Page 67 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

“How long?” he dared to press.

Crow paused. Vaara thought she was going to tell him to back off, until she asked, “Would you like to see?”

Something in his chest tightened. Crow held out her hand, bare skin waiting for him.

His curiosity prevailed over his fear. Slowly he reached out and rested his hand in hers.

Her memories appeared to him like a dream, in rapid fragments of images, scents, sounds, feelings.Through Crow’s eyes, he saw a dark-haired human woman who bore a striking resemblance to Crow, but her eyes were heavy-lidded and distant, her face gaunt. She frowned down at Crow before she turned and walked quickly away. Crow was sobbing. Screaming.

He saw the man he’d seen in the mirror, younger then, taking Crow’s arm and pulling her down a path through the garden in front of the house. Then she was alone in her room, banging on the door. Still screaming.

He snapped out of the memory and back to the present. In the memory, she’d been half Patros’s height. Young. Very young.

“He raised you?” Vaara said.He had imagined Patros had some kind of intangible hold over her—a debt from a loan, perhaps, or some secret he was blackmailing her with. But the origin of their relationship was worse than he’d expected, and made him angry for the young girl in the memory. The distress she had felt was still vivid and painful, even now.

“If you can call it that. I never saw him unless he had some use for me.”

He gave her a cautious glance. The man had bought or traded for her. She was a slave. They’d lived together, alone in this house, for years, when she’d been a young woman with no one else to look out for her. “Use…?” he repeated carefully.

“Not that kind of use,” she said. She shook her head to herself as she turned to the door. “Though I’m sure he would have, if he’d had any interest in so much as touching another person. I suppose I’m lucky he’s repulsed by other people.” She waved a hand over her shoulder. “We should go. I don’t know if he’ll send someone else after us. It’s best we not be here when they come, if he does.”

He followed her down the stairs and out the door. She didn’t look unhappy to be leaving the house behind her. She didn’t look back once.

At the front gate, Toreg was struggling to get free of his tethers. He looked up when he heard them approaching.

“Hey! These ropes are too tight. Untie me.”

“No,” Crow said.

“What, you’re just going to leave me here? Come on. I look like an idiot.”

She deigned to glance in his direction as she passed the gate. “Yes, you do.”

Something touched Vaara’s hand. He looked down, and there was a dog licking him—a familiar black dog with a fresh scar on its leg.

His heart sped up. He scanned the entrance to the grounds and saw no one else. “Crow.”

She turned, looking down at the dog. It wagged its tail happily, oblivious to the danger it represented. Crow cursed, but went to stroke the dog’s ears. Then her hand stilled on the dog’s head, and she was motionless for a long moment, staring into space.

“Alexei’s here. In Valtos,” she said.

A cold hand clenched over his heart. “You can see him in the dog’s mind?”

She nodded grimly.

“We need to go,” he said, pulling the scarf up over his face.

Crow’s hands remained on the dog. Its tail stopped wagging as she stared at it, giving it mental commands. It seemed to take far too long.

“Crow—”

“Relax,” she said, finally letting the dog go. It ran off down the road. “She’ll take the other dogs and lead them that way while we go the other way.” In the distance, he heard the other dogs barking. Close, and coming toward them.

He pulled his hood close around his face. “Fine. Let’s go.”

“Hey!” Toreg said. “Wait. Let me go. They’re going to find me and take me back to the prison if you leave me here.”

Crow just threw a rude gesture over her shoulder and kept walking. Vaara paused.

---