Page 34 of Captive

The woman shoved her toward the post across from the sun elf, and Novikke caught herself against it. She resisted the urge to turn and glare. There could be no benefit from defiance, only punishment.

The woman jabbed a finger toward the floor at Novikke’s feet. Novikke hesitated, then knelt beside the post. Impatient, the woman walked behind her, grabbed her arms, and tied her wrists together on the other side of the post. Then she left the way she’d come in, locking the door behind her.

There were no lights in the hut. It was too dark to see much.

Novikke closed her eyes and measured her breaths, counting seconds on each inhale and exhale. A tense presence had rolled up her throat, like a scream trying to escape. She was sure that if she let any sound come out of her mouth, it would immediately turn into a sob. She stopped breathing until it passed.

She was afraid, but she was also angry. She latched onto that feeling, pulling it up beside the Panic and feeding it, growing it.

She didn’t mind being angry. Being angry, she found, kept the Panic at bay. And she preferred anger to panic. Anger made you act. It was productive. It was strong, while panic was weak.

It wasn’t hard to be angry in that moment. Every part of this was unfair and wrong and infuriating and she wished some sympathetic god would just strike down everyone here in a rain of righteous lightning.

Maybe she should try praying to Volkan.

“Thanks for nothing, Aruna, you godsdamned spineless asshole,” she muttered, and felt a little better.

A sliver of firelight came in under the door, and when her eyes had adjusted, it was enough to see a little by. She turned to the sun elf. He was not looking at her, almost pointedly.

He looked perhaps ten years older than she and Aruna, though it was probably more like twenty years when you took into account the delayed aging that elves were gifted with. He had the golden skin and light hair that were typical of his race, though you could hardly tell with all the blood on him.

Along with the black eye, bruises and scratches dotted his face. He wore an Ysuran military uniform, black and red and gold and emblazoned with the Ysuran sun, but if he’d had armor or weapons, the night elves had removed them.

If he was a mage, he could help her escape, and potentially offer protection long enough to get out of the forest. Even if he wasn’t a mage, he would still have the affinity for fire magic that all sun elves were born with. He would be deadly to anyone who crossed him, if only she could get that collar off.

“Well met, friend,” Novikke said—quietly, for fear of drawing the attention of anyone outside.

He tilted his head away from her, uninterested. “I’m not your friend, human.”

She pursed her lips. “In Ardani, it’s said that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”

He gave in and looked over at her. As Ysurans were wont to do, he looked at her like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe. She was impressed by his ability to look aloof even while bound, collared, and covered in grime and dried blood.

“That much is true,” he conceded.

She smiled at him.

His eyes flicked down to her uncollared neck. “Can you use magic?” he asked. She noticed his accent for the first time on that last word. He spoke Ardanian almost perfectly—with a more refined accent than Novikke, if she was honest. It was how a lot of sun elves talked. Something to do with the dialects of Ardanian they were taught in Ysura.

“Unfortunately, no.”

He made a disapproving face, then leaned back, looking away again. “I thought not.”

It occurred to her that this was the first time she’d had a real, non-written conversation with someone in days. It was a comfort, despite the poor company.

“Have you been here long?”

He gave her a sharp look, like he was annoyed that she was still talking. But maybe he had gotten bored in his isolation here, because he answered anyway.

“Two days, I think, since my people abandoned me,” he said. “The Varai will probably execute me soon.”

“Abandoned?” she asked.

His eyes were heavy-lidded, tired and disappointed. “They ambushed us at the height of night, when we couldn’t see them coming, like the cowards they are. Then the honorless bastards I called friends left me to die after an arrow caught me. They escaped unscathed while the Varai were occupied with me.” He looked truly disgusted.

Novikke was pleased. He was angry, too. Good. Anger was useful.

She glanced at his legs. There was a thick bandage wrapped haphazardly around his thigh, darkened with large splotches of blood. It didn’t look well-cared-for. Even if they didn’t execute him, the wound would go rotten and kill him if he didn’t find a healer soon.

---