The forest looked different in the daytime. Its strange magical aura was less intense. Novikke was relieved to not have to watch her step so closely now that she could see where she was going.
It had the opposite effect on Aruna. He kept to the shadows under the trees whenever he could, and he kept a hand over his eyes to shade them from the midday sun. As much as he’d looked at home in the dark, like he belonged to it and it to him, he looked equally out of place in the sunlight.
Novikke eventually started talking to Neiryn as they walked. He had a lot of opinions that he was happy to talk about at length. She didn’t mind. She’d never spoken to someone from Ysura before, and she was curious. There were sun elves in Ardani, but they were not usually recent immigrants—certainly not Ysuran citizens, ever since the war had begun and the border had closed.
He also had some very strange misconceptions about Ardani and about humans in general, which Novikke corrected. For instance, that Ardanians did not teach their children to read, that the existence of magic was not widely known about, and that having sexual relations outside of marriage was illegal.
She caught Aruna occasionally glancing at them over his shoulder, but he didn’t ask for translations again.
They’d been walking along the river for some time before Aruna stopped short, giving an annoyed grunt. Far ahead, she could see a structure on the water that, at first, appeared to be made of a black metal. Then she realized that the middle of the structure was missing, and only a few lone posts remained sticking out of the water.
It had been a bridge, made of wood, which had been burned.
Aruna turned to shoot a disgusted look in Neiryn’s direction.
“That is… unfortunate,” Neiryn said, volunteering no admission of guilt.
“Is there another way across?” Novikke said quickly, before another argument could break out. Neiryn repeated the question to Aruna.
Aruna squinted up the river, then down the way they’d come from, running a hand through his hair. He sighed. He said something to Neiryn. There was some discussion. In the end, Aruna pointed upriver, and they continued on without anyone threatening to kill anyone else.
They crossed much farther up at a shallow spot in the river, holding their boots and outermost clothes over their heads as they waded across. The current made this somewhat difficult for Neiryn. He’d leaned on Novikke the entire way, which nearly resulted in both of them falling in.
As soon as night fell, they stopped, eager for an excuse to rest.
There was no shelter to set up, no bedding to lay out, no food to eat, and they couldn’t risk broadcasting their location with a fire. There was nothing to do but ignore their hunger pains and try to get comfortable enough to sleep until morning.
Novikke frowned when Aruna settled a dozen paces away from them. The notebook had remained put away since they’d left the river. Novikke had asked him a few questions about their heading via Neiryn, but that had been the extent of their interaction. He didn’t look at her now, just sat down facing away from them.
“Your arm,” Neiryn said to her. “How is it?”
“It hurts a little. It’s mostly healed,” she said. She’d been trying not to think about it. “One of the night elves did it.”
“I know. I saw it at the outpost.” She wondered if he looked guilty for not having said anything about it earlier, or if she was imagining it. “It will get better. Healers can’t fix the scars, but they can fix pain.”
She nodded. “Have you had any? Burns?” she asked carefully, wondering if she was pressing too far.
“Every sun elf has burn scars.” He stretched out on the ground and didn’t elaborate.
He didn’t speak for a few minutes while Novikke prepared a pitiful bed composed of dead leaves. Had it not been autumn, it would have been composed of nothing.
“I won’t find you gone when I wake up, I hope?” he said, after Novikke thought he’d fallen asleep. He’d said it lightly, like he was joking, but when she looked up, his face was sallow, bruised, exhausted. He forced a nervous, half-hearted smile.
“We’ve brought you this far,” Novikke said. “I wasn’t planning on leaving you now.”
He seemed satisfied with that, and he closed his eyes again.
Novikke curled up under her pile of leaves, and she was almost warm by the time she went to sleep.
◆◆◆
She awoke to the cold.
It was dark. The moons and stars glowed above her. And the chill of night had crept into her bones, freezing her bit by bit. She curled into a ball, shaking. Her breath came out in uncontrolled shudders.
She stayed there for a long time, wide awake and unable to shake the cold, before giving up and climbing out of her leaf pile. She hugged herself and had started to pace when she spotted a dark figure sitting a dozen paces away.
He looked up when she approached, luminescent eyes widening in surprise.
Without asking permission, she sat next to him, shivering. She half expected him to move away. He didn’t. Her skin warmed in the places where her thigh and shoulder touched his. She wondered why he didn’t seem cold. Maybe another magic of the forest.
Tentatively, he reached up to put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him. When he still didn’t move away, she turned and rested her head in the crook of his shoulder. For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then she felt his arm tighten around her.
Their faces were close enough now that she could feel the heat of his soft breaths. His skin was warm beneath the cloth under her cheek, and his hair silken. Was he turning his head to get closer to her, or just to get more comfortable? Did she hear him smelling her hair?
She thought of the shade, suddenly. The shade who had worn her face while it tried to seduce him.
She reluctantly sat up straight, not looking at him. His arm dropped from her shoulders.
As if he’d forgotten he had it until then, he unclasped his cloak and threw it over her. She didn’t bother to politely insist that he needed it as much as she. She was too cold to be unselfish. She hugged the fabric tight around herself.
“Thank you,” she whispered. The words vibrated through chattering teeth. Aruna gave an amused smile. It made Novikke laugh in turn, and suddenly the mood felt lighter. She hadn’t seen him smile all day.
He pulled out the notebook and showed her a page he’d already written something on. Novikke dug in a pocket for her light and held it over the book.
“I don’t regret helping you.”
A weight that had settled on her that morning lifted. The thought of him resenting her bothered her more than she would have liked.
The lower half of the page was torn out. It seemed he’d taken several tries at writing whatever was next before he was satisfied with it. He flipped to the next page.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think this would happen. I tried to tell them you should be treated well, like a Varai prisoner. What she did—I couldn’t have stopped it. If I’d tried, they would have only arrested me and done it anyway. So I looked for a way to free you, instead.”
Her brow pinched a little. She held her hand out for the pencil, and he gave it to her.
“You really thought you’d be able to convince them not to harm me?” she wrote.
“Yes.” He watched her face, as if trying to decide whether she believed him. She didn’t know that she did. At least, it did not sound like the whole truth. She didn’t think he had been certain she should be spared from death. He hadn’t decided until they arrived at the outpost. Even then, he was hesitant.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he added.
She sniffed. “Not completely all right.”
She saw his jaw clench. He didn’t look over at her.
“Have you seen her do that before?” she wrote.
He nodded. Novikke’s temper flared. His eyes flicked up to meet hers, only for a moment, then he picked up the pencil.
“I’ve seen other human prisoners before. But th
ey were people who had done terrible things to us.”
“So they deserved it?” She held out the pencil, and he didn’t take it. “I deserved it too, then,” she wrote.
“No. Not you.”
“But all the other Ardanians?”
He hesitated until Novikke prodded him to write something.
“I don’t know,” he wrote.
Novikke frowned. She didn’t know either.
“I didn’t think about it,” he wrote. The words came haltingly. “Before you. I just didn’t think about humans, except that I knew they like to cause trouble for us. I had never met any. I thought you were all…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He gave her a searching look. She gave him nothing.
There was a flash of strong emotion on his face. He reached out and took her hand lightly in both of his, then bent to touch his forehead to her knuckles. His fingers wrapped around her palm and then he remained still, in an unexpectedly humble, emotional gesture.
Novikke was taken aback. She watched him for a moment, then reached out to cover his hand with hers.
He slowly raised his head. Novikke squeezed his hands.
He looked down at the patch of puckered red skin circling her forearm. With some reluctance, he pulled his hands away from hers to pick up the book again.
“Does it still hurt?” he asked.
There was no point in lying. She nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he wrote again.
“I know.”
He exhaled heavily, leaning back.
After a minute, he wrote again. “I think I killed Zaiur.”
Novikke wasn’t sure if she should write what she was thinking. She did it anyway. “Good.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a murderer.”
“I know.”
He bent and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I can’t stay in Kuda Varai,” he wrote, and she could see the weight of his misery in his hand as he formed the letters.
“I’ll help you,” she wrote. His gaze flicked up to meet hers in surprise, like he hadn’t thought she would until she said so. Like he’d expected her to just abandon him after he helped free her.
“They don’t like Varai out there. We are only safe in Kuda Varai.”
She couldn’t say he was wrong. Instead she wrote, “You don’t have to do it alone.”
He pressed his palms over his eyes, wiping away wetness. They sat in silence, watching the moons inch cross the sky above them.
“Neiryn would be dead if we hadn’t been there,” Novikke wrote after a while. “At least there’s one good thing that came of all this.”
Aruna groaned. “Is that a good thing?”
She smirked. “Not sure.”
“It seems like you’re getting quite friendly with him.”
She gave him a knowing glance. “Jealous?”
“No. I just don’t think you should trust him.”
“He keeps telling me the same thing about you.”
He looked up at her. “Do you trust me?”
“Should I?”
“Yes.”
She arched an eyebrow. “So you aren’t planning to drag me to any more Varai prisons?”
“No,” was all he wrote.
The cold was still prodding at Novikke’s skin through the cloak. She’d reached a plateau where she didn’t think she’d get any warmer, no matter how long she stayed under the cloak. She felt on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, but she didn’t want to leave Aruna’s warmth. She pulled her knees to her chest and tipped her head down, closing her eyes.
She opened her eyes when she heard Aruna writing something.
“Cold?” he’d written.
She nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask for the cloak back.
“Then come closer.”
She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. He looked back at her, his expression guarded.
When she didn’t move, he tipped backwards to lie on his back. He settled, closed his eyes, and went still. She watched his chest slowly rise and fall. She liked how he looked at that moment—at peace. For the past day and a half, she’d only seen unease and anger and guilt on his face.
She tried to remember what she’d thought when she’d first seen him. How frightened and angry she’d been. She had never thought of him as beautiful back then. Not like this.
She imagined him out in the world, in Valtos or Skouvos. A night elf freely wandering around Ardani. It was unheard of. No one would understand. He’d be attacked on sight. A surge of worry went through her at the thought.
She would have to protect him. He had no one else.
She curled up with her back against his side, throwing the cloak over both of them. She shivered, curling up tighter and burrowing her face under the fabric.
Aruna shifted behind her, and then she felt his chest touching her back.
Whenever he touched her, he did it slowly, carefully. She couldn’t decide if it was because he was trying not to offend her, or because he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be doing it.
Encouraged, she straightened her legs a little so their bodies could fit together, and he inched closer, resting a hand on her shoulder blade. She waited for his hands to wander farther, but they didn’t.
She gave a sigh that might have turned into a sob if she’d let it. She closed her eyes and thought only of the warmth at her back, clinging to it as if, if they just huddled close enough, they could cast away not only the cold, but the troubles of the past few days.
Chapter 2
When she awoke at daybreak, Aruna had already gotten up, and she was alone under the thick cloak. With the sun slanting over them, the cold was fading.
She was finishing her morning ablutions when Aruna called to her and waved her over.
He was standing beside Neiryn, who, to Novikke’s surprise, had not risen with the sun. As she walked over, he was slowly sitting up. His skin was damp and pale.
“Are we going?” he asked, his voice rough. He still looked half asleep.
“Yes. Are you all right?”
His eyes sharpened, as if trying to focus through a haze. “Yes,” he said. “Fine.” He climbed to his feet, struggling not to wince as he did so. Novikke could tell he was gritting his teeth.
“You look unwell.”
“Then let us be off before I get more unwell,” he suggested, shooting her a sharp look.
She exchanged a frown with Aruna.
They walked until midday before they stopped to rest. Novikke’s stomach had been growling all day. She’d rarely gone this long without eating. Aruna had foraged a few strange-looking leaves and roots and split his findings between the three of them, but it was hardly enough to make a difference. He told her they would reach Ardani by the next day if they could keep up their pace.
She was not sure Neiryn would make it that long.
He’d perched against a boulder. Sweat coated his skin. Novikke watched a shiver go through him. His eyes were glazed.
He’d forced himself to keep up with them, but it was obviously causing him pain and was probably making his fever worse. But if they didn’t move quickly, they wouldn’t find help in time to save him from whatever infection was working through him.
She watched him blink into the distance and then work his jaw open to speak.
“… should scare off any… crawling… firthwyn ae… ”
Novikke squinted at him. “What?”
He looked up at her, then blinked again. “Didn’t say anything.”
By the time the sun had reached the three-quarters point in the sky, he’d begun to slow significantly. Not long after that, she and Aruna ended up holding him up on either side, practically carrying him.
He was only coherent half the time. At one point he sputtered a long string of what sounded like a combination of Varai and Ysuran. From the look on Aruna’s face, it made as much sense as she expected.
“You’re thinking of leaving me,” he said, in a moment of sudden lucidity, as the sun was
crossing the horizon.
Novikke shifted his arm around her shoulders, wobbling as he leaned on her. He was slim but tall. The weight and the awkward angle of him leaning down on her made supporting him difficult. “We’re not going to leave you,” she said.
He gave a quiet, dry sob. “Please don’t. I’ll do anything. I’ll…I can pay you. I’m sorry about what I said at the outpost. I was never really going to leave you there.”
Night Elves of Ardani: Book Two: Sacrifice Page 2