Page 17

For a few moments, Sigurd's words hung between them. His words were an invitation too enticing for Liv to pass up as the truth only she knew threatened to bubble up inside her until she burst.

But she was tired of the lies.

Flashes of a war torn continent burst in Liv's memory— the desolate towns that had long since faded from history, the glazed look in everyone's eyes as they tried to pick their lives back up after the fighting had ended.

"Ahland used to be a safe place for the vitki ," Liv said quietly, her eyes shifting out of focus to the early days of her childhood.

"It was only when the Elemental War was over and the separate kingdoms became strained enemies that the hierarchy of power was introduced as a way of controlling the people in a time of chaos. "

As suddenly as the memories of war appeared, they were replaced with ones of fields of wildflowers and the echoing of laughter as her siblings ran beside her.

Even now, she could see their faces in her as clearly as if they stood before her.

With an old wave of sorrow, the image of her siblings were washed away.

Liv cleared her throat as she returned her mind to the present.

"Over the next few decades, galder was phased out of common bloodlines by order of the Helvig and Kolbeck families who were the seated rulers of the human kingdoms at the time.

The Kingdom of Flame rounded up known vitki off the streets and created the Crafters Guild from those who could wield their fire or air to create swords and shields, but most were never heard from again.

The Kolbeck's were kinder, but no less ruthless in their tight control over bloodlines.

They rounded up those with two or more galder abilities and sent them off on their ships as part of their Navy.

But those who had been sent off were never seen or heard from again. "

She paused as the ugly truth soured her tongue.

"Their actions ensured that their families would be the ones to inherit the crown and they forged the treaty as a way to prevent those less powerful than them from being able to take their kingdoms by force," she finished, her disgust choking off the final word.

The truth she had been suppressing for years spilled from Liv's tongue the longer she spoke.

She had been lying to Herrick and Hakon for years about who she was, but this had been the bigger sin: the ugly history of their family that had been washed away by all the Kolbeck's before them.

Maude and Bryn could possibly know the truth, but Liv doubted that Harald Helvig would have been so forthcoming in their family's history.

Liv had been tasked with keeping an eye on the two royal families once she was old enough to pass a human woman in her twenties.

Liv and Aeric, along with all of those who lived in Nida, knew the truth of the past. It was one of the things she and Aeric had agreed needed to be kept quiet for now as they all recovered from their ordeal.

But the longer Liv waited to tell them, the worse it would be when they heard the truth.

"Do they know about this?" Sigurd asked, his voice strained from the anger in it. She couldn't blame him, the unsavory parts of Ahland's history had been erased for a reason .

Liv shook her head as she glanced over her shoulder to see her friends gathered around the map from Aeric's spy, their fevered planning palpable from where she stood apart from them.

"How could they not know?" Sigurd murmured as he searched Liv's face for answers only she could provide him with. "How could we all be so ignorantly unaware?"

Liv paused only for a beat before she answered.

"Because the victor gets to rewrite history.

Because no one really wins in war, except those who get to create the new rules.

The Elven lost that day when our King of Light stepped onto the middle of a battlefield and sacrificed himself to end a war he did not start.

No one really talks about what happened to the Elven when our King was killed.

Just like all the atrocities committed by the Kingdom of Flame before the Elemental War, all of the Elven were wiped from history.

More myth and legend than fact. The very idea that we were still out there was swept under the rug as we went into hiding to recover from the massive losses we faced. "

Liv started to grow furious the more she spoke of the past, how easy it had been for their continent to forget them.

"It is incredibly difficult for Elven to conceive, it can take years for just one Elven youngling to be born," Liv vented as her irritation grew.

Sigurd patiently listened to her as she continued on her tirade.

"So many were lost in the war, so many Light Elven burned when the King of Light made his choice.

I just don't know how I can ask them to fight in another war that has nothing to do with them. "

Liv sighed heavily, her anger leaving her as the crushing hopelessness threatened to swallow her whole.

"You speak about them as if you are separate from them, like you don't belong to their society," Sigurd observed as he turned to face her.

She only huffed a laugh, her light sparking in her chest and pulsing in the growing darkness. "Maybe I don't anymore. I've lived with the Kolbeck's for a long while now, have traveled amongst the people in Ahland for longer than I spent among my own race. "

A beat of silence passed before she spoke again, this time, her words stronger. "It may not be their fight, but it is mine. They have to decide how much they want to help."

"Maybe they don't have to fight, then," Sigurd suggested. "But instead, offer a haven to those who need it most."

The vitki who were hunted within this kingdom and, soon, all of Ahland as Helvig grows more powerful.

The wheels in Liv's head started to turn as she chewed over Sigurd's words, a rough plan forming independent of Herrick's rescue.

The second dungeon… could it be where the vitki had been taken?

Liv had nothing to go off other than the mysterious instructions from Aeric's spy and the unyielding sense of rightness in her gut.

Would that be enough to deviate from her friends as they rescued Herrick? Would they understand?

Maude and Hakon were going to kill her, but she had another task to complete tomorrow.

"I have an idea"Liv whispered as that sense of rightness settled in her gut the same way it did when she met the Kolbecks and then again when she met Maude.

She now knew why the gods brought her here.