Page 25 of A Broken Promise (the Freckled Fate #1)

25

FINNLEAH

T he straw mattress was prickly and stiff, even against my black leather suit. Still, this bed was a much better alternative to the half-rotten hammocks we slept on the past three days while traveling on a one-man boat down the river to this gods forgotten village.

Priya seemed to share the sentiment as she twisted and turned on her mattress relentlessly.

Even in the middle of the night, the first floor of the tavern we were staying in was still full of people. Most of them were so drunk that they couldn’t find their way home, but considered themselves sober enough to gamble away their life possessions. The bar owner was a smart man to take a cut from all the gambling, especially since he was the one providing the booze. Though he clearly had poor taste, considering the state of this room. Priya was annoyed at the lack of luxury, but not enough to turn down the half-blind cook’s dinner concoction that we devoured a little while back.

“Ugh, if they don’t shut up, I will murder them all right now,” Priya grumbled from under her blanket as the crowd bellowed another huge roar of laughter on the floor beneath us.

“I think they are celebrating,” I supposed.

I’d been laying still, listening to the chatter and the sounds for a while now. It was too far and too noisy to differentiate individual words, but I had heard a couple of toasts and shouts. “I think it's Laze Day.”

Priya's lips thinned. “Like they deserved one. Useless pricks.”

“I don’t know much about human holidays, since my elven maid and I never celebrated them, but from the sound of it, it seems to be a big deal.”

“You didn’t miss much, Freckles. Gathering is about to start tomorrow and so today they are supposed to rest and save their strength for the next several weeks of harvest.” She tried twisting again, this time to her side, to try and get more comfortable. “So, Elven maid? How did that happen?”

“I wish I knew.” I adjusted my braid and hairs away from my face. “Somehow twenty-two years ago, according to Tuluma’s point of view, my mother conveniently died during child labor, making Tuluma swear to protect and care for her newborn baby. The how and why she was in a life debt to my late mother, or what she was even doing in the mortal part of the world, considering Elves’ standing with humans, always remained a secret from me.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.” My eyes darkened from the memories of Tuluma’s death. My body twitched, remembering the acid burn of her ashes on my body from the Destroyer’s fire.

“If it makes you feel any better, my parents were murdered too.” Priya offered a simple truth.

“I am sorry.”

Priya just casually shrugged.

“I had a sister too. She didn’t make it either. So now it’s just me.” Another truth.

For the first time in months of knowing Priya, I saw a small glimpse of sorrow that went through her face as quick as a lightning—there and gone a second later.

“Do you speak elven?” Priya asked, changing the subject, getting away from that painful silence.

“Yes, I do. I used to even have an accent. Little village kids bullied me for years because of it.” I chuckled, remembering those innocent days when mean names and words were the biggest concern of my life. “Tuluma would beat the soul out of me if I ever spoke in human tongue to her and since she was the only person I had, I spoke primarily elven my entire life.”

“Say something in elven,” Priya eagerly demanded.

I paused.

I hadn’t spoken elvish in years, only occasionally reliving my memories or reading my thoughts.

But I hadn’t said a single thing out loud since the day Tuluma died, sealing those memories.

My mind was tripping over thoughts as they somersaulted from one tongue to the other. A few coarse words came out of my mouth, and it felt comforting. As if I had a glimpse of home.

Priya now propped her chin on her hands and curiously looked at me.

“That sounded so ferocious. What does that mean?”

“It means, I taught you better than that, you human filth .”

“Weird choice of words, but okay.” I laughed at Priya’s sarcastic confusion.

“It was my maid's favorite thing to say to me.” Something nostalgic churned inside of me. I could almost hear Tuluma’s voice near me, angrily hissing. That voice, though harsh at times, was now something I wish I could hear just one more time.

“Well, she sounds like a charming lady.”

I chuckled at that. Tuluma was closer to a feral animal than a proper human lady.

“She sure was.”

The crowd below roared yet again.

“I want to know more,” Priya yawned.

“Well, she was very beautiful, even with her sharp pointy ears and elongated canines. Over two hundred years old, though she looked not a day older than us, and her turquoise eyes were so mesmerizing against her pitch-black hair and porcelain skin that as a kid, I often just stared at them to imagine wild oceans. ”

But it wasn’t her beauty that I remembered the most. It was the slow spring tracks between small villages that we walked, filled with peaceful quietness. It was the long nights spent listening to Tuluma’s tales of the lost, forgotten elven lands, filled with mystical creatures. It was us celebrating Leuflun, Tuluma’s favorite elven holiday. It was how we danced to worship the Dryads or the songs we sang to Nymphs or the elven chess we played on long summer days, or the elven riddles I spent nights guessing, just for her to smack my head and tell me to try harder. Or the shivering winters we spent cuddled together far in the south to survive.

I told Priya of her.

And of me. Of whom I was before. Before life took my fiery free spirit and molded it, suffocated it with destruction until there were nothing but clumps of coal left.

My voice turned into a whisper. Priya’s eyes were already closed shut, her breathing slowed, and the twisting stopped. I smiled seeing her sleep. Who would have thought a cold-blooded assassin would look so peaceful?

I stared at the low ceiling, still listening to the drunken serenades coming from below, realizing that for once, the memories didn’t hurt so much.