Page 76 of The War and Deceit Series omnibus

“This one stays alive,” Rodrick calls out, making sure he speaks loudly enough so I can hear him. “Make sure there are no visible wounds. We’re being watched.” He’s talking to the guard in charge, but when I look over, I see them both studying me closely.

“We can get creative.” The guard grins and I know I’m in trouble. Wilson’s presence may have stopped them from killing me, but it doesn’t mean they can’t still hurt me. Pushing my discomfort away, I face the door and try to block them out. What they are saying is nothing new to me, but knowing it’s going to happen is its own special type of torture—anticipation. I’m always wonderingwhenit’s going to happen.

The door is mostly open now and I can see Vaeril’s silhouette against the bright flames in the forge, and the banging of metal against the anvil is loud. A shove on the small of my back has me stumbling forward and falling to the ground as the door slowly closes behind me. Vaeril doesn’t stop working, but I swear I heard a brief pause when the guard shoved me, yet as I get to my feet, he’s fully focusing on his work.

Walking farther into the room, I suddenly feel unsure. Do I go up to him and start speaking? It’s not like we are friends, we barely put up with each other’s presence, but we have an understanding of what the other has been through. Standing there, with doubt running through my mind, I do the only thing I know how to do—I clean. Ducking my head, I scuttle to the cubby by the door and collect a brush and bucket, filling it withwater from the tap. I carry my load to the centre of the room, drop to my knees, and start scrubbing.

“You returned.” His words reach me over the clang of the banging and the roar of the fire, and I shudder at his rich voice. I’m not sure why my body is reacting this way, and all of a sudden I’m glad I didn’t decide to walk straight up to him. The implication of his words hits me a moment later and I frown, sitting back on my heels as I stop scrubbing.

“Of course I did,” I call out, my pride wounded that he thought I wouldn’t come back. “I promised.”

There’s a pause as he stops hammering and turns to face me. He’s braided back his long, silver hair, and a leather tie gathers it together at the nape of his neck. His eyes practically glow from the light of the fire, his pointed ears on full display. He looks truly fae, and I realise with shock I’m not afraid of him anymore. I’m still very aware he could kill me in an instant, but I trust him not to. The guards are more likely to hurt me than he is.

Dropping the brush to the floor, I push up into standing and slowly make my way over to the elf’s work desk. I don’t touch anything, but I look at his tools and semi-finished weapons, and I can feel him tracking my movements with his eyes.

“I’ve learned that a human’s promise is a lie,” he finally replies, returning to his weapon in progress. There’s bitterness in his voice, and I realise I don’t know how he ended up a prisoner here. I want to ask, to know what happened, but I don’t think he’ll answer.

“Then why did you trust me? Why did you agree to wait?” I ask instead, equally as interested in his answer. He’s been tortured, forced to work, and kept away from his people by the humans, so why would he trust a lone human woman?

“I don’t know. You seem different than the others. You know what it’s like to be seen asnothing.”

He’s right, I do. Is that why I feel connected to him? Is it as simple as that? We share a bond over our past experiences? That piece of me that is always angry, that I’ve been finding more and more difficult to keep quiet, tells me it’s more than that. I feel connections to Tor and Grayson also, but I have almost nothing in common with them, yet I have that samepull.Closing my eyes, I focus on those feelings that seem to anchor deep inside me. They all feel different, and right now two of them seem distant, while one of them is bright. When I reach out for it, I get the impression of raindrops on leaves, the freshness of being caught out in a rainstorm, but all of a sudden it seems too far away.

My eyes shoot open and I see Vaeril watching me with wide eyes, which he quickly narrows at me.

“What did you do?” he demands, dropping his half finished weapon and striding towards me. His hands are clenched into fists and he looks torn between shock and anger. I throw my hands up in front of me in a gesture for him not to come any closer, my eyes wide. I have no idea what just happened or why he’s so furious.

Did I just break some elven rule I didn’t know about?

“I—” I start, my brain trying to scramble an answer together.

“How did you do it?” He makes a gesture through the space between us, cutting me off.

“Do what?” I demand, thoroughly confused. He seems to be working himself up the longer I fail to explain, and I get the feeling he’s not actually angry at me. With a low growl in the back of his throat, he finally understands I don’t know what’s happening, and he pulls his intense gaze from me, starting to pace.

“You touched my spirit,” he tells me, his expression frustrated. “No human should be able to do that.”

“Your spirit?” Everything he said makes no sense to me. I touched the connection between us, not his…spirit? I track his movements with wide, confused eyes. Realising he’s lost me, he lets out a frustrated sigh and turns back to face me.

“I think you people call it a soul? The essence that makes up a person.”

I ignore the ‘you people’ part of his comment, since I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to insult me and I’m used to far worse comments, so I simply shrug it off. That is until I realise what he just said.

“Oh.” We’re silent for a couple of seconds, and the implications roll around in my mind.

I touched his soul!

“Wait, how did I touch your soul?” My voice is loud, and I wince as it echoes off the walls. The last thing we need right now is for the guards to hear us and investigate.

“That’s what I want to know!” He turns away from me, and I think he’s about to start pacing again, but instead he stares into the fire. When he begins speaking, it’s more to himself than to me. “Even among my people, it’s almost unheard of, and only those who are—” He suddenly stops and his eyes widen as he quickly looks at me. “It doesn’t matter,” he blurts out, and I glare at him, knowing he’s keeping something from me.

“Wait, tell me what you were going to say.”

“No.” He’s completely shut down with his arms crossed over his chest, and I know he’s not going to tell me anything. All of a sudden, a thought comes to me.

What if it’s something to do with his culture and he can’t share it with an outsider? What if I’m asking him to betray his people by telling me?

“Vaeril…is this something I can’t know because of your culture? Something that outsiders can’t know?” I ask delicately, unsure if I’m even phrasing this right. I don’t want to unwittinglyinsult the one person who can help me get out of here. “If you say yes, then I will drop it and won’t ask again. But if not, I deserve to know.”

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