They moved in shadow, Kashava casting her shadow spell over Zara, and Aruna casting over Novikke. The roads had quieted since the earlier scuffle. Some time must have passed. Novikke expected to meet another guard around every turn, but Kashava guided them through the tunnels without incident.
The cavern they ended up in was the most crowded and run-down that Novikke had seen so far. It looked like the kind of place people came when they didn’t want to be found. People like herself and Aruna.
They dropped their shadow spells as they approached an unassuming building on a side street. A sign hanging out front bore a picture of a cup and a bed.
Novikke reflexively tightened her hold on Aruna as they entered a crowded bar. He glanced over at her, his eyes checking her over like a healer examining a patient. He hooked his arm a little tighter around her waist, and she resented the spike of affection she felt.
A few people looked up, but none were interested enough for their gazes to linger. It wasn’t the type of establishment where someone who looked disheveled and nervous would look out of place.
Zara leaned closer to Kashava when someone in the crowd bumped into her, and Kashava’s hand came to rest lightly on Zara’s shoulder. It made them look almost like a mother and daughter, if you didn’t look too closely. Novikke stared, curious again about how close the relationship between a night elf and a human in Vondh Rav could be.
Kashava spoke to the woman behind the bar, then handed coins across the counter. She turned to Aruna, shooting him an ugly look as she did so. She still held a grudge.
“You have a room for the night, upstairs at the end of the hall,” she said. “Try not to cause any more trouble than you already have. The world will still be here tomorrow. We’ll figure this out and deal with it—the right way.”
“I hope you’re right,” Aruna said, sounding like he had little confidence that she was.
Aruna started toward the stairs, but Novikke held back, looking at Zara. She leaned closer, then pulled the translator off her neck.
“We could take you with us,” she said into Zara’s ear, her voice lost to outside listeners in the noise of the bar. “When we go back to Ardani.”
The girl looked up at her in surprise.
“We have a plan to get out of Kuda Varai safely,” Novikke said, not wanting to divulge too much information. “You wouldn’t be caught. We could take you to Valtos.”
But even as she said it, she wondered how a foreign teenage slave girl would make a life in Ardani. She had no family there to take care of her, no money. Novikke didn’t know what skills or education she had, if any. And she’d be a stranger in her own lands. She knew nothing of Ardanian culture or law. The more Novikke thought about it, the sadder she was for the girl.
“I—Thank you, but no,” Zara said in heavily accented Ardanian. Zara gave her a soft smile. “I have a home here. I could not leave them.”
“Couldn’t?”
“Do not want to,” she amended. “Maybe someday I will find a way to visit Ardani. But not today.”
Novikke nodded. “If you’re sure.”
“I am sure.”
She hesitated, then put the translator back on. Kashava gave her a suspicious look, putting a hand on Zara’s shoulder. They started to leave, but Zara faltered again.
“I didn’t know that you were… in love,” she whispered to Novikke. Novikke stiffened. “I’ve never seen a Varai and a human together before now. Not like that. It makes me...” She shook her head, not finding the right words. “I’m just glad that I met you.”
A painful lump was growing in Novikke’s throat. She didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded.
As Kashava and Zara left the establishment, Aruna found Novikke’s hand on his shoulder and grasped it gently. He looked like he’d guessed what Novikke had offered to Zara, and what the girl’s response had been. Novikke shrugged tiredly.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Try to be inconspicuous,” he replied as he started toward the stairs. He’d pulled his cloak close around his shoulders, shielding the blood on his clothes from view.
“There’s blood on your face,” she said. In the light of a lantern above them, she could see speckles of it on his cheek. She couldn’t tell if it was his or hers or someone else’s.
“Where?”
She reached up, ignoring the soreness in her arm, and wiped it away with her thumb. “I think I got it.”
Aruna swallowed. He moved toward the stairs.
Up the stairs, down the hall, and in their own tiny, bare room with the door locked behind them, Novikke’s nerves finally started to settle. Aruna carefully unhooked her arm from him, and she leaned heavily against the wall.
He dropped his pack to the ground on the other side of the room, then looked up as if to ask something. He opened his mouth, then closed it. There was a long silence. His eyes never moved from hers.
Now that they were alone in a quiet room, she didn’t have the luxury of anything else to distract her from him, and she thought again of their kiss at the shop.
He took a step toward her.
Novikke took a quick breath, searching for something to break the silence before he reached her. “Your sister is…”
He stopped. His expression darkened. Exhaustion lined his face.
She knew that this hurt him—the fighting and killing. The things Avan and Kashava had said. It wasn’t in his nature to do any of these things, but he’d done them nonetheless.
“She does what she thinks is right,” he said with an ironic smile. “As she always has.” He leaned on the table against the wall across from her, which wobbled on unevenly cut legs. “No one in this entire forest can see reason.”
“Maybe tomorrow she will. Like Kashava said.”
“Maybe. But I’m not going to wait to find out.”
Novikke raised her eyebrows. “What are you planning?”
“To go to the temple myself, without Avan’s help.”
“And then?”
“Get to the heart, and beg Ravi to give me the power to save her.”
“Won’t they deny you entry?”
“Almost definitely.”
“Then how will you get in?”
He smiled bitterly. “I…haven’t figured that out yet. Perhaps Ravi will bless me with inspiration tonight.”
“What would you say your chances are?”
“Low. But I have no better plan, and I have to try something, and I have to do it soon.”
He came closer, standing in front of her. “You should leave,” he said. “Use Kadaki’s device to go back to the forest. It isn’t safe for you here. There’s a good chance I’m going to be killed or arrested tomorrow, and if that happens, it’s best if you aren’t here.”
She frowned. “This is the whole reason I came here with you. For just this situation. Your chances are better if I’m here to help you.”
He shook his head. “Kashava was right. Bringing you here was a mistake. After what happened earlier…”
“If I hadn’t been there earlier, you’d have failed already,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m not leaving. We’ll go to the temple together.”
He frowned, eyeing her narrowly.
“And I hope you’re not about to try to make me do otherwise, because I’ll be annoyed if I came all the way here and endured all of this just to be cut out at the last moment.”
“After everything that’s happened, you still want to stay?” He took another small step closer until they were almost touching.
She thought of the dead trees and animals they’d seen, and imagined the entire forest like that—reduced to a dry, lifeless husk. She couldn’t let that happen to Kuda Varai, to Vondh Rav. More importantly, she couldn’t let it happen to Aruna.
“Of course I do,” she said.
He reached toward her, and her heart raced in anticipation of the touch.
She forced herself to say, “Don’t.”
His hand stopped in m
idair. She looked down to avoid his hurt expression.
“I must have misunderstood things,” he said, the bitterness in his voice unmistakable. He turned away from her. “Maybe the things we’ve been doing mean something different to Ardanians than they do to Varai.”
“Aruna…”
“First I thought you were merely giving me what you thought I wanted because you were trying to escape. Then, when you kissed me at the Ardanian camp, I thought you might have had feelings for me. And then when you put that sword in yourself—”
His tongue was quicker without the barrier of the notebook between them. She could tell that if he’d had too much time to think about it, he wouldn’t have said any of this. He turned to look over his shoulder at her.
“But I suppose you came to your senses after that,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he muttered.
“I think I do,” she said with a rueful smile. “You’re an outcast among your people. You’ve had to hurt your friends and family. Everything has gone terribly for you since you met me. I must have had something to do with that, don’t you think?”
“No. Your captain had something to do with it. My leaders and my friends had something to do with it. But you? No. You’re the only part of this I don’t regret. If I could go back and change things, the only thing I’d do differently is not take so long to realize it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. You’re better than anyone I know.”
She put her head in her hands. “All I’ve done since we met is make life harder for you. We’re only going to keep hurting each other. We weren’t meant to be a part of each other’s worlds.”
“Is that what you think?” He leaned back on his heels. “Is that all that’s stopping you?”
“Is that all?” Novikke repeated with a tired laugh. “That’s no small thing, Aruna.”
“It is to me.” His stiff shoulders dropped, as if in surrender. “I love you. Next to that, everything else is small.”
Novikke stared at him, disbelieving.
“Don’t say that,” she said breathlessly.
He looked affronted. “Why not?”
“Just don’t.”
He set his jaw in defiance. “I love you,” he said again.
“You can’t.”
A number of conflicting emotions played out on his face. Eventually he laughed. “Why not?”
The laugh cracked through whatever resistance she’d had left. She took hold of the front of his shirt, pulled him toward her, and kissed him.
He raked his hands through her hair and then pulled her closer, like he was afraid she might change her mind and back away again.
“I love hearing you laugh,” she said against his cheek. “Why don’t you do it more often?”
“I would if I had reason to more often.”
She pulled away to meet his eyes, knowing that this time, there would be no going back. “We’re doomed.”
“I know,” he said, and kissed her again.
He pushed her backward toward the bed. She sank into it, and he climbed in on top of her. The blood rushed from her head.
“I still feel a little weak,” she said.
He pulled back a little, disappointed. “Do you want to rest?”
No, she definitely didn’t want that. “Uh… no, I just think I might faint if I exert myself too much.”
“Then let me exert myself, instead,” he said, loosening the ties on her pants.
For once, there was no barrier of reluctance and fear between them. She touched him without thinking about how he couldn’t have cared for her the way she did him, or how she was hurting him by remaining near him, or how it might be their last time doing this. Finally, she had no guilt or doubt in her heart, because love had crowded them out.
They were still doomed. But at least they were doomed together.
Chapter 8
She awoke in a strange bed, in a strange room. But the warm presence beside her was familiar and comforting. She felt the hot, smooth skin against her naked back, and turned over.
His eyes were closed. She’d rarely seen him asleep before. He always seemed to wake before her. She took the opportunity to stare openly at his face, beautiful and placid. The serenity of the moment disappeared when she thought of the task ahead of them.
She couldn’t tell how long they’d slept, but it felt like a long time. They needed to get to the temple. They’d already lost too much time the previous day. They could not delay any longer.
“Aruna?” she said quietly, regretting having to disturb this perfect image of him. When he didn’t wake, she sat up and touched his shoulder. “Aruna.” She shook him gently.
He didn’t move.
She frowned down at him, suddenly seeing how he was just a little too still, a little too deep in sleep.
She thought of the wolf and the birds they’d seen on their way to Vondh Rav, and she stopped breathing.
“Aruna?” she said louder, and his face didn’t so much as twitch in response. A knife of fear drove through her core. She grabbed his arm and shook him. “Aruna, wake up. Please wake up.”
His body was limp in her hands. His eyes didn’t open. Novikke forced herself to put her ear against his chest, fearing she’d hear no life there.
A slow, steady heartbeat thumped in her ear. And he was warm. He was alive. Mostly.
“Please wake up,” she begged him. “Don’t do this to me.”
Every second that he didn’t wake brought the Panic closer. It was coming up her throat, clouding her vision, pushing the world far away, strangling her.
She grabbed his hand and held on tight.
“I’m not going to panic,” she told herself.
The death had spread to Vondh Rav.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Except…the heart. She could find the heart.
She had to. Because there was no one else. She was the only one who could help him now. If he wasn’t beyond help.
She shuddered. She couldn’t think of that. She had to assume that she could fix this, or the Panic would overtake her.
Her fingers curled around his. “I’m not going to panic,” she said again, and was surprised to find that she believed it.
She took slow breaths, holding tight to his hand. She focused on the warmth of his skin. The calluses beneath his fingers. The hard beds of his nails.
And the world slowly began to come back into focus.
She waited a long time before she dared let go of him, and even then her breath still came in shallow spurts and her heart still raced, but her thoughts were in order enough for her to move. She set her jaw, cloaked herself in cold resolve, and slid off the bed.
She cast glances back at him as she dressed. He never moved. She made herself turn away from him. She tied her boots tightly before slipping out the door and into the hall.
The moment she entered the hallway, she knew something was very wrong. Blaring silence pressed against her ears. The soft creak of the floorboards rang out in the absolute stillness.
She came to the end of the hallway, which opened into a balcony that overlooked the bar. Her blood ran cold.
Dark figures lay prostrate and limp across the room. The man behind the counter was curled up on the ground, as if he’d just lain down and gone to sleep. Customers, some still clutching their drinks, had laid their heads on their tables. A waitress had collapsed on the floor, leaving glasses and plates shattered in an arc around her hand. No one moved.
It was as if a poisonous vapor had swept through the place and silently dropped them all where they stood.
Novikke turned on her heel and went back to the room. She slipped on a jacket, strapped Zaiur’s sword onto her belt, then went to the bed.
Aruna still looked perfectly at peace. She wondered if somehow, from wherever his mind was, he could hear her.
“I’m going to fix this,” sh
e said. She bent and kissed him—in case it was the last time she got to do so. A sensitive inner part of her chest, the part that felt love and hate most keenly, twisted in pain at that thought. Gritting her teeth, she fought back another wave of despair, strategically replacing it with anger.
Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation Page 9