Page 14 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

Drip.

Thirty-nine seconds.

Drip again.

Always thirty-nine seconds exactly. But only when it was raining.

Vaara hadn’t seen the outside world in over a year. There were no windows. But he could tell when it was raining by the leaks in the masonry—the long stain of water and mold that grew wet in his cell, and this drip from the ceiling in the mage’s lab.

It was amazing how many things you noticed with your other senses when you were blindfolded.

He shifted, trying in vain to make the stone slab under him more comfortable. The cold burned into his bruised back. It was always cold here. He’d become cold when he’d arrived a year ago, and had never warmed up again after that.

The door finally opened.

“Will you need anything else, Lady Mage?” the boy, Callias, asked.

“No,” came the woman’s voice. “Thank you, Callias. You may go.”

Vaara couldn’t recall Felion ever saying “thank you” to the boy who had assisted him. Perhaps the not-mage, Crow, hadn’t yet learned that she wasn’t required to show him respect. She hadn’t learned that she didn’t have to show respect to Vaara, either. He wasn’t looking forward to the day she found out.

The door closed. Strangely light feet crossed the room, a stark contrast to the shuffling of the old mage and the stomping of the guards. The steps stopped beside him.

He stiffened out of habit. He was fairly certain she wasn’t going to do anything to him. But he’d found humans to have a huge amount of ingenuity when it came to torture. Maybe this was all some elaborate emotional manipulation.

He flinched when her fingers brushed against his face, but she only pushed the blindfold off, then leaned back, crossing her arms. Torchlight burned his eye as he peered up at her.

He wondered if she was really as beautiful as she seemed, or if he was just starved for female beauty. It had been a very long time since he’d laid eyes on a woman who wasn’t covered in the bulky armor all the guards wore. And an even longer time since anyone had touched him without intending to cause him harm.

Her skin was a light tawny, a contrast to most of the pale Ardanians he’d seen, and there was an unusual gold tint to her complexion. Neat, straight hair, as black as his own, fell to her collarbones, and her eyes were heavily lined with black makeup, which was a fashion he was not familiar with but didn’t dislike.

He might have found her attractive, except that she was human, and that fact by itself was enough to fill him with disgust. He’d never met a decent human in his life. There was no such thing.

He took in a breath as her fingers landed on his shackled arm. The way she was always touching him was unnerving. If it had been another Varai doing it, he would have thought she was flirting, but in this context, that would be absurd, and in any case there was something distinctly un-flirtatious about it. It was like she wasn’t thinking about it, like she’d done it by accident, but it couldn’t have been anything but very intentional.

“We need to talk,” she said soberly.

“We can talk if you stop touching me,” he growled.

She hesitated. Vaara felt a pang of apprehension, expecting rapid punishment. That was the way it was usually done here.

He was surprised when she did as he asked and moved her hand away from him. She could easily have said no, and gotten him to talk some other way. It was an unexpected courtesy.

Or just manipulation.

“You want something,” he prompted her. He’d told her so before, and she’d denied it. She must have thought him a fool.

“I just want to talk,” she said, leaning casually against the table.

He didn’t dignify that with a response. In any case, it seemed she really had no interest in the old mage’s work. He relaxed a little.

“Tell me,” Crow said, “how did you come to find yourself stuck in a dump like this, so far from your homeland? Kuda Varai is leagues away from here.”

“That’s what you want to talk about?”

“In part.”

“Why don’t you get straight to what you want, and we can skip the small talk.”

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