Page 6

The feelings she’d developed for him in the past few decades weren’t all that sisterly. Which was inconvenient, because he still saw her as nothing but a sister.

Adry shook those thoughts away. Dwelling on her feelings for Merrik never did her heart any good. She needed to keep suffocating them until she could finally move on. Sure, they had yet to go away after all these years, but it could happen. Eventually.

Around the far side of the workshop, she arrived at the spot where she could climb onto a small platform where a lift—a gazebo grown of wood—rested. Stepping inside, she pressed the button that activated the power to the gears to raise the lift in a quiet, gentle motion.

It rose into the air, giving her a view into the quiet forest beneath Ellonahshinel, the light a subdued green where it was filtered through the broad oak leaves overhead.

She halted the lift when it reached the platform behind the network of treehouses, bridges, and stairs that formed her family’s home. A swinging bridge opened before her, connecting to the main part of her family’s home.

To her left, her parents’ room with their own personal lift to Dacha’s workshop nestled into the nook of two large branches. A set of stairs led from their bedchamber down to the kitchen and dining room. Two more staircases branched from that room up to Ellie’s and Tryndar’s rooms.

An arching wooden bridge connected the kitchen to the larger sitting room on the next branch over. This room, along with the three additional bedrooms farther beyond it, had been added when Adry had been young and her parents realized that the original rooms weren’t enough to contain their growing family.

With her magic still burning beneath her skin, Adry didn’t head for her room just yet. Instead, she set her rucksack on the platform, drew her swords, and took off at a sprint onto the thin branches that laced outward at this far reach of Ellonahshinel.

Here, the branches were only a few inches wide, yet she had no fear of falling, her feet finding purchase with the innate sense of balance she’d inherited from her elven father. She threw herself into flips and spins, putting all of her pent-up energy into the movements. When she released some of the tight grip on her magic, blue bolts crackled down her swords and into the air around her.

Giving in to the fury scorching through her, she whirled and parried, sliced and flipped. Yet no matter how much she fought the invisible enemies, her magic still crackled within her, vast and fiery, begging for a true release of her full power.

Something she couldn’t do while she was alone here at Estyra.

The ringing broke through slowly. A slight irritation that finally registered past the crackling magic and energy coursing through her muscles.

The telephone.

Panting only slightly from her exertion, Adry sheathed her swords, sprinted along the branches, dashed around the lift platform, and raced across the swinging bridge without slowing down. She all but fell into the kitchen, scrambling around the large table with its collection of chairs that dominated the center of the room until she reached the black box of the telephone mounted to the wall beside the door.

She unhooked the black funnel and held it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Adry.” Her mama’s voice carried past the crackling static that always filled the telephone lines, made worse by the long distance between Estyra and Aldon.

Even that one word held a strange note. An extra roughness, a weariness. Perhaps even the wetness of tears.

Adry’s whole body clenched, a chill sweeping through her. No, please, no. The only reason her mama would call in the middle of the day with tears in her voice would be if something bad happened. Was it Dacha at the front? Fieran? Maybe Louise had an accident at the AMPC?

“What is it? What happened?” Adry could barely speak past the raw tightness clutching her throat.

“It’s Fieran. He’s alive, but…” Mama halted for a moment, as if she had to gather herself. When she spoke, her voice was so strained that she hardly sounded like herself. “He crashed this morning. He was badly injured, and they’ll be sending him home to Aldon to recover.”

Adry braced herself against the wall, the nearest chair out of her reach, otherwise she would have grabbed it to sink into.

Fieran. Her big brother. The one who was always grinning, always looking on the bright side, always up for an adventure.

He’d crashed. He was hurt. Badly enough that the healers were sending him home to recover. Considering how much the elven healers could fix with their magic, only the very worst injuries that needed multiple healings and extended recovery to avoid stressing a body were sent to the hospitals in Aldon or Estyra. Anything less could be healed right there at the front and the warrior sent back into the war after a day or two.

“I…” Adry clamped her mouth shut around the words. She’d been about to say that she would be on the next train to Aldon. That was the type of family they’d always been. The kind that would drop everything for each other.

But she couldn’t. She would need to get an official leave from the elven army, and she wasn’t sure they’d give it to her. Not even to visit her injured brother. They were too determined to keep her here to protect Estyra, especially the cultural treasures of Ellonahshinel.

Perhaps if she went directly to her aunt, Queen Rheva, who was ruling while Uncle Weylind was at the front. But that would only remind everyone that Adry was a Laesornysh. That she was related to elven royalty. That she could ask—and receive—special treatment whenever she wished.

“I can’t…I don’t know if…” Adry wasn’t sure she could voice those thoughts out loud. It sounded so awful, saying that she had to stay here when her brother was so badly injured.

“Your duty is in Estyra. Fieran understands. And…” Her mama heaved a deep breath, as if gathering herself yet again. “There’s more. Merrik crashed too.”

Merrik. This time Adry’s knees did buckle, and she barely caught herself with a hand on the windowsill to keep herself upright.

No, not Merrik too. Her heart twisted as if a dagger had been thrust through her chest.