by Tara Grayce
“That’s true. But, I do believe integrating the two armies will be our best chance for victory.” Julien gestured around them. “Each of our armies has strengths that can balance the other’s weaknesses. Escarland’s army has devastating firepower and weapons unlike anything you have seen before. We can provide long distance fighting beyond what you can accomplish with your archers. Escarland’s army, however, does not have the magical abilities that your armies have. We need your warriors to provide the countermeasures to the trolls’ magical attacks. You are also the better close combat fighters, though we have the advantage of numbers.”
“I see.” The general nodded, but the set of his mouth didn’t soften. “But do you believe it is necessary to begin integrating now? Our peoples were at war not that long ago. Fighting may break out among our peoples if they are stationed too closely together.”
“That’s actually the other reason I believe we should begin having our soldiers interact now. They won’t work together on the battlefield as a team if that old hatred lingers. Our armies need to train together. They need to learn to depend on each other and trust each other enough to go to battle together. It will be rough. There probably will be a lot of internal fighting that the commanders will have to deal with. But better we get all that internal fighting out of the way before we are in a battle for our lives in Kostaria.” Julien glanced between the two elves, then gestured at Essie. “We just need to give them a reason to rally.”
Essie wasn’t sure if she should smile or blink away tears or what. Right now, she just felt too numb. What sort of expression should she wear as the human princess missing her elf prince? How should she look when trying to rally both peoples to get Farrendel back?
Essie glanced around the table in the royal dining room. In some ways, this wasn’t much different from her first time dining with her new elven family. The vaulted ceiling of the dining room soared, held up by pillars made of living branches. The long table filled the center of the room while the elven servants set the plates before them in serene efficiency.
But in many ways, this time was very much different. Not Farrendel’s absence. He had been absent during her first dinner with his family.
This time, Farrendel wasn’t the only one missing. Jalissa was missing, still in Escarland. Melantha was also missing, and her empty seat made everyone shift awkwardly and talk around her absence. Perhaps it would have been better if they had filled that seat or moved it or something.
Beyond Melantha and Farrendel missing, Edmund and Julien sat in two of the seats at the end of the table near Essie. Julien conversed with Ryfon on Escarlish military techniques while Edmund chatted with Brina about Escarlish cities.
It was the most conversation this table had probably seen in a long time. Before Essie had left, Ryfon and Brina had barely begun to open up to her after the troll ambush near Lethorel. But now, it seemed King Weylind’s somewhat more welcoming attitude—and the deepening ties with Escarland—had relaxed the tension.
Perhaps Essie and her brothers felt safe compared to the betrayal that had ripped apart the elven royal family.
Essie picked at her food and tried to participate in the conversation between Queen Rheva and Farrendel’s grandmother Leyleira.
Eventually, Queen Rheva joined Brina and Edmund’s conversation while King Weylind joined Ryfon and Julien.
Leyleira turned to better face Essie. Due to all the missing family members, Essie had somehow ended up next to Leyleira.
With a soft smile, Leyleira patted Essie’s hands. “How are you holding up?”
“As well as can be expected.” Essie forced herself to smile. Leyleira had always been kind to her, even though her words often felt like a test. What would Leyleira read into Essie’s words and expression this time?
A flare of pain shot through Essie’s chest. She gasped, but the pain faded quickly. Farrendel again?
Leyleira’s gaze studied her. “Anything you wish to ask?”
What did Leyleira want her to ask? Or expect her to ask?
There was one thing...Essie hadn’t been sure who to ask about the heart bond. But surely Leyleira would know, if anybody would. “How much will Farrendel be able to sense through the heart bond? I know it connects us, but besides the explanation of how it forms and how I saved Farrendel’s life with it, I don’t know much about it. No one really seems to talk about what having a heart bond is like. Farrendel and I have talked about it, and I know he feels it differently than I do, and I don’t know if all elves feel it like that or...” Essie swallowed back her nervous chattering. “Or, well, I don’t know. How much can he feel?”
Leyleira’s mouth twitched with something almost like a smile, though it faded quickly. Good. At least Essie had asked the right question. Leyleira glanced around the table, everyone else still distracted with conversation, before she turned to Essie. “We elves do not often discuss our elishinas publicly. Often not even with close family. An elishina is considered something private.”
Essie suppressed a sigh. This was another one of those elven propriety things. Seriously, it was amazing the elves managed to actually reproduce, considering all their rules of propriety.
Leyleira’s hint of a smile was back. “Unless, of course, that elishina becomes as obvious as yours and Farrendel’s. Then everyone talks about it unabashedly. I do not know what it is about elishinas between humans and elves that capture our imaginations so.”
The elves’ greatest love story was of a human, Daesyn, and the elf princess Inara, who formed a heart bond that kept Daesyn alive when he should have died, much as Essie had kept Farrendel alive after that troll ambush.
“So glad we can provide plenty of gossip for the elven court.” Essie grimaced and rubbed her chest. The magic of the heart bond, normally so warm with the sense of Farrendel, had gone cold. It was still there. Not empty as it would be if Farrendel had died. But like an iron wall had been put up between them.
What did it mean? What was happening to Farrendel?
“Not gossip. An inspiration. The stuff of legends and stories.” Leyleira’s deep brown eyes were soft, the gray streak in her dark brown hair giving her bearing a regal wisdom. “As to your questions, every elishina is different. Some manifest as simply a bonding without any particular strength and magic, perhaps because they have never been tested. Others, like yours and Farrendel’s, are incredibly strong.”
Essie swallowed, that iron wall still in her chest. “Jalissa said that Farrendel’s father and the late queen shared a heart bond.”
The faintest hint of lines crinkled around Leyleira’s eyes and mouth. “Yes, they did indeed.”
And, if Essie were to guess right, Leyleira had shared one with her late husband, though she probably wouldn’t talk about that one.
Weylind cleared his throat, turning toward them. His dark eyes focused on his plate, the line of his jaw hard. “He felt it, that day, when she died. She was not killed instantly.”
“She wasn’t?” Essie hadn’t heard the details of how the late elf queen had been killed. Farrendel didn’t talk about her much. Understandable, as she wasn’t his mother, and the late queen’s death had been the start of the cracks that tore the family apart.
Still, it was unexpected that Weylind would bring it up. He was not the most forthcoming of her elven family members, and this was his mother he was talking about.
Leyleira’s eyes saddened. “Lorsan had not been with her that day. She had gone ahead, visiting with distant cousins of hers who lived near the border with Kostaria. Lorsan planned to join her in a few days. When her party was ambushed, Lorsan felt her pain, until she cut off the heart bond. For the rest of his life, Lorsan carried the guilt that he failed to save her, even though there was nothing he could do. I believe it is one reason why he mourned so hard and so deeply for her.”
The late elf king had mourned his wife so desperately that it had eventually led him to seek solace and a single night of forgetfulness with Farrendel’s mother.
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“I think...I think Farrendel might be doing something like that right now. I don’t know. The heart bond doesn’t feel as warm and vibrant as it normally does.” Essie rubbed at her chest again. “But what did you mean that he felt he failed? Was there something he could have done?”
Was there something she could do to help Farrendel?
Lines dug into the corners around Weylind’s eyes, making him appear older than Essie had ever seen him. “It is possible that, when one person in a heart bond is killed, the other can also die if they try to save them. There are times death is inevitable.”
Leyleira raised an eyebrow at Weylind, something in her tone firm. “Have I taught you nothing? You are supposed to comfort her, not frighten her.”
“She should know the dangers. It is her life at risk, as well as Farrendel’s.” Weylind crossed his arms.
“Do you really believe Farrendel will allow anything to happen to her?” Leyleira reached out and patted Essie’s arm. “Farrendel is strong, my dear. Do not give up hope.”
“My parents were strong too.” Weylind’s words were murmured, so low Essie wasn’t sure they were meant for her.
Essie’s fingers went cold. The heart bond had always seemed like such a good thing. But it had dangers, especially with Farrendel in the hands of the trolls who hated him.
She had saved his life during that ambush. Had that really been less than two weeks ago? So much had happened since then.
She had so naively saved him with that heart bond. If the healers hadn’t been there to stabilize Farrendel, what would have happened? Would she have let go in time to keep from dying along with him? Or would he have been aware enough to save her by severing the bond that made her heart keep his heart beating?
Let the sacrifice be my choice this time. That’s what Farrendel had told her on the train when they’d been captured. He didn’t want anyone to be killed trying to rescue him. That would include Essie trying to save him through a heart bond.
If it came to it, Essie would be hard pressed not to at least attempt to save him, even if she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to lose him. It would gut her.
But she also didn’t want to make her family grieve both her loss and Farrendel’s. And his family would need her to be there for them after all the losses they had already sustained.
But it wouldn’t come to that. It wouldn’t. Farrendel would pull through this. They would rescue him, and everything would be fine.
Except that Farrendel was already blocking her. Yet, Essie didn’t think he was dying. Surely she would sense if he was dying.
Was he trying to spare her the pain he was feeling? Was he already undergoing torture?
The little she had managed to eat churned in her stomach. She didn’t want to think about the torture he must be enduring. Here she sat eating a fine meal, safe in Ellonahshinel, while he was suffering enough pain to feel the need to keep it from her.
Essie pulled her shoulders straighter. “It won’t come to that. I’m sure of it. Farrendel will pull through this. We’ll get to him in time.”
She refused to doubt that. Would Farrendel feel it through the heart bond if doubt took hold and her hope wavered? For his sake, as much as for her own, she could not give up hope.
Leyleira nodded and made a small gesture to the others in the room. “With humans and elves working together as they have not done in centuries, I am certain this war will be nothing like the trolls expect.”
Essie glanced back at the others. Her brothers were still animatedly talking as the elves listened. Edmund caught her eye and gave her a subtle wink. Yes, they were doing their best to ingratiate themselves to the elves. Either that, or they were going to talk the elves to the brink of insanity. But if Essie hadn’t managed to do that yet, Julien and Edmund combined wouldn’t manage it.
She turned back to Leyleira. “Now about my original question...”
“Yes.” Leyleira’s smile was both soft but also a touch knowing, as if Essie’s impatient prompting was what she had been angling for all along. “With my Ellarin, I could sense impressions. I would know if he was thinking about me or sending thoughts my way, even if it was more a sense than actual words. No matter where he was, I could always feel him there.”
Essie sighed and rubbed at the woodgrain of the tabletop. That was pretty much what she felt, though hers was less a constant presence in her chest than what it sounded like the elves experienced. “I guess actual telepathy would have made things far too easy. I just wish I could talk to him.”
“Then do so. He may not be able to understand the words through the heart bond, but he will sense you are thinking about him. Maybe an impression of the words will carry through.” Leyleira’s smile faded once again. “Perhaps it is a hope he desperately needs.”
Essie nodded and gazed around the table once again. Farrendel, you would’ve loved to see this.
MELANTHA HUDDLED against the back of the cold, stone cell, pressing her hands over her ears. Tears filled her eyes, even as the stone pounded a headache behind her temples.
Shouts of pain echoed from somewhere down the dungeon’s passageway.
Farrendel. They were torturing Farrendel.
What had she expected when she had betrayed him to the trolls? She had been so angry for so long. It had been easy to direct that anger at him, to focus on how much better life would be once the scandal of his existence was wiped from her family’s life.
Yet, sitting here now, all those reasons were ripped away in the reality of what her betrayal meant and would cost. She had never truly wanted this.
Another scream of pain, then silence. Had Farrendel passed out? Had they killed him?
What had she done? How could she have done this? She pulled her knees to her chest, gasping at the force of the sobs that begged for release.
She must not cry. An elven princess did not indulge in such hysterics.
But that was her little brother being tortured. And she had been the one to put him there.
Boots tromped past her cell. She stifled her mouth against her folded arms, muffling her sobs. She could not allow these trolls to see or hear her emotions.
The footsteps faded down the passageway. The silence stretched for far too long.
Melantha pushed to her feet, approached the door, and peered through the bars. Torches provided weak light for the passageway, either side lined with dungeon cells just like hers with one cell at the far end. That was the one where she suspected Farrendel was being held. “Farrendel?”
She waited a long moment, but he did not answer her. Was he ignoring her? Or was he still unconscious? As the trolls had not carted a body past her door, he must be still alive.
Melantha sank to the ground by the door, her fists clenched. Her chest burned, and she longed to lash out and punch something. A door. A wall. One of the trolls who had been torturing Farrendel.
But an elven princess did not display that much emotion. Instead, she just simmered in constant, unrelenting anger with no way to release it.
The door into the dungeon grated. Melantha scrambled to her feet, peering from the window of her cell.
Prince Rharreth strode down the passageway once again. He halted outside her cell’s door. “Step away from the door.”
Melantha backed away from the door, clenching her fingers into fists. It would be so satisfying to spring at him and claw his eyes out. For one moment, she let herself indulge in such thoughts.
But only for a moment. Then she huffed a breath and wrapped her arms over her stomach, her shoulders hunched.
The door grated, and Prince Rharreth stepped inside. He carried a bowl in one hand and a knife in the other. He did not bother to close the door behind him. As much as Melantha wished she could dart past him and escape, it was impossible.
If only she could use her magic to attempt an escape. She felt the faint threads of her magic coursing through her. Her head ached from the stone, but she was not as cut off from her magic as Farrendel wa
s.
Her magic was not crackling and destructive the way Farrendel’s was. Nor could she control plants the way Weylind and Jalissa could.
Melantha had healing magic. Long ago, when she had trained with the best healer in Estyra, she had taken an oath never to use that power to harm anyone. Healing magic, after all, could just as easily be turned to killing magic.
The elven oath was a magical one, and the stories said that any healer who broke their oath of healing to harm another would die.
Yet, was this circumstance dire enough that she should risk breaking that oath? Should she turn her magic on this troll and attempt to escape, assuming she did not die or become too injured to move?
No, before she did that, she needed to find out how they had Farrendel secured and if there was a way she could break him out. She might have put him here, but she had no intention of leaving here without him. Not after listening to his screams.
Prince Rharreth eyed her, as if trying to decide if she was going to bolt. Nodding, as if satisfied, he held out the bowl.
She did not take it. “What have you done to my brother? Is he still alive?”
His brows shot up. “Now you are concerned about him?”
He had a right to question her rapid change of heart. But being locked up provided ample time for self-reflection. More than that, how many screams did it take for a person to realize what a horrible sister she was and what terrible mistakes she had made?
She had never truly been angry at Farrendel. She could see that now. Over the years, he had simply become the convenient target for all the anger she had bottled up inside. Now that she had other targets—namely, this troll prince before her and his torture-happy brother—her anger at Farrendel had disappeared.
Even now, heat simmered in her chest. It was so tempting to stand there and scream until she no longer shook with the force of everything she kept inside.