“You nearly succumbed to your wounds last night,” Elon said. “We’re fortunate my sister could bring what I needed to treat the infection.”
He attempted to thank him, but Rawn drifted away again. The next time he woke, he could finally sit up. But not for long; it made him dizzy. The best he could do was slump against the cold wall.
“Who is Aerina? You call for her in your sleep.”
“My wife…” Rawn stared at the wall, seeing past it to the land of his home. “She is the one Anon came for…”
Elon made an incredulous sound. “The Princess of Greenwood?”
“I was never meant for her, yet that didn’t prevent me from loving her all the same. I would have made an absolute fool of myself to spend merely one more minute with her...” Rawn weakly rambled on about the rest of the tale, from how Leif allowed them to marry, to the birth of his son, then leaving home and living as a vagrant for years until they caught him. They both fell silent, looking at their surroundings.
Rawn took a moment to work up the courage to ask. “Sylar?”
“Anon lied.” Elon leaned his head back against the wall. “He doesn’t have him. Only my sister.”
Rawn allowed himself to feel relief. “Did he harm her?”
Elon didn’t answer, and his relief faded.
“I’m sorry … God of Urn knows I have no knowledge of the key. My memories were veiled somehow. The little I recollected came to me when they held me underwater.”
Elon studied him thoughtfully. “Curious…”
From what Rawn knew of such spells, whoever placed it also locked it behind a trigger. Did he need to nearly die to remember what he’d forgotten?
“Regardless of who cast the spell, I will find no answers now.” He exhaled a heavy breath, making the dust in the air stir. “If only I had known what it meant when I took up the sword for the crown.”
“Do you regret it?”
Rawn leaned up against the wall with his shoulder, careful not to disturb the salve on his back. He thought of his sister, and his heart ached. “I had spent many years regretting my service, then I regretted my oath. I never intended to leave my family this long, but fighting for the future of Greenwood has been a noble choice. I must believe that it is worth something.”
“Noble…” Elon retorted, staring blankly at the wall. “I have never understood the meaning of that word. Was it noble to torture elves not born of my country? Was it noble to serve my father’s commands blindly, no matter the depravity of my deeds? I was one of many bastards vying for a place in his halls until I realized that wasn’t what I wanted. But I left these sands soaked in the blood I spilled. If rotting here is the price of my sins … may it be the first and last of my noble deeds.”
The blood of elves also soaked Rawn’s hands. It had colored his cloak and gave him a moniker by which he was ashamed. “It couldn’t have been your first one,” he murmured. Elon glanced at him questioningly. “You spared Sylar and chose to raise two sons with him. They’re not yours by blood, I take it.”
A faint sadness crossed Elon’s face as his one eye stared blankly at the ground. “Four years ago, we found them within an overturned carriage outside the border of Dwarf Shoe,” he murmured. “Their mother and father had defected and attempted to flee, but the Bloodhounds caught them…”
Rawn’s stomach sank. Red Highland sent the hounds to hunt them down. How they must have felt to be steps from freedom, only to have it snatched away.
“They were babes. Hardly months old. Spared because of their mother’s love. We only heard their cries, for Sylar had sensed them hidden behind her protection spell. ‘They are ours now,’ he said.” A rare smile touched the edge of Elon’s mouth. “Henceforth, they were. I never understood how that could happen. That something so small and helpless could become everything to you…”
Rawn understood perfectly, for he felt the same when his son was born. “To have a child, it’s a peculiar kind of love. You would tear out a piece of you and consume any darkness to protect them. Including killing your mate’s childhood friend.”
Elon smirked. “And I would do so without hesitation, Norrlen.”
He chuckled. “Then why save my life again when you believe this place will be our tomb?”
“Sooner be,” he corrected. “I was not waiting here to die. I was only waiting for you.”
He lifted a tiny leather pouch in his fingers.
Rawn recognized it as the same one Dyna had pinned to the inside of his cloak.
“I found it on you when we left Dwarf Shoe and I tended to your wounds,” Elon told him. “I knew it may give us a chance, so I made sure that they wouldn’t find it.”
Rawn rubbed his chest where arrows had shot him over a week ago and found a fresh bandage.
Elon handed him the pouch. He turned it over in his palm and out fell the dried four-leaf clover. An amber bead with a black clover inside rolled out next.
