Chapter Fifteen

Talyria

T his is ridiculous. So, what are we going to do? Just search every room in this inn till we find the guardsman, and then what? Accuse him of being a sorcerer and be on our way?

I don’t think Victor has much of a plan, but if he wants to wander around in meaningless circles, then who am I to try to counsel him?

We’re practically strangers anyway.

Corallin falls into step beside me, and I straighten as I glance at my sister out of the corner of my eye. Her appearance, at least, has remained completely unchanged even after a thousand and twenty years. Her blue skin is pale and her eyes glow with a reddish light. Everything about her is light and softness from her gently curling white hair kept up in a loose bun to the angle of her nose.

My sister, my partner in crime. I suppose I should just be thanking whatever gods would help a criminal like me, or maybe our demigod patron, that she is alive, and somehow, we have been reunited at long last.

“How did I wind up trapped in that stone chamber?” Corallin asks in a low voice, obviously not wanting the others to overhear her.

I slow my pace and glance at her. “Is that where you were?” I ask. “Trapped in a stone chamber as well?”

All this time I thought that maybe she had been roaming free while I was sleeping, but what if she never made it out of our stone hall that fateful day? What if she wound up trapped in a tomb of rocks as well, buried in the mountain that was once our shared home?

Corallin presses her lips together. “Yes, my adoptive father found me in basically a stone tomb, I had no memory of who I was save for the name Corallin . He took pity on me and took me in as his own.”

“You’re lucky,” I say as I rub a hand up my arm. I was found by a necromancer who held me prisoner while Corallin got another family out of the deal. I always told her that she was our patron’s favorite. She didn’t believe me because I was the one with money.

“Do you not know what happened to me?” she asks, the disappointment weighing heavy on her voice.

I shake my head slowly, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. “No, I’m sorry. There was so much happening. The war, it was not going well, we had been under siege for so long and our city was crumbling. And in the meantime, my own personal empire was crumbling. I was betrayed by my second in command, stripped of my power. Locked away. Petrov, he was killed trying to help me.”

“Who is Petrov?” Corallin asks, tilting her head.

Flashes play through my mind. His blue eyes, his laugh, the first time he told me he loved me. When he walked away after finding out who I was, I wish he had stayed gone. If he hadn’t returned and tried to fix things with me well… he wouldn’t be alive today. But maybe he could have lived to a ripe old age, remarried someone who would not make him choose between his conscience and his heart.

“No one,” I say simply. “At least not anymore.”

Corallin draws her tongue across her lip before she steps closer to me. I realize that we’ve stopped walking. I’m not too worried about the others getting too far ahead of us. It isn’t exactly a huge building; it’s just an inn. “You mentioned a war?”

I nod. “The war of the valley as we called it. The Lower Elves and Lowlanders had united against our people. It was the valley against the mountains, and we were not able to join forces with the Highlanders to fight them off. We were too individualistic, elven cities and Highlander clans alike. And so divided we fell. I do believe that they had been intent on wiping us out, at least it had seemed that way at the time.”

“The unification of Ruskhazar,” Corallin whispers, her red eyes widening. “I’d read of it, how our culture fell, and the Higher Elves were nearly wiped out before the Lowlanders called for an end of the bloodshed. They then took the Highlanders and the Higher Elves that were left and united them under one country which has flourished for a thousand years despite its bloody start.”

“Very bloody,” I mutter.

“I have heard so much about this era of time,” she says softly. “I never realized I lived through it. I can’t believe that I don’t remember.”

“Count your blessings,” I tell her as I place a hand on her shoulder. “Memory is pain.”

Corallin looks like she is going to say more but then I hear Estelle gasp up ahead. I look up and take off racing down the hall toward the others. They are easy to spot since half of them are still in the hallway. Victor has stepped through the door into another room. I move forward, elbowing Lek to get past into the room behind him.

I come to a skidding halt when I see the guardsman Ibram lying on the floor with bloody wrists. He’s clearly dead. There’s too much blood for him to have survived. Victor kneels beside him, pressing the man’s eyes closed.

“What happened to him?” Estelle gasps.

“He must not have been able to live with himself after all he had done,” Lek replies, his voice heavy.

My eyes stray down to the knife held in the guard’s limp grip. Could he have truly done this to himself? If he was indeed the sorcerer then he wielded a great power, but clearly that wasn’t enough for him. Did it leave him feeling empty and alone?

I watch Victor out of the corner of my eye as he straightens.

“I…. guess it’s over?” Lek says, but his statement sounds more like a question than a statement.

Victor doesn’t say anything, he looks stunned. Estelle lets out a small squeak and rushes forward wrapping her arms around Victor. He totters a bit under the force of her throwing herself in his arms as she starts crying. Victor stares blankly ahead as he reaches up to rub her back. “Shh, it’s okay.”

“Will it be?” she demands back. “There’s been so much death. How do we live on when so many have died tonight?”

Victor sighs heavily. “We just do.” He pushes to his feet, keeping his arm around Estelle. She moves with him as he walks out of the room without another backwards glance at the body.

I drop my gaze, feeling my heart sink. I don’t know why I would feel so affected by seeing another woman in Victor’s arms. It isn’t as if he is actually mine. Our whole marriage was built around a lie.

It isn’t as if it was much of a marriage anyway. We never even kissed.

I rub my thumb across the part of my finger where my ring was supposed to be resting. I let out an exhale as my eyes flick back to the guardsman.

“He didn’t seem the sort,” Lief says from the door. I look to see that Corallin is standing just in front of him, he has his arms encircled around her as if trying to shield her from any remaining dangers of the night. It makes me wonder if there’s perhaps more going on between the two of them than they’d initially let on.

Corallin rests her hand on Lief’s forearm as she eyes me up. “Talyria, what are you thinking?”

I suppose I should be happy, at least I’m not completely alone by the end of the night. I start to turn to leave, but something catches my eye, and I freeze. It’s just visible on the other side of the guard’s arm, half hidden behind his corpse.

I step around him, kneeling to get a better look.

I feel my breath catch. My heart races up into my throat as I feel horror begin to flood my system.

Because there, scrawled out in blood, by a desperate hand likely while he was bleeding out is a word. Just a word. One word, only three letters long.

But they change everything.

Lek.