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Chapter twenty-five

Sifa

Enough for Now

T he minutes and then hours flow into each other on the rack.

My mind returns, heartbroken, when I realize Fhord is running away from me. My body is still displayed and tortured. And I hurt so fucking bad. Everywhere I look, my skin is shredded. These guards did exactly what the Dróttning demanded, making sure I would feel each drop of blood they take from me.

The night drags on and I don’t leave my body again. I experience all of it. Every slice of a knife. Every puncture where it will cause the most pain. Every scrape on an open wound. It is pain and pain and more pain. Three times, I nearly leave to find an escape in the clouds. To hide from the agony for a time.

Instead, I stay. Because in the clouds, I would only think of him . And that pain is even worse.

So I let the physical pain fuel my anger and resolve. I’ll need every one of those dark emotions when I’m free. The path in front of me shimmers with the vengeance I’ll take against the Dróttning and all who serve her. Every man and woman who acts out her cruel demands. Every person who inflicts pain on another, usually because they take pleasure from it just as the Dróttning does.

Finally, too many hours after they tied me up here, the Dróttning returns. I’m asleep, my body demanding rest even now, when I hear the click-clack of her heels strolling toward us. Her presence floats into the room, a wave of ice-cold air preparing the way for her. Then she’s here, her face a mask of cold cruelty.

“Well done,” she declares as her hands lift into a mocking clap. “She looks exactly as I’d hoped she would.” Letting her feet carry her toward me, blood seeping into the hem of her dress as it sweeps across the floor, the Dróttning reaches out a hand and swipes it through a wound her guard just opened. Agony follows her long fingernails as they trigger nerves all along their path. She again lifts her fingers to her lips and tastes my torture. “Almost as sweet as your pain.”

“It won’t matter, you know,” I whisper, the words barely passing through my mutilated throat. “I won’t ever give in to you. You’ll never get what you want from me.”

“Maybe not,” she concedes, her lips twisting into a smile of pure malice. “But we’ll have fun trying.” She lifts a hand to cup my cheek, then turns to the closest guard. “Enough for now. I want flawless, unbroken skin the next time I take my knife to her. Replace the manacle and return her to her cell. When she comes back to me, she’ll be bathed and pure.”

She spins to stride away, her hips swaying as her dress leaves a trail through my blood.

Flinching away from the hands that wrap around my naked form, I try and fail to hold back the shudder of relief when they release me. My knees clatter to the ground as I collapse, barely holding myself in a kneeling position.

“Up,” a stocky, sweaty man barks as he wraps the metal around my throat again. A tremble rolls through me when I feel it stifle my mind, trapping me fully in this body. I hate this sensation, but at least now I don’t have to fight to keep my thoughts here. To prevent them from searching for Fhord.

I barely notice the trek back to my cell. Hints of an occasional sharp, stabbing pain break through my stupor as I stumble along the winding corridors, but my mind is dazed, my blood loss too great to stay alert. A wave of relief washes over me as I realize I’m being dragged back to the same little cage. They toss me in, the door clanging behind me, and then I’m gone, my body demanding the sleep it needs to heal.

It’s dark when I wake up, a heaviness hovering in the prison, as if the air itself needs light in order to drift around me unencumbered. For just a moment, I’m in the caves adjacent to the Nest, Fhord’s comforting presence a few feet away as we hold a needed distance between us. I can hear his steady breathing, almost but not quite mimicking the sleep we both should be chasing. His scent of coriander and cloves fills the space.

Just for a moment.

Too soon, my eyes open and I look around, a chill wafting into every part of me.

I’m in the Nest.

Again.

Forever.

“How are you, Sifa?” Joralf’s voice floats toward me, concern layered through each word.

The groan erupts before I can stop it. How am I ? I have no idea.

Looking down, I can see my wounds are healing. A little blood still seeps out of the worst of them, but very little. The pain pounds through me—every severed or damaged nerve ending reminding me what it suffered—but it’s not as overwhelming as when I collapsed. Soon, the pain will give way to an unbearable itch. I’m grateful to not be there quite yet.

“I’ve been better,” I answer with a laugh after a few moments. “I’m alive. So there’s that.”

“You are alive,” Joralf echoes. “For now, that’s a good thing.”

“It does feel like a blessing right now. I guess when I’ve been here nearly eight hundred days, it will feel like a curse. And I’ll wish for death like you do.”

“Perhaps,” Joralf concedes. “Or perhaps not. Every elf responds differently to challenges such as these.”

“Challenges,” I ponder. “That’s what this is? A challenge?”

“What else would it be?” Joralf’s tone matches my mood—dark and pensive. “The gods have wicked senses of humor. We are their toys. They delight in watching us struggle.”

“Do you really believe that?” The gods in my worlds—at least the ones who controlled things—did not savor misery as the gods seem to do here.

Joralf doesn’t answer right away. When his words float to me, they hold so much sadness, it almost brings a tear to my eyes. “I can find no other reason for their actions, the games they play with our lives, the pain they relish, drawing it from us in all its varieties and nuances. I’ve come to conclude the gods grew bored with all the good this world has to offer and found that wickedness, depravity, sorrow, better filled their days. And their nights.”

“That’s a very depressing outlook.” My words barely made it out of my corner of this dungeon. “But I can’t deny its truth in this world we call home.”

“Most certainly, my dear little elf. Most certainly.” Joralf sucks in a deep breath, as if he can draw away all the horror that hovers between us. “Still, we need not wallow in the misery they would hoist upon us. We are elves. We write our own stories, even when others would try to filch our quill.”

“And what story should we write today?” I can feel my mood lighten with Joralf’s shift. I need the distraction he’s offered me. “What’s your mate’s name?” I ask after a moment.

“That I cannot tell you. The Dróttning cannot know how to find any of us. She has not been able to wring that knowledge from me. And she will not.”

“Can you tell me about him? Something that doesn’t risk exposing him?”

I can almost feel the smile in Joralf’s voice when he responds. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been asked about him. Thank you.” He pauses for a moment and I can hear him shuffle around in his room, as if he’s settled in to share his tale. “Shall we call him Bjorn? It’s not his name, but it shall do.”

“Bjorn’s a great name. Full of strength.”

“It suits him, I think. He is the strongest elf I’ve ever known.” Joralf is quiet for a long time. When he speaks, his love echoes through every word. “I first saw him across the dining room in an inn just outside the town. He sat with a group of others who shared his trade. He was the center of their conversation, laughing and drawing mirth from all. That’s what attracted me to him at first. His laugh. When our eyes met, I felt something shift inside me. I soon learned he did as well.”

“Is that how all mating bonds work? You know right away when it exists?” I don’t know why I’m so curious, but I am.

“Not all,” Joralf tells me. “As I understand it, you both must be ready for a mate, willing to acknowledge the bond. If either mate is resistant, the bond will resist too. But it happens so rarely in this world, I don’t know how it might feel for others.”

“What happened after you saw each other?”

“I couldn’t move,” Joralf responds with a deprecatory laugh. “Even if I’d been brave enough to stand and walk across the room, my knees wouldn’t have carried me there.” He laughs again, a snort of pure joy. “He’s the most stunning male I’ve ever seen. He held everyone around him in the palm of his hand. Yet he somehow belongs to me.”

“Bjorn came to you?”

“He didn’t say a word to anyone at his table. Just stood, holding my gaze the entire time, and strode toward me. When he extended his hand, I took it. We spent the night in his room, just talking at first. And then we explored each other in different ways.” Now Joralf is definitely smiling. I have no idea what he looks like, but I almost can see the wicked grin on his face.

“How long did it take to commit to each other?”

“How long does it take a mother to love her child? A bird to treasure its eggs? The sun to share its light with the world? It was not a choice. It merely was. As he crossed the room to me, I knew I belonged to him. At our first touch, I realized he was mine as well. Bjorn and I did not ‘commit’ to each other. We simply were, because we always had been. We just didn’t know it yet.”

Joralf is quiet for a long time after that and I wait for him, letting him enjoy his memories without my interruption. When he speaks, his tone holds hints of sadness, but joy dominates. “I didn’t yet live in Revalle, but nothing bound me to my home. Bjorn had a job he couldn’t leave. I moved to him. We spent nearly two centuries together. The happiest of my life. And his, I’m sure.”

“Can you tell me what he did?”

“What can I share without risking his freedom?” Joralf muses. “Nothing,” he says at last. “Revalle, despite its size, is too small. I would risk Bjorn if I told you more.”

“Thank you for sharing with me what you did. It’s nice to hear a love story.”

“Have you no love?”

My traitorous mind pulls up an image of Fhord.

Oh, fuck no .

“Nope,” I announce, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I’ve never been in love.”

“Ah.” Joralf’s response hangs between us, heavy and thick.

“Not ‘ah.’” Gods, I wish my voice wasn’t so shrill. “There’s no ‘ah’ here,” I add in a more measured tone.

“Do you know why the Dróttning imprisons elves?”

I shake my head, surprised by the change in topics. “A bit,” I say after a moment.

“What do you know?”

“It has to do with dragons, and the connection between dragons and elves. The Dróttning coveted that kind of bond and found a way to do it. She imprisons the elves so they can’t threaten her control of the dragons.”

“You understand more than most.”

“Which is hardly anything.”

“Do you know why elves and dragons bond so readily?”

“I don’t.” Pondering his question for a few seconds, I add, “I’ve never thought about it.”

“It’s because we have mates. The ties between dragons and riders are much like mating bonds.”

“And you’re telling me this, why?”

“I don’t know who you love,” Joralf tells me in a voice full of emotion, “or whether that person is your mate. And I don’t know why you’re denying your love. But I do know that things in this world rarely are simple. Dragons sometimes are forced to kill the riders the fates intend for them so the Dróttning may bind them to another. Because she controls all they do.”

Joralf pauses, perhaps choosing his next words carefully. “Things are not always as they seem in this place. The Dróttning’s command skews everything. Even the ties the fates intend. Do not dismiss your love so readily. It’s a rare gift that few may experience in this cruel place.”

My silly heart responds to his words, a glimmer of desire spiraling from deep in my gut to fill me, for a moment, with hope. But I’d be a fool to wish for anything from Fhord. I know where his allegiance lies. It’s not with me.

“How does she do it?” I ask, eager for a change of subjects. “Control the dragons, I mean.”

Joralf’s laugh floats through the cold air. “I saw my dragon once,” he tells me. “From a distance, but we both knew. It was so much like when I met Bjorn, it couldn’t be anything but the bond the fates intended.”

“But you’re still alive. Obviously,” I add with a smirk at myself.

“I heard her surprise when she saw me. It washed through me, coated in love. All dragons know, though, what happens when they are called to someone other than the Dróttning’s choice. And she is a very smart creature,” he adds with so much delight, it nearly brings a tear to my eye. “She blinked her eyes once. And then she swung her head toward her rider, letting him feel the wash of emotion. She never looked at me again.”

“What did she look like?”

“The moon,” Joralf responds, his voice bright and simmering with adoration. “She is silver and black. Small but mighty. I wish I could know her better.”

“I wish that for you as well. In a different world, a different life, perhaps.”

“Or perhaps in this one. The Dróttning’s control is not absolute. Even in this hole, I have learned of the brave dragon who defies her. The one who refuses to accept the rider chosen for him.”

Pride rushes in, washing over me as I think about my dragon. Brave, determined Astarot. I wish I could see him again. “What could one dragon do? Even if he withstood her torture and survived somehow?”

“The Dróttning realized during the war with the elves that the dragons’ links to this world are tenuous. That they can be severed under the right circumstances.”

“The disappearance of the dragons and elves during the battle with the Far North?”

“Again, you know more than most. You are an enigma, Sifa.”

“I learned a lot on the trip that brought me here,” I explain dismissively.

“I should not know that story,” Joralf continues. “But I am descended from the elf who returned to this world. His secrets live within me.”

My stomach tightens and then expands as a hint of hope fills me. Perhaps the fates do have me in their hands.

“You know of the world he traveled to? Of the jotnar he discovered?”

“I do. But that is not why I tell you this.” He pauses, breathing in deeply once, and then again. “I’ve only found hints of the source of the Dróttning’s power over the dragons. I’ve wondered if it grows from an overwhelming fear the dragons hold that she can end their lives by cutting their links to this world. My grandfather’s dragon did not join him in the other world he discovered. He did not survive the journey from this one.”

“You think there’s some portal or path that elves can traverse but dragons can’t?”

“I’m certain of it. I also know something in this world—perhaps some substance—is the reason. Control of that would destroy her stranglehold on the dragons.”

“Because the dragons need it?”

“Exactly,” Joralf exclaims, a hint of pride in the word.

“What could possibly give the Dróttning such power?”

“That I cannot tell you,” Joralf tells me with a laugh. “The Dróttning suspects we’ve discovered her secret. She’s desperate to learn what we know. I have no doubt I’m still here, instead of in an elven prison, for that reason. She may be listening now, hoping I give you information I’ve never given her. Or the walls could have ears. I can’t risk her hearing anything I may say to you.”

“But you, maybe others, think you know what it is?”

“We do. We’ve yet to learn exactly where it rests, but we will. And when that time comes, we’ll bring the Dróttning’s tyranny to an end. We’ll restore this world to what it once was. When elves roamed free and dragons chose their mates.”

We both sit in silence after that. I’m too caught up in my own thoughts and hopes to speak further. It feels like an impossible dream, but I’ve lived long enough to know that all things are possible. Maybe this is, too.