Page 40 of Soul Forge

“She’d better not break my door,” he grumbled. “Wait here.”

“Wait here?”

“Yes. I want to make sure that magic of hers isn’t about to shock you again.Stay.” She did as he asked, scooting to the bathroom doorway and no further. He limped to the door, trembling in its frame, pulling it open to reveal the captain. And she wasseething.

“Where is she?” Reiner demanded.

“Fully clothed and right over there,” Sypher answered coldly, jerking his thumb towards Elda, cowering behind the doorframe. “Where else did you think she’d be?”

“I thought you might haveeatenher,” Reiner hissed, drawing a knife from her belt and laying it against his throat in a flash.

“You saw,” he noted, not fazed by the steel nicking his jugular.

“I saw, alright. I know Elda saw too. I thought she’d have the sense to keep her distance after thatthingshowed up.” The blade pressed deeper, drawing blood. “I should put you down.”

Sypher’s eyes narrowed, and he let go of the door handle to raise both hands, palms facing the captain. “Do it then.”

“She will!” Elda squeaked, panic clawing at her. Her feet were frozen to the ground. “Don’t taunt her!”

“She won’t,” the Soul Forge replied, looking Reiner dead in her crackling violet eyes. “She can’t kill her saviour. This is her fear talking. Her rational mind knows she’s not the first to see the demon and let me live.”

Elda waited, her breaths coming in quick gasps, until Reiner finally removed the blade from his windpipe, swinging the tip to point at her instead.

“You. Out,now.”

When Elda went to hurry away, Sypher put an arm out in front of her to stop her, ignoring the pulse of energy it sparked through the captain’s veins. They stared each other down, the seconds ticking by in tense, unbearable silence.

“You answer to no one,” the Soul Forge said quietly, and Elda knew he was talking to her even though his eyes stayed focused on the valkyrie. “Remember that when she starts making your choices for you.”

And then he dropped his arm, and Reiner grabbed her and dragged her out of the room.

The moment the door closed, Elda was struck by Reiner’s rage. She sat on the bed, keeping her shoulders hunched and her chin down. That always seemed to calm her father, but with Reiner, it didn’t work. Her temper fuelled itself until she was pacing back and forth, her fury filling the small room until it was hard to breathe.

“How could you willingly let yourself be alone with such a creature?” the captain asked. “I trusted you to be smart while I tended to my Pegasus! How could you be so stupid? It could have eaten you!”

“I don’t think he eats people,” Elda argued weakly, but Reiner was already on the next sentence, still pacing back and forth. It was a surprise the convoy Edward had welcomed that day wasn’t banging on the walls asking her to shut up.

“I saw its face in that field! If that last wraith hadn’t sliced up Atlas, I’d have caved the demon’s head in myself!” the valkyrie growled. “Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you take its blade and stab it through the heart?”

“It wouldn’t have killed him.”

“But itwouldhave given you time to remove its head before it hurt you.”

“He didn’t hurt me.”

“That’s not the point!” Reiner cried, throwing her hands in the air. “We kill demons. We hunt them, we kill them, and weburnthem. They murder our people, feed on our armies, destroy our crops, and damage our homes. Demons are monsters, and the smarter they are, the moredangerousthey are! Or did you forget about Lord Malakai while you sat in your ivory tower?”

Something inside Elda snapped, and she surged to her feet. “Rukya!” she snarled, using the captain’s first name to shock her into silence. “Did you forget what myivory towerwas like? Did you forget the punishments? What about Yarrow? Did you forget that I watched him burn right in front of me because of somethingIdid? I learned nothing unless my father said it was okay, so no, Idon’tknow about Malakai! I don’t know most of our continent’s history!”

The captain’s anger faded from her eyes, her dark brows pulling together. She tucked her braids behind her ears and folded her arms across her chest. Elda blinked away the tears that welled up at the mere mention of Yarrow’s name.

“All I ever wanted was to be given a choice,” she whispered. “To be free enough that I didn’t fear the inside of my home or the sight of my father. To know that I was protecting my people because Ichoseto, not because I was forced.

“You say that you would have caved Sypher’s skull in if you’d been given the chance in that field, but you couldn’t take his head just now, and he gave you every opportunity to do so. I don’t think you believe what you’re saying any more than I believed the same things my mind told me out there in the rain with his demon looking back at me.”

“You’re achild–”

“I’m awielder,” Elda snapped, feeling the certainty of the statement thrumming through her veins. “If the Spirits had thought you up to the task, they would have chosen you as their champion. But they choseme. I don’t want this, nor did I want to bed Horthan just to save my father’s crown. I didn’t want to simper over needlework or be treated like a useless bauble in a tiara. I was a tool in that palace, but Sypher gave me a choice that day. Ichoseto go with him.”

---