into the center of Beacon Street even as dizziness bloomed in my mind.
My body slid and scraped over the freezing pavement. I scrambled to remember what I needed to do next.
“Goott herrrr,” the troll growled. Its molten spittle hissed on the icy street.
You got me. But you’re not taking me alive.
“Skalei!” The dagger appeared instantly in my hand, its blade black and lethal. I might have failed my people, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I swung hard at the troll’s forearm, but my dagger barely chipped his skin.
The troll grunted, then lifted me in the air by my arm and slammed me onto the frozen asphalt. Agony ripped through my bones.
With its stony fist pressing down on me, there was nothing more I could do. Within moments, the High Elves were locking iron handcuffs around my wrists.
Chapter 5
Ali
A guard tugged on the chain connected to my manacled wrists. The whole situation had me walking at an awkward sideways angle. At this point, I could only hope they did not know I was a chief assassin. With any luck, they simply thought I was simply a thief.
My body had taken a battering in the past hour, and I winced with every step. Since they’d blindfolded me, however, I had no idea what my surroundings looked like. Footsteps echoed, and the air smelled of moss, dank rocks, and death.
In here, it was far too hot to wear my coat, even if the fur was fake. Sweat trickled down my neck.
Best guess was that I’d been taken to the Citadel. In the years following Ragnarok, when my people had been imprisoned deep within the earth, the High Elves had constructed a colossal fortress in the center of Boston. A thousand feet high, its stark walls were interrupted only by the heads of marble gargoyles. Pale gold spires ringed the tip of the tower, like a crown atop Beacon Hill.
It had always seemed so clean and beautiful—a fortress that shielded the ornate and mysterious world of the High Elves. I’d never been inside it, but I imagined lots of glittering parties and gilded ceremonies.
The elves called it New Elfheim. But to everyone else, it was just the Citadel, the seat of their power. All I knew was that it was part temple, part prison, part castle. It housed priests, prisoners, and royalty all within the same looming fortress.
Whatever the case, it was a constant reminder that High Elves now ruled the city, and that my kind wasn’t part of it.
Clearly, I wasn’t being taken to the royal section of the building. Even with a blindfold covering my eyes, I’d been able to work out that much. High Elves didn’t live in places that smelled worse than a sailor’s armpit. No, it was straight to the prison blocks for me.
Crushing disappointment pressed on my chest. I’d been so close to saving my people. The task had been to go to the bank, to steal the safe deposit box. And something in that box would lead us to Galin. He was the sorcerer who had locked the Night Elves underground, and I longed to kill him. His death would break the spell and lead to our liberation.
But it seemed I’d fucked it all up. Which item was even the right one? Would’ve helped if they’d explained that.
I felt like the tip of a blade was piercing my heart. When I was little, Mom always told me that was my destiny, that I’d bring the Night Elves into the light again. Before she’d died in the subterranean caves, she’d said I was the North Star, and I would guide the Night Elves to freedom. And I'd always believed her.
My thoughts shot back to Barthol. Fear streaked through my nerves when I pictured him pressed facedown in the snow, handcuffed by High Elves. I could only hope he’d escaped, that he’d made it back to our safe house.
I couldn’t let myself think of any other possibility or I’d fall apart completely. So, I shut a mental steel door over my worst fears and tried to focus on the sounds around me.
The creak of ancient hinges pulled me out of my worries as the guard pushed open a door. As he tugged me deeper into the Citadel’s depths, my right side brushed against a damp wall.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“You’ll see soon enough,” the guard replied, in that annoying singsong voice that seemed to be universal to High Elves.
Truthfully, tonight was the first night I’d ever encountered