63
It was the work of the Spirits.
This was what my old nanny had said when she’d seen the blood flee my cheeks. The maids were moved as she was, calling me blessed.
However, when my eyes had fixed on the spot where the embossed scar was supposed to be, I hadn’t felt touched by the kindness of the Spirits.
I had felt scratched by darkness.
Something was wrong, I told myself as I walked down the corridors that, from my wing of the palace, would lead me to the central building. I needed to find Amlach before he joined the celebrations and ask whether he had noticed the scar disappearing during our final days in Rubra.
I swung the door in front of me open. I was hurrying across the luxurious corridor where I found myself, heading toward the door behind which secondary stairs led to the first floor, when I noticed a tall figure in the grand atrium at the main entrance to the compound.
A figure I would recognize among hundreds.
Moving as if hypnotized, I stepped forward beneath the semicircular balcony. From it, two winding flights of stairs with intricate handrails crafted from light natural wood and gray marble steps matching the floor descended.
With his hands clasped behind his back, Amlach was studying the enormous fresco snaking across the walls, illustrating the final battle against Mornon. His gaze was focused on the main scene, which depicted the fight between me and Mornon the Abomination.
As I drew closer, I took in his image, enhanced by his teal robes with lighter embroidery that resembled the veins in his irises.
The flickering glow of the candelabra flames on the walls appeared to dance on the coppery highlights of his hair, which was so thick that the tips of his ears were hidden.
I slowed my pace, peering up at his profile, from the broad forehead to the straight line of his nose, then to the curve of his full lips—where the cut from Araton’s fist was nearly healed—and down to the apple of his throat. His beauty was so magnetic that it drew me in a primitive way.
Almost unnatural.
However, as I closed the distance between us, I saw that his face, rather than showing fascination with the painting’s bright details, appeared indifferent.
I briefly glanced at the fresco, questioning whether he simply didn’t appreciate what he saw.
Maybe he favored the painting style of the Kingdom of Men, and, absurdly, elven art failed to interest him.
I brought my attention back to him and took slightly louder steps to signal my presence.
The absence vanished from his face, and his lips lifted a tad to one side. He tilted his head toward me and opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when he saw my dress. His eyes flared up like a bonfire of dark voluptuousness, gliding over my body to take in every little detail.
He smirked. “That’s not very elven . . .”
I stopped a few inches away from him so he could breathe in my scent and I his. “Maybe tonight I want to feel a little more human,” I said, gazing at him through my eyelashes.
“Hmm,” he said, so pleased as he ran the fingers of one hand through the ends of my hair, which I had left loose just for him.
“For the last time,” I added under my breath. “Amlach—”
He pressed his pads against my lips with a warning look. “Don’t start.” He drew his hands back behind his back, peering down at me harshly. “I will do my duty and ensure a safe future for my people.”
Spires of anger and pain squeezed my heart. “And what about our future?” I hissed.
An emotion glimmered in his eyes, but before I could understand it, he faced the wall again. "You’ll forget me as soon as I’m on the other side of the Glawar.”
“If that’s what you believe," I retorted with anger and bitterness, “you know nothing about elves’ memory.”
Amlach sliced me a cryptic glance. “Tell me, then . . .” He looked at the fresco. “Do you remember that day?”
I shifted my attention to the painting, observing my dynamic pose and how my white armor and golden cloak contrasted sharply with Mornon’s frightening black figure. “As if it were yesterday.”
I remembered the terrible smell of Araton’s partner’s guts spilling onto the scorched ground from her torn-in-two torso.
The vibrations I’d felt in my arms every time I had been able to parry a slash from the enemy’s broadsword.
The dark blade cutting into my flesh, instead of piercing me to death, almost as if mocking me.
The blood dripping down my thigh, my cheek.
The awareness of not living up to beating Mornon.
“You look so fearless,” Amlach remarked in a distant tone.
“So . . . great.” He slightly frowned. “Greater than him.” He paused, his eyes moving slowly from my figure to the Abomination’s.
“My kingdom’s artists, too, have depicted the Great War in frescoes, paintings, bas-reliefs, and statues.
But none of them ever made you look that .
. .” He hesitated. But it didn’t seem he was searching for the proper adjective.
It was as if he didn’t want to say the word that had come to his mind. “ Invincible.”
I watched the fight illustrated on the wall. Where did he sense that invincibility in me? I saw myself as so inferior in comparison to the evil grandeur that radiated from my opponent’s portrayal.
“I wasn’t,” I said gloomily. “It was Calien and the Spirits who defeated Mornon.” I looked at the Crystal shining at the center of the enemy’s black armor. “I was merely the vessel for my grandmother’s power.”
Amlach stayed silent, yet his thoughts were so loud I could almost hear them buzzing in my ears.
“When his hand closed around your throat . . .” he said after a few seconds. “When you found yourself face-to-face with him and his eyes of fire, were you afraid?”
I wondered how my duel with Mornon was described in the humans’ texts and whether they had remained faithful to the version written by the elves. I wondered whether Amlach knew that, at some point, it was Mornon who had tried to break free from my grasp.
Whether he knew that I had felt terror, along with wrath, spread behind his scary helmet.
“Yes,” I admitted, then added at once, “But not for me. I was scared I couldn’t save my family. I was scared to abandon the peoples of the Lands of the East to Mornon’s cruelty and folly.”
Slowly, Amlach turned to me, searching my eyes as if looking for something. As if he were seeping into my mind. Whatever he read in them, he didn’t like it.
“You weren’t afraid to die,” he said grimly.
My brow cinching, I recalled Mornon’s iron fingers gripping my neck increasingly tighter. “No, I wasn’t.”
Suddenly, Amlach’s expression grew so ravenous that my nostrils flared from the sudden rush of uneasiness mingled with arousal that spread through me.
“Why?” He pressed me with his imposing presence, forcing me to recoil without ever taking my eyes off him. “He had beaten you. You were at his mercy. He was about to kill you. Why weren’t you afraid of him?”
I noticed I shifted to the side when my heel hit the first step of one of the two staircases. Almost automatically, I climbed up, reaching back with my arm to keep the handrail from pressing too hard onto my back.
“I didn’t say that,” I replied, my breath suddenly going serrated.
“ Why, Nauriel?” Amlach said again, with such vehemency that my heart skipped a beat.
Of course, I had been frightened by Mornon the Abomination and by the evil he embodied and shaped. Why was Amlach acting so strangely? Where did those enigmatic and dangerous thoughts come from? And why was he staring at me so rapaciously?
And then, I saw it.
Behind his eyes, devouring and cruel and inexorable.
“ You are scared,” I said under my breath.
He went still.
I peered closely at him, finally understanding what was upsetting him. “You’re scared to lose me,” I whispered, astonished, and reached out to his face.
Amlach caught my hand before I could stroke his cheek, a movement so fast it startled me. So fast it awakened my fighter’s instincts.
But before I could use my strength to wriggle free, he let me go as if he’d burned himself.
“You overestimate yourself, Elf,” he said without even looking me in the eye, then abruptly headed toward the palace entrance.