The Emerald Assassin

by Ellie Margot

  “They’re what?” Corin asked. Her voice shook a little with the words.

  Riette fought the urge to roll her eyes. How could she not know?

  “She told me not to worry about it. She said I had duties. Fucking duties. If the place burns down, will it need a ruler?”

  “Riette.” Cassian attempted to calm her. The air around Riette was shimmering. He knew what would come if they kept down this path.

  “She didn’t look at the fire in the trees. I barely got to even say what I saw. It’s bullshit. Does she know? Does she not care? Does no one?”

  “Riette.” Mekhi’s voice boomed in the small space as he put Corin slightly behind him. His move to protect Corin shook awareness into her. Why was he protecting Corin? Their wide, wary eyes, all trained on her, struck tightness through her chest. She was the danger.

  Riette looked down at her hands. Flames at least six inches high burned the air around them. The room smelled like the ashes of the burnt leaves that fell around her as the particles fell softly to her feet, and the tingle she’d been ignoring on her shoulder had become a pulsating rhythm of heat.

  Riette breathed in deeply, trying to shake it.

  Cassian moved closer slowly as if trying not to spook a wild animal.

  “Don’t,” said Riette. She took a step back. When she saw Cassian’s hands outstretched, she knew his intention, but he wouldn’t always be there to extinguish things, with his wind energy pushing its way against the fire that waged a war on her psyche. She needed to do it on her own.

  Riette closed her eyes and then opened them. She breathed in through her nose and out of her mouth repeatedly until things started to settle. The air shifted. Cassian dropped his hands to his side. The flames in her hands had gone away, but her skin tingled where they had been.

  “Woah,” said Corin. She combed her shaky hands through her hair and stepped out from behind Mekhi.

  “Woah and a fucking half,” said Mekhi. His eyes were still open too wide, but there was the ghost of a smile on his face.

  On Cassian’s? He bit his lip and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Riette covered her face for a second, trying to wrangle her thoughts.

  “We should leave the forest.” Riette’s words stunned the room, evidenced by the silence that followed.

  “Excuse me?” Cassian asked.

  “Mother said I needed to learn how to be a hero before I can save the world. I can’t learn here.”

  Cassian frowned. “Riette, you’re upset. I know you want to know everything—”

  “No, I want to know the only thing that matters. Why the trees are burning and what we can do to fucking stop it. Everything else is bullshit.”

  “She’s right,” said Corin.

  Cassian turned, his forehead etched with lines, and there was a tic in his jaw at his little sister’s words.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Riette is right. How much do we know about what’s outside of Vitan?”

  “Hardly anything,” said Mekhi.

  “So why do you think something out there can help us?” asked Cassian.

  “If it were in here, we would know about it, wouldn’t we?” Riette asked. She moved closer until the four of them formed a circle. Riette looked at Cassian pointedly.

  “We don’t know everything that exists within our borders,” he said.

  “We know the chances of my mother and the other Elders telling us fuck all more than they already have are slim. If Vitan can be saved, it’ll be from us doing something, not sitting on our hands.”

  “Sitting on your hands in your case would be pretty dangerous,” said Mekhi.

  Corin elbowed him in the side, saving Riette the trouble.

  “We should do it,” Corin said. “We should go outside the border and find someone who knows something, find a cure.”

  “And we should jump off the cliff together after eating a big salad of poison leaves,” said Cassian, his voice mirroring Corin’s bubbly tone. “You know, after we disgrace our families and get banished for leaving.”

  “I’m serious,” said Riette.

  “I am too,” said Corin.

  “And you’re both completely out of your minds,” said Cassian. Riette watched him run a hand through his hair and walk to the window. He leaned against it and shook his head. The others didn’t stop talking behind him, and Riette saw the unsettled tension in his shoulders at the sound of their voices.

  But Riette knew what would happen if they did sit by and do nothing. If the forest continued to burn, they would lose their homes and their world, and everything that was the Elf culture would be lost. She had been taught that the world outside of the Forests of Elan was dangerous, but they would all be forced to call that outside home if they didn’t save the trees around them.

  “How, though?” asked Corin.

  “That’s enough, you all,” said Mekhi. His tone didn’t fit him. It was unlike his usual easygoing manner.

  Riette smirked as she watched Corin pause to look at Mekhi. Corin licked her lips, and Riette saw Mekhi follow the movement and then clear his throat before speaking again.

  “Let’s just stop, okay? This is crazy.”

  “You saying it’s crazy is saying something,” said Riette.

  “Exactly. If I’m saying it’s nuts, it’s fucking nuts. So let’s just stop.” Mekhi let out a sigh and joined Cassian by the window. There were a set of chairs they both sat down in, and they shared a look before turning their attention back to the others.

  “There’s a lot to consider,” said Riette.

  “The guards,” said Corin.

  “We could take the path in the woods. My mother would have people after us if we went during the day.”

  “The water alone once we break through the trees—”

  “Right.”

  “Are you all hearing yourselves?” asked Cassian. “You’ve literally said three things that would cause any sane person to leave all of this talk behind and come to their senses.”

  “No, they’re surmountable. We go at night when there’s fewer guards. We wait till most of Vitan is sleeping. We take the hill—”

  “The cliff.” Cassian’s words cut off Riette’s.

  “Right, the cliff. We get down that, find a ship to take us across.”

  “If there’s water, there’s got to be shit in it,” said Mekhi. “Like monster infested fucking water even. Who knows what the fuck we’re dealing with? This is uncharted territory.” He shook his head, and his brownish red hair shook with him. It was kept a bit too long, and he always pushed it out of his eyes when he was trying to wrap his mind around what he was hearing.

  “If we had a ship, we could handle anything,” said Corin. She had been nodding along with enthusiasm to Riette’s words. Her hands held each other as if they might give away the scheming in her brain.

  “We don’t know what’s out there,” Cassian said. “There’s no way of telling how we’ll handle it. Am I right? No one cares about leaving this place forever, our home?”

  “If we stay here, we may not have a home before long,” said Riette. She walked over to where Cassian was sitting. She respected him. She always had, but he wasn’t hearing her.

  “There’s no way you’d go?” she asked.

  “There’s no way you should even be considering it. It’s too risky. We know nothing of the world outside of Vitan. We can’t begin to guess what will face us.”

  “Brother,” Corin started.

  “No. This ends. We have too much to do here, and you, Corin, are too young to think about leaving the forest.”

  “I’m not too young,” she said, but her voice sounded like a child’s. She didn’t stomp her foot, but from what Riette could see, Corin looked sorely tempted.

  “She’s not,” said Mekhi. He looked over at Corin, but Cassian’s eyes on him were something he couldn’t ignore.

  Riette took another breath. “You’re right,” she said to Cassian, but there was a weight in her word
s.

  “Riette…”

  “Even if we left at night, found a ship, we don’t know what we’d be facing. The amount of Vitan wood alone to keep our powers charged would be a logistical nightmare.”

  “But we could take our saplings,” Corin said. “The liengs would provide us with more than enough power. And we have supplies for journeys. If we gathered enough, we could do it.”

  “Corin, how would our parents feel? How would they survive without us? With you gone?”

  At that, Corin went quiet. Her cheeks reddened at being checked, but something was awake inside of her, and not even shame about her parents could quiet it.

  Riette smiled at the idea of taking her sapling anywhere. Each family hosted a sapling tree until it was mature enough to be planted. For many, Riette included, it became like a pet.

  Bark, Riette’s charge, was trouble, but she loved him.

  “I still think we should go,” said Corin.

  Riette admired her spirit, even though she knew that if a fire-wielding Elf like Corin agreed with her, she was probably on the wrong path. The last thing fire Elves were known for was level-headed thinking.

  “If we leave tonight when the sky is the darkest, we’d have the most cover.”

  “That’s true,” said Riette. Her face pinched for a second, thinking about the logistics. What they would need, how they’d get there.

  She didn’t realize she was talking out loud until Corin spoke up.

  “Exactly. It’s doable.”

  “It’s a death wish,” said Cassian. He stood again. Riette could tell that the place they were in was too small for him to be comfortable. Riette knew that she never felt that more than she did right now.

  Riette saw Cassian take a breath like his chest was tight. As if his skin itched. She could see his own tattoo start to glow. She knew that he wouldn’t admit that the idea of being near the water, any size of it, made the wind powers inside of him stand at attention, but being excited and being practical were hardly ever on the same page.

  Which was never more evident than in this conversation.

  “Cassian is right,” Riette said, her voice tight. “I know he’s right.”

  “It’s annoying, though, when that happens,” added Mekhi. He stood, too, and walked over to stand by Corin. He mussed her shoulder-length brown hair.

  “It so rarely does happen, though, that one doesn’t need to worry about getting used to it,” said Corin.

  “False, and the point is, I am right,” said Cassian. He aimed a deadly scowl at Mekhi’s hand on his sister’s shoulder, taking a step toward the pair before stopping himself.

  “I’m not taking it off of the table. I’m just saying that without knowing more, it’s hard to buy into a plan that could—”

  “Kill us,” said Cassian.

  “Or save us,” said Corin.

  They all looked at each other, and something else passed between them.

  Riette’s eyes found Corin’s last, and she saw something in the girl’s expression that she had only seen in herself. A want. A passion.

  And it was only Riette who really knew just how dangerous that look could be.

  Chapter 4

  It was late into the night when Riette gave up on sleeping.

  She had been tossing for hours. When she settled in, her brain didn’t, and when her brain quieted, her body was uncomfortable.

  She thought back to the conversation with the others. Corin was the only one as excited as she was, and that was the only evidence she needed to know it was a bad idea. But it was still an idea she couldn’t shake.

  Riette got out of bed and stretched. Her long frame pulled thin with the motion as her arms reached high above her head. She tucked her chin into her chest and turned to stretch more. It helped center her, and she walked as she did it.

  The tattoo tingled on her shoulder, and she crossed the room to the mirror on the other side to look at it herself. Riette didn’t turn immediately, though. She wanted to see what others saw when they looked at her, if only for a moment. Her freckles could barely be seen by the moonlight shining in through her window, but they were there.

  Her father had called them kisses. They were evidence of his love for her, he had said during one of those rare nights where he was overly sentimental. She was tan, a blend of the light freckled skin of her father and the deep, richly dark brown tones of her mother.

  Her tattoo tingled again, and Riette turned around, peering over her shoulder to look at it in the mirror.

  She was wearing the simple clothing she preferred when going to bed, a thin-strapped tank and pants made to be lounged in.

  And her tattoo glowed in the dark.

  She touched the new lines with her fingers. The tattoo she’d had since childhood had been simpler, a representation of her earth-moving powers.

  Now, though? She had new lines to represent the new fire power inside of her. Getting two was a rare thing.

  Riette pictured her mother’s tattoo. It was the only one she’d ever heard of that was more complicated than her own.

  Riette touched it again, and the warmth licked her fingertips. Her thoughts kept flitting back to her father. What would he have thought about them finally having something in common? Something that others could see?

  Riette shook her head and walked to the window’s ledge. From there, she could see the smallest edges of her father’s home and the proximity it had to her mother’s as a child. That was how they had fallen in love. Neighboring trees that had held neighboring secrets.

  She smiled but then jumped a little at the faint sound of something shuffling nearby. Leaning forward more, her upper torso over the window sill, Riette allowed her eyes a second to adjust to the darkness. Then, she saw the culprit.

  Corin. Her small-statured body snuck down the tree by hand. It was unheard of, and no one had done it since they were foolish children. But Riette did see her. She wasn’t dreaming that Corin was sneaking out.

  Fuck. This was her fault. Earlier that night, Corin had gotten caught up in the frenzy of it all. The desire to leave was a fever she herself had caught and, from the looks of it, one that she’d passed on. She couldn’t let her own desire to leave get Corin in trouble. She needed to stop the younger Elf before it was too late.

  If it wasn’t for Corin’s hair catching the moonlight just so, Riette might have missed her. What she didn’t miss was the bag on Corin’s shoulder and the sapling peeking out from inside.

  If she hurried, she could catch Corin. Riette turned and gathered up the clothes closest to her fingertips. She threw on a shirt, barely wrapping it around herself before rushing out of the door and into the quietness of the rest of the house.

  Riette slowed her footsteps so as not to wake her mother, but the wood beneath her feet creaked with age and use. Pausing on a particularly loud step, she waited for her mother to appear with lines of worry etching her face, but nothing happened.

  Riette moved forward and descended by vine. Corin was taking it all so seriously by going down the hard way to avoid getting caught. It was the only saving grace Riette had to catch her.

  Riette made it to the ground, and the vines started to unfurl around her while she looked up to see the edges of Corin’s outfit disappear behind a tree. A sense of urgency made her itch to go faster, to be released, and then she was. Her feet moved, faster and then faster still, running until her breath came in pants, but she sucked it down to continue.

  Riette ran if she was forced to and only during practice in an effort to bulk up her endurance. Now, though? She wished she was more gifted in it. Not only was Corin younger, but she was the type who ran as a hobby and flew like a gazelle. Riette ran more like a gazelle that had been shot moments before the running began.

  They ran through the clearing, nearing the edges of the settlement. Corin looked back, but she didn’t stumble at seeing Riette coming into her rhythm behind her. Knowing she was being pursued didn’t slow her down. It made her faster.
r />   For fuck’s sake.

  Riette’s lungs burned. The chase covered too long of a distance, and every time she gained on Corin, Corin became faster.

  She wasn’t going to make it. Cassian would lose his sister to the great unknown, and it would be all her fault. She’d planted the ideas like a poison had been spewing from her lips.

  Guilt pushed her farther. They ran faster and faster, the edge coming closer with every struggling breath. Corin stumbled over a tree branch, and Riette used that energy to advance on her, closing the gap just as they reached the edge of the forest. The sensation of being close to the end of an era for her sent a chill through her body. She didn’t know what she’d face or what she could lose by crossing the line. She grabbed Corin’s shoulder, stopping her, but Corin didn’t turn around until Riette made her. The tremor running through Corin’s slight body shook Riette through the hold. She turned Corin around and then released her slowly, keeping her hand just a hair away in case Corin wanted to run again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving.”

  “Corin, that’s crazy.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “I was crazy.”

  “No, you weren’t. I saw it. You’re weren’t lying.”

  “Saw what?”

  “The trees,” she said, and her voice caught. Her lip quivered, and she tilted her head back, blinking. “I saw the trees, Riette. I went to the edges of what wasn’t forbidden, and I looked out and saw it.”

  “You really didn’t know?”

  “No. Of course not. I mean, I may have heard someone say something once or twice, but I didn’t think, not for a second, that it was real.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should leave.”

  “So I should stay and watch everything get eaten up?”

  “It’s not moving that fast. There’s time. We have a year, maybe less.”

  “Stop. Stop lying to yourself. You’re going crazy here. The power surges, the way you don’t speak to hardly anyone anymore. Everyone can see it. It’s killing you.”