Elaris Ashwyn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 12

The sprite slipped back into the red blossoms and vanished. Elaris stayed kneeling among the flowers, her hand still warm where it had touched her. She had spoken her name at last. Now the silence felt worse than before. One creature had heard her truth, then left. She wanted a person. Someone who could answer. But she had nowhere to go where a half-elf with purple hair would be let through a door. Obsidian lifted off her shoulder and flew low through the trees. Elaris followed. The raven led her to the edge of the flower field, where a man knelt over a spread of orange blossoms that blazed like coals. He worked fast, cutting stems and pushing them into a leather pouch. Black armor. Silver hair falling past a dark hood. He had not heard her. Elaris drew a dagger and stepped closer. He turned before she finished the motion. Ice-blue eyes fixed on her blade, then her hair, then her ears. His own were pointed like hers. "You move loud for a rogue," he said. He did not reach for a weapon. "Put it away. I want the flowers, not you." "Nobody comes this deep for flowers," Elaris said. "I do what I'm told." His jaw tightened. "These bloom one night a year. My master wants them." He said the word master like it burned. "Ren Westfall. And I already regret giving you a name." Elaris kept the dagger up. But she watched his face, and she knew that look. She had worn it in every mirror for eleven years. He served someone he hated. He hid what he was. "You're fae," she said. "Under armor. Under a hood. Pretending to be something colder than you are." Ren went still. "And you're a half-elf alone in a wood at night, hiding your face from the world. We're both good at hiding, then." The words landed like a hand on the splinter under her skin. Here, finally, was a person who might not flinch. Someone chained the same way she was. Her mouth opened. The ring hung heavy against her chest. She could show it. She could say Ashwyn and watch his eyes. She closed her mouth. Trust was still a knife, and she had known him for one minute. Instead she lowered the dagger. "Take your flowers," she said. "I never saw you." Ren studied her a long moment. Then he tied his pouch and stood. "There's a crossing two days east. Travelers of every blood pass through. No one asks what you are." He pulled his hood forward. "You looked like someone with nowhere to be." He walked into the dark before she could answer. Elaris stayed among the blooms, and for once she had a road and a name that was not her own. She would follow him. She had found someone worth the risk. She just was not ready to take it yet.