They ran.
Venick didn't make it far.
His foot was useless, the blood-stained boot swollen so tight he thought the leather would rip. He hobbled after the elves who went deer-swift through the forest, who were soon out of sight. Except Ellina. She hovered back, uncertain, watching as he heaved and stumbled. Venick saw her calculation. He saw her gaze shift behind him to the fresh trail of blood there.
"Go," he told her through clenched teeth. But she did not.
Venick was glad not to remember much of what came next. How the wanewolves appeared, a young pack of females. How Ellina descended upon them, killing them swiftly with arrows and a shortsword. The high cry of the animals as her green glass found their soft bellies. The silence of death. The way Ellina's face became sorrowful, and a slow memory tugged on Venick's mind. Different elves, different arrows, another forest.
But he had no time for memories, no time to think of anything but the elf with him now as Ellina crouched beside him and cut away his boot. As she used needle and thread that she got from—where?—to stitch together the wound.
Quickly, in a way that might worry him, might warn that the danger was not over yet. There was no poultice to numb the pain, no salve. Not even a swig of ale. Not that he would ask.
Proud, are we now?
Stupid, more like. The pain became overwhelming, every dig of the needle, warm blood peeling over exposed flesh. Light popped across his vision, which tunneled and darkened. Venick struggled to hold to consciousness. He knew what would happen if he didn't. He had imagined this moment, the way it would feel to cling to the ledge. The dark chasm spanning beneath. How he would spend all his strength, and the pain of holding on would became worse than the pain of letting go.
But he had let go.
He had let go of his old life, his dreams. Whom he'd loved, who he had been: a warrior, a lowlander, a son. Honorable. Venick remembered the feel of honor, how he'd worn it like a cloak. Proud.
Capable. That was who he had been.
And now?
Now Venick had only the stretch of empty days, hunting when he could, scavenging when he couldn't, warding off the bitterness with thoughts of ending it all for good. In the mainlands, the penalty for murder was banishment or death. Venick had escaped death. Three years later, he wasn't sure banishment was the better choice.
There was, of course, a third option: redemption. Soldiers who committed crimes otherwise punishable by death could redeem themselves by making a sacrifice. The nature of the sacrifice was up to the soldier to choose, and the outcome—whether that soldier was absolved of his crimes—was determined by those he had wronged.
Venick thought of his mother. He wondered what sacrifice would be enough to absolve him in her eyes. If any sacrifice would be.
"Stay with me." Ellina's voice broke through the haze. Her face swam in his vision.
But Venick wasn't with her.
He was again hanging from the cliff. Again, feeling his muscles strain, peering down into the void. He began to lose his grip. His fingers slipped loose, one by one.
✽✽✽
Venick cracked open an eye, then the other. The campfire burned low. Its golden-red light spread just far enough to touch the first ring of trees.
Beyond that: black, as if the world only existed inside the fire's halo.
Venick shuffled upright. He gave a cough, heard it rattle in his chest. Heard his captor—Savior, you mean—shift on the ground beside him, alert. Her eyes moved to his foot, then to his face. Her expression darkened. He knew that look and didn't like it.
"I'm alive," he said, though he wasn't sure if he meant to reassure her, or himself.
"Hmm."
He found it hard to hold her gaze. He didn't want to read her thoughts, which said stupid human and look like hell and worried, too. He looked at his leg instead, at the fire. The first was painful and swollen, bandaged in what appeared to be packed leaves. The second, burning wood. Venick took the fire to mean they were safe. Safe enough, anyway, if she would risk an open flame.
He touched his leg and searched his memory, trying to recall what had happened, trying to piece it all together. He was rewarded with hazy pictures and a headache for his efforts.
He blinked bleary-eyed into the forest and noticed for the first time that they were alone.
"Where are the others?" he asked. She didn't answer. "What happened?"
She didn't answer that either. Gave him a long look instead, one that might have silenced a wiser man. "How long have—" But then he noticed something in her fist. A silver chain. His hand shot to his neck and touched only skin.
"Who gave this to you?" she asked, holding it up. Her words were delicate, silvered like that necklace. She spoke in a combination of his language and hers. Venick mentally parsed out what she'd said in elvish, deciding if any other man might understand her. He would, Venick thought.
But hell if she wasn't testing him.
"No one."
"You stole it?"
He let out a breathless noise. "No. I meant no one important. No one you know. It doesn't matter, anyway."
"This is elven silver."
Venick was silent, his body stiff. When had he become so stiff? It must be the hard forest ground. His injury. Not the sight of his necklace in this elf's hands, not the weightlessness around his neck where it usually hung. He watched her trace a thumb over the links and forced himself not to snatch it back.
"You are a mystery, human."
"My name's Venick. And I'd like that back."
"This is elven silver," she said again, ignoring his outstretched hand. "It belongs to an elf. Where is she?"
"Gone."
"Gone, or dead?"
"Dead," he said, and practically spat out the word. Ellina raised a slender brow.
"Did you love her?"
"Stop."
"Did you kill her?"
"Enough." His anger came quickly, thick and hot and too big for his body. And behind the anger, a flash of memory. An elf he'd loved, a secret revealed, a murder. His entire history condensed into a blink. He pushed those memories away, forced them out of his mind. He wouldn't think about that right now. He certainly wouldn't explain it to her. He let out a growl and tried to get to his feet, but Ellina was there in an instant, pushing him back with a strong hand.
"You will tear the stitches," she said.
"Damn the stitches."
"I did not mean to anger you."
But she was an elf. Gods, he knew elves. And she did mean to anger him, meant to push him at all angles to see what snapped. She was fleshing him out, baiting him into revealing something vital. It was a test. Lay the plank. Hammer it down. See if it would hold his weight.
And then another thought occurred to him, a nagging suspicion that broke through the anger and pain and forced him to think. Forced him to see each piece of this moment. The fire blazing. Her missing comrades. And now, an attempt to bait him.
"I have been thinking about our bargain," she said. She released his shoulder and sat back on her heels. Firelight danced across her face, drawing dark shadows. It was odd, that fire. Venick had assumed fire meant safety, but they couldn't be safe. Not this far south, not if she was a northern elf in enemy territory. And her gaze. The careful way of it. The way she drew his gaze where she wanted it, to her, to his necklace in her hands. Not at the trees. Not into the dark.
As if there was something there she didn't want him seeing.
Venick looked anyway. He peered into the night and found nothing. But he heard Ellina's breath hitch, and his suspicion took root, blooming into full-blown certainty. Even if he couldn't see the other five elves beyond the bright ring of firelight, he knew they were there.
So they were interrogating him after all.
Hell and damn.
"You say you have information for our queen," Ellina went on.
"Yes." Voice flat, because he knew how this would go. They would prod him for information, torture him when they became impatient. He would admit in elvish that he didn't truly have a message for their queen, that he knew nothing about their war, and then they would kill him for trespassing as they should have done from the start. Or for lying. Or because they were elves, and he was human, and that was simply the way these things ended.
"And since I cannot trust anything you say in mainlander," Ellina said, again studying his necklace, "I might teach you elvish in exchange for the truth. For proof that your information is valid."
"Yes."
"Do you speak elvish already?"
Venick hid his discomfort with a frown. "You know that I don't."
"I know nothing for certain." The chain swayed gently in the light. "The elf who gave this to you. What was her name?"
"She was from the south. You wouldn't know her."
"Tell me anyway."
Venick could lie. He would have, if only because saying that name was difficult, impossible, sometimes, and because he didn't owe Ellina the truth.
But he caught the shape of her mouth, the slow breaths, and some unknown instinct urged him to tell her. "Lorana," he said, and this time it wasn't pain that thinned his voice.
"Common name."
"Yes."
"I know many Loranas."
"Know any who were killed by their own kind?"
Ellina was silent for a long moment. "We elves do not kill our own."
"I hadn't thought so either."
"You are a liar, human."
"Am I?"
She darkened. There was anger in her gaze now that she didn't try to hide. No, she wanted him seeing she was angry. Wanted him afraid for it, which he might have been if not for the ache in his foot, and his exhaustion, and the fact that he understood elves.
He understood them better than humans, sometimes, and so he knew that her anger was meant to cover all the rest. Her uncertainty. Her worry. The train of her thoughts.
"I will teach you," Ellina said.
Venick blinked. "What?"
"We are traveling to Tarrith-Mour. I will teach you elvish along the way."
"I don't—"
"You have until we reach that city to explain what you know in our language—in elvish—to prove that your information is true."
Hope flared. Venick searched her face for some sign that she was joking, even though elves rarely did. She handed the necklace back and stood. "If you fail, human, you will die the way the bear did."