Page 31 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

“The sooty ones on your face.”

Her eyes widened. “The—what? Where?”

He jerked his chin toward the right side of her face. She rubbed at it, and a little smear of soot came off on her glove.

She made a face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”He shrugged.She wiped her face some more for good measure. Now she was remembering his tongue in her mouth and the unpleasant taste of his mind, and she felt nauseous again.

“Come on,” she said, eager to think of anything else, and started down the hill. On the hill, they were exposed. Trees covered the slope, but the trees had gone bare as autumn came to an end. They’d be better off with Vaara’s spell hiding them.

She turned back to him, and he had disappeared. She didn’t see him until he moved—a shifting shadow blending in with a tree. She saw him go stiff and straight with something like defiance. She realized why, and felt suddenly uncomfortable.

“Do… you have to touch me to cast on me?” she asked.

He tilted his head in a gesture she couldn’t quite interpret. “I don’t need to touch your skin,” he said.

She nodded. “Do your people have a name for this spell?”

“We call it ‘fading.’” He stepped toward her. He’d been keeping his distance since that morning. She could understand why. Most people did.

She held out a gloved palm. A large, warm hand closed around it, and the spell worked into her, hiding her. She looked down at her shadow-self appreciatively.

They passed close by the house and quickly moved on.

Chapter 9

The world was gloriously loud and open and alive.

The sun and moons shone with infinite light. Snow and ice and curling leaves crunched underfoot, and branches swayed in the wind while strange birds and insects flew past. The air smelled of damp verdant life and precipitation. Ardani was all brown and white and gray-green, dull and far too bright, with endless hills and huge skies instead of tall trees. It was hideous and beautiful.

After more than a year inside, a part of him had almost started to believe that the outdoors had ceased existing, that the entire world was only the cramped, cold hell that lay within the walls of the prison.

So when the snow seeped through his clothes and shoes and froze him piece by piece, and his legs burned and trembled from overuse, he could only thank the Goddess for giving him a chance to feel all of these sensations that told him he was still alive, and he was not caged.

As the day went on, he didn’t know what kept him walking aside from pure willpower. He certainly had no physical strength left, so it must have been mental strength. He hoped for his captor’s sake that she wasn’t expecting him to fight anything for her, because she’d be sorely disappointed with his performance.

As night fell, his binder—his new warden—announced that they could finally stop.

He hadn’t heard the dogs for several hours by then. They’d fallen behind and then disappeared shortly after they’d passed the farmhouse. Crow’s plan seemed to have worked.

They approached the edge of a small village. Down the road, he could see a collection of buildings and a crowd of pale-skinned humans. He gave a silent prayer to the Goddess that someone there was selling food.

The prayers were mostly a reflex. A habit he still hadn’t grown out of. The Goddess had abandoned him a long time ago.

He pulled up the hood on the cloak Crow had given him. He didn’t know what the people in town would do if they caught sight of a Varai in their midst.

“Wait here,” Crow said. “I’m going to go get us a room and some food. Try not to get in any fights. Best just stay out of sight.”

He felt the command take hold. It wrapped around his wrist first, where that bracelet had melted inside him, and then zipped to his chest and his stomach—a tense buzz that would explode into action in its hurry to obey her orders.

Anger flared through him as he watched her walk down the road toward the inn.

Experimentally, he took a few steps. She’d said “wait here.” But the binding must not have interpreted that entirely literally, or he wouldn’t have been able to take those steps.

But the more steps he took, the more he felt the command pulling at him, until he had to go back to where she’d left him. The limit, he noticed, was approximately what he guessed she intended when she’d said “here.”

He was fairly certain the binding’s power was tied to his own understanding of her commands. Commands that were vague might be up for more creative interpretation. But he doubted he could disobey an order by lying to himself about what he really believed she meant.

There had to be a way past the binding. He needed to get back to Kuda Varai. His brother, Zaiur, had been with him when the Ardanians took him, but he’d escaped. He was still alive. He probably believed Vaara was dead.

---