that makes me increasingly uncomfortable. Then I notice how the corners of his mouth begin to curl upward.
I glare at him. “No,” I say. “No, I’m not.”
“Good.” He smirks. “I’d have hated to have to execute you right away.” He takes a sip of his cider. “Ouch!” He fixes Seniia,who just kicked him under the table,with an indignant stare. “What was that for?”
“I told you to be nice! The poor girl grew up inside the Void, Vilder,the Void!Hasn’t she been through enough?” She rolls her eyes at him.
He lifts his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” he says to me.
“It’s all right,” I say quickly. “But why are halflings forbidden?”
Seniia winces. “Halflings are . . . complicated. When humans left their home and arrived on Rea centuries ago, we learned that mixing our bloodlines had . . . consequences.” She hesitates, glancing at me. “They inherit access to elen—celestial magic—from their Rean parent, but humans—” Another pause. “Humans are more easily corrupted. More susceptible to greed, manipulation. When you give that kind of person access to elen's power, it rarely ends well. The Council had no choice.”
I want to argue, to defend my kind, but I think of the Minister, of Master Coperie, of Bronich, and I know she’s right.
“And Reans, what do they smell like?” I ask, eager to change the topic.
