“I love you,” Adrissu said, pulling back enough to look Ruan in the face. The human’s grin faltered, eyes softening. “If you remember anything, remember that. I love you.”
Ruan nodded. Adrissu stared into his eyes in silence, memorizing the familiar golden brown—every part of him radiated warmth, like he carried a tiny sun within him that made him glow with its rays.
“Well, who knows?” Ruan finally broke the silence with a nervous chuckle. “I might come back from this in one piece, and then we’ve had all this fuss for nothing. Stranger things have happened.”
In his gut, Adrissu knew it was impossible. But still he smiled and smoothed back Ruan’s hair with one hand.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Perhaps.”
Three days later, he watched Ruan leave Polimnos on horseback with the full force of Polimnos’ mercenary guild.
The shield upon Ruan’s back that Adrissu had gifted him so long ago gleamed in the sun, and Adrissu watched its flickering light until his eyes watered, until the shape of Ruan was lost to the indistinct crowd of human bodies moving steadily westward. The reassurance of their soul bond was now only the barest comfort: a single ember amidst the icy cold fear that spread further through his chest with every beat of his heart.
Ruan did not return.
It took three weeks for any news to reach them.
Autreth had vanquished the forces of Polimnos, decimating almost their entire army before the last remaining warriors surrendered. Those last few were now being escorted back to the city with the invading force, who would officially proclaim Polimnos as part of the Federation of Autreth.
The courier cried the message all through town, shouting it over and over in the town square amidst the weeping of those who had remained behind. Adrissu listened from Saltspire Tower—his mind blank, his limbs cold and heavy. He did not realize Vesper had curled into his lap until she was slithering across his neck and draping herself over him, the only way she could embrace him.
She missed Ruan. She feared for his life. He could only shake his head and run his fingers along her cool skin.
The Federation forces were five days behind the courier who had come with their proclamation. When they arrived, there were a hundred of them, most on horseback, along with twenty-one survivors from Polimnos who followed on foot in a closely-guarded cluster. Adrissu craned his neck from where he stood in front of the council hall with the remaining councilors, waiting for the representatives to approach. He did not see Maya Graylight. He did not see Yue Lang.
He did not see Ruan. The cold numbness that had permeated his chest and his limbs sunk down through his veins into his bones. His mate was gone. He knew it as surely as he knew that he could breathe fire.
“People of Polimnos!” a man on horseback shouted, carrying a tall flag of the Federation with him. He was dressed as a knight, but he was not one of the original five who had come to Polimnos. It was good that Adrissu did not recognize him; if he had, he might not have been able to stop himself from killing the man then and there. “You are now all citizens of the Federation of Autreth! You will be treated with the dignity such citizenship demands. We came here not to destroy your city, but to lift it in unity, so that Autreth may never be conquered again. As long as you cooperate, no harm shall come to you.”
Adrissu thought that he should be enraged, expecting the bitter sting of bile in the back of his throat as the knight’s words all but denied how hundreds of citizens of Polimnos had just fought and died at the sword of Autreth. But nothing pierced through his numbness, like a sheet of ice enclosed around his body. Nothing mattered if Ruan was gone.
The knight rode up to him and the remaining councilors: Cyrus, Shefali, Abe, Benil, and Ellisa.
“You are the council of Polimnos,” he said, no longer shouting.
“We are what’s left of the Polimnos council, yes,” Cyrus replied. His voice was hoarse as he spoke. Adrissu felt the knight’s gaze linger on him as he looked them over: the only elf on the council, the only elf in Polimnos.
“Let us discuss the terms of Polimnos’ annexation, then,” the knight said brusquely. He plunged the long pole of his flag into the dirt and dismounted from his horse. A page came up alongside him, taking his helmet in one hand and his horse’s reins in the other, and the group behind the knight began to dismount from their horses as well.
Adrissu turned to follow, as they began to file into the meeting hall, when a hiss of a voice called out to him.
“Adrissu!”
He turned back, frowning, to see one of the now released survivors hurrying toward him. It took a moment for him to recognize Ederick, the head instructor of the mercenary’s guild—his armor was dirty and bloodied, as if he had not washed since they’d first set out, and both his eyes were bruised and swollen, making his face puffy.
“Ederick,” he replied evenly, pausing.
“Don’t let them see this, and don’t tell anyone I gave it to you,” Ederick said, his voice low as he loosened the bag strapped to his back. The makeshift rucksack looked as if it had once been a large bag of grain crudely affixed with rope, and was stuffed full as if all of Ederick’s worldly belongings were within. With some effort, Ederick pulled out a large item: a disk shape wrapped in dirty cloth. “This belongs to you.”
Adrissu took it and pulled back the cloth enough to see. The gleaming metal of Ruan’s shield shone up at him, revealing one eye of the inlaid dragon. Adrissu choked, covering it back quickly and biting his lip to keep from crying out. His eyes suddenly burned, his vision blurring.
“I knew as soon as any of these bastards from Gennemont saw that, they’d try and take it for themselves,” Ederick muttered, shaking his head. “But if anyone deserves it, it’s you. I... I’m sorry. It was all I could find of him.”
A sob escaped Adrissu, and he clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle his cry, as the other hand clutched the shield to his chest, as if he could press it through his ribs and into his heart. Distantly, he was aware of Ederick’s rough hand on his shoulder, his voice low and murmuring something he couldn’t understand.
His shield. The shield he had commissioned for Ruan, the one he had enchanted himself, so that it might keep him safe—it was all that was left of him. The only testament to the last decade of his life was here in his arms.
“Thank you,” he managed to choke out, when he felt like he could breathe again, wiping his face with one hand. It was, he thought, the first time that he had thanked a human other than Ruan and sincerely meant it. “I can never repay you for this. Thank you.”
