Page 74 of Ties of Starlight

Frode gaped, then turned to Idonea and gestured to her. “My Lady, do you hear this? Please, mark this momentous occasion, Lady Asa, I believe, has just given me an honest-to-goodness compliment.”

Idonea plucked another Star Lily and added it to her crown. “I’ll be sure to make a note of it.”

Asa shook her head. “Don’t encourage him!”

Frode opened his mouth again, but Asa was already charging up the path again having found sufficient motivation and strength to finish their trek. The guards resumed walking with them as Frode and Idonea followed Asa up the last incline and to the peak.

Idonea and Frode reached the rocky outcrop and they could see down below the crowd gathered, all ready to watch Nyrunn scale the cliff face. There was the distant, muffled noise of their cheering when they appeared. Asa just took a seat on one of the boulders, tilting her head back and catching her breath again. One of the guards passed her a waterskin, and she immediately drank deeply from it. Idonea plucked the last lily she needed from a plant at the inside of the peak. Frode took a seat on the ground beside the boulder, also breathing heavily. He leaned against it and ran a hand through his hair, the dark blue strands sweaty and sticking to his neck.

Idonea sat beside Asa on the boulder as she put the finishing touches on her crown before sliding it onto her head. She turned to Asa. “How does it look?”

Asa handed her the waterskin. “It looks lovely, especially on you. It goes well with your hair.”

Idonea took a drink, fighting the urge to pull the crown off her head and keep fiddling with it until she received “perfect” as an answer.

It was fine. It was probably perfect, and Asa was just trying to be kind to Idonea instead of focusing on the crown. She could feel the magic humming in it and the magic in her and Nyrunn’s bond hum as if in anticipation for his arrival.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Asa said, gesturing to her and Frode and then the peak. “Why exactly did the Night Elves bring Gytha here in the first place?”

Idonea passed the waterskin back to the guards. “They wanted her to use her magic as a witch to find a way to prevent their magic from weakening during the day. She told them she needed to be brought to a high peak, close to the sun, to be able to do so. Legend says she was just buying time for Agnarr to come find her, and another version of the story includes her having a plan to use her magic to fight them off and throw them over the edge to save herself, but Agnarr reached her before she had the chance.”

“Huh. Well, as we can see, that didn’t really work out for them,” Asa said.

Idonea only hummed in response.

It was certainly a bizarre thing, sometimes, coming back again and again. One life, she’d died, and the next she’d come back and a whole other race of elves was wiped out.

If the same happened to the Star Elves, meaning there were no Star Elves left, would she and Olaug continue to return?

Of course, it wasn’t like there wasn’t still Night Elfblood in the world, but as a kingdom and a distinct ethnicity, they were gone, swallowed by their once upon a time allies, the Moon Elves. If they had their way, that’s what would happen to the Star Elves too.

“It’s probably because of this,” Frode said, gesturing to one of the seams of the leather armor. “Look how easy it is to stab through here. It’s no wonder they didn’t last if this was what they were using to protect themselves.”

Idonea laughed. “That’s not an accurate recreation of their armor. Their extinction was more complicated than that.”

“What did their armor look like then?” Frode asked.

Idonea only had a vague memory of it from her first life, after she and Olaug had completed the ritual, how the king had invited several neighboring kingdoms to see for themselves. The Night Elves had been among them, and she’d seen a few of their guards in passing, but she’d had bigger concerns on her mind than paying too much attention to them.

“It’s hard to describe because we don’t have the same materials they did. It wasn’t leather, not the way we have leather. I saw—in the history books about them—they had this rumored technique about how they would, in the creation of their armor, merge it with their shadows. It was seamless, molding to fit them individually and helping to cover them and preserve their strength even when they were forced to be out in the light. It looked like they were wearing shadows.”

That was as much as Idonea recalled. They’d been terrifying, frankly, and she was much happier as Gytha’s chosen just having Star Elves pretend to be Night Elves for this ritual.

“Idonea, I don’t think I’ve met anyone who knows asmuch history as you do,” Asa said, shaking her head with a laugh. “When you talk about things like that, it sounds like you were there.”

Idonea’s blood went cold. Had she given herself away? Had she gotten too lax now that Nyrunn had discovered the truth?

Frode nodded. “She’s right. You have a surprisingly, and I mean this in the best way, excellent grasp on foreign politics thanks to that. If I’m being frank, that’s never been His Majesty’s strength. He’s had to rely on his father’s advisors for any decisions in that area.”

Idonea forced herself to relax. She hadn’t really thought of that. Nor had she known Nyrunn had… well, any weaknesses, frankly.

“In all seriousness… May I be honest? No wit or sarcasm or groveling, as some might put it,” Frode said, directing a pointed look to Asa who raised her hands in a peaceful gesture.

“Of course, please, go ahead,” Idonea said.

He glanced around to see the guards had taken up posts by the inside of the peak, guarding the rear since Nyrunn had guards on the ground to protect him as he climbed. He still lowered his voice.

“You’re good for Nyrunn.”

---