Page 33 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

“Don’t you?” he said mildly, fuming internally. Inside the cloth was a small loaf of pale, hot bread. There was a hard crust on the outside, but it had a give to it, like it was squishy on the inside.

“Not without a lot of thought and good reason, no. But on occasion I’ll give someone a small push in the direction they were already leaning in. It’s harmless.”

“Yes, that’s the word I would use to describe you. Harmless.”

She sighed loudly. “Just eat it.”

The command clenched his stomach. Or maybe that was just hunger.

His food in prison had been the same every day. A gray, cold, gelatinous, cooked grain mush with no taste.

He pulled off a piece of the bread. It was soft inside. And spongy, and white. Everything in Ardani was strangely pale and lacking vibrancy. He put the piece in his mouth and chewed.

It was salty, a little oily, crunchy, chewy, soft. And hot. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten anything hot since he’d left Kuda Varai.

He closed his eye. It was good. It was so good it hurt. He’d forgotten that eating could be this pleasurable.

“Good?” Crow interrupted.

He opened a narrowed eye at her. She sat across the room, staring at him.

“Please be quiet,” he said.

She crossed one leg over the other, arching an eyebrow.

He kept eating until the bread was gone, and did not feel the least bit sorry about not offering any to his captor.

A strange feeling bubbled up inside him. At first he thought it was the binding, but that wasn’t it. It was something good.

Happy. He felt happy.

He looked up at Crow, who was eating her own hunk of bread. It was cold, not steaming like his had been.

His gaze tracked down to the crossed leg she was bouncing over her knee, to a slender ankle clad in fashionable-looking leather boots and body-conforming leggings, then back up to delicate fingers tipped in carefully manicured nails. She’d removed her gloves to eat. It was the only bare skin below her neck.

He watched her lift a piece of bread to her mouth, and watched her pink lips part to eat it. And then he was imagining her lips parting for other reasons, suddenly.

He looked away. Was this all it took to arouse him anymore? A tiny bit of bare skin? The movement of a woman’s mouth?

He made the decision to avoid looking in her direction as much as possible.

She dusted her hands off as she finished eating. “I’m having a washbasin and some water sent up. I’ll occupy myself downstairs while you wash. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you need it. Don’t let anyone see you.”

Occupy herself. By fleecing more fools, probably. That must have been a hobby for her.

She left, and a few minutes later, a woman in an apron appeared with a bucket of water and a sponge. Vaara had faded against the wall in a dark corner of the room and watched her, unseen.

Humans were remarkably unobservant.

When she’d left, he approached the bucket. He was so tired that he felt like he might fall over at any second. He was tempted to leave them for tomorrow, but the binding nagged at him. He sighed, disrobed, and picked up the sponge.

There was a tall, narrow mirror on one wall of the room, which he had been steadfastly avoiding. It seemed to be staring at him as he washed, waiting for him. He pointedly didn’t look at it.

When he had finished and there were no more ways to put it off, he cautiously approached the mirror. He stopped in front of it and looked at himself for the first time in more than a year.

He’d lost weight. More than he’d realized. Innumerable small, shiny scars lined his arms. Why did it look like so many more when he looked in the mirror compared to when he looked down at them? Why did he look so much older?

Filled with dread, he slowly turned to look at his back.

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