“In the henhouse.” Elloven couldn’t tell what was happening below, only that it would be a terrible time to return to the ground without her disguise. She’d panicked and run without even grabbing a cloak. “Please, Uma, they’ll torture you. They’ll torture your father, your brother. They already know you’re fond of me. Don’t make this worse on yourself.”
Uma’s shrug lacked concern. “Well that’s just too far to walk around looking as you do. I can... I’ll go get them. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll bring the clothing here.” She braced between the door and the lip of the platform with a furtive glance behind her. “But there’s something else you should know.”
Elloven almost laughed. “What else could there be?”
“Someone has come for you. He says he’s a friend, and he’s waiting on the other side of the wall. I didn’t... I didn’t trust him at first, but he knew things about your mother, and you’d told me the same things. He knew about your... um, birthmark. He can get you out of here safely, but we don’t have time to waste and wonder,” the girl said. She palmed the wooden ground with an impatient grunt. “My lady!”
It took Elloven a few moments to form a response through her confusion. “Who’s come for me?” It was the birthmark comment she kept returning to. The only men who had seen it were dead or many miles away, so this was either a trap or her life was about to get even more complicated.
“He called himself Taven. He didn’t give his family name.”
Elloven spun all the way around with a stammer. “Are you certain that was his name? That’s what he said? Taven? What did he look like?” If someone was posing as Taven, they’d have a hard time doing so convincingly unless they had the same distinct features.
“He’s, ah, quite tall, my lady, and his ears...” Uma said. “And he’s?—”
“Right here,” Taven said, pushing up behind Uma. He towered even from halfway up the stairs. His breath out was swollen and dramatic, like he’d reserved it so she’d see the great effort he’d expended on her behalf. “Ellie... my beloved. What a sight you still are.”
Elloven could only frown and stare. Taven. Taven was there. In Whitechurch. Standing on the steps to the perch. It was as impossible as anything else that had happened to her there, but somehow the least plausible. “What are you doing here?”
“I had a clairsight.” He nodded at Uma. “Sorry, Uma, I couldn’t wait on the other side when I saw how many men were already out there looking for her. Go on. If they ask, you tell them you saw your lady elsewhere. Somewhere far from here. Consider it your final act of service.”
“My lady?”
“It’s all right, Uma. Go on, before they realize what you’ve done.” The effort it took to smile was worth it after all the girl had done for her. “Your kindness has meant so much to me. It would break my heart to see you punished for it.”
Uma nodded with one last helpless look at Elloven before clambering down.
“What? What did you see?” Elloven’s heart throbbed hard enough to constrict her throat, and she almost choked trying to swallow. She didn’t ask how he’d found Uma, because meeting her had probably been part of his vision, but how had he slipped past the guards? He looked nothing like anyone there. Taven, with his long, dark hair and even darker eyes, taller than the Guardians on high. Ears that came to the subtlest point, instead of rounding at the top. But it wouldn’t be the first time he’d slithered through spaces unwelcome and unseen.
“After nearly a decade, and a trail of bodies to your name, this is how you greet me? Your first words, to me?” He had the audacity to look hurt.
Elloven didn’t have the endurance for his bruised feelings. The clash of past and present was too disorienting on the heels of the bloodbath she’d caused. But if he knew Fabrien and his friends were dead, then he’d known before it had happened, and how. He’d known what Fabrien and the others had done to her, for years. “What would you have me say, Taven? It took you seven whole years to decide I needed help.”
He seemed to consider his words, eyes turned away. “Your husband is dead.”
“I’m aware.”
“Because you killed him.”
She shrugged, a gesture in dire opposition to the vortex of unrest within, but the suddenness of his unexpected arrival kept most of her words bottled.
Taven had always been very serious, even when they were children. “All these years... the rumors of his malice spread all the way to us in Riverchapel... so why wait so long? Seven years, Ellie, you could have been home so bloody long ago.”
“You’re the prophet.” Elloven crossed her arms in protest to the urgency in his eyes. He’d always set the course, and she’d always followed. Not anymore. She was no longer that girl. If she’d been stronger, found her fight sooner, she never would have been. “And if you saw what I’d do, then you already know what happens next.”
“What I’ve seen, Ellie, is we need to leave this cursed place.” A deep, uneven line rutted deep between his brows.
“I appreciate you clarifying what is painfully obvious already, but why should I go with you?” He’d always parceled just enough information, one of the many ways he used authority over her, but she no longer hung on his every word, or lived for his praise. If he wanted her to leave with him, he would tell her why or she’d find her own way, as she’d intended all along.
He shifted the door onto his shoulder. “Can we talk about this from the road? When there aren’t dozens of men looking for the late lord’s wife so they can cart her up the hill in triumph and burn her?”
“Is that what you saw? Me burning?”
“Ellie, please. I know you’re surprised to see me, that you’re hurt I didn’t come sooner, but none of that matters now. I have a carriage. Provisions. We can make it if we go together.”
So that was the fate he’d seen. Her burning on the hill. He was far too scared to be lying.
Elloven approached slowly. Her plan had always been thin. Her resources were meager. Laughable, really. When she made it out—if she made it out—her journey would take weeks on foot, though she was more likely to be apprehended before she even left the town border. The thought of being home soon, and safe, was impossibly hard to set aside, no matter how she felt about him. “Tell me, and I’ll consider it.”
