Death Wind (Elven Alliance #3) - Tara Grayce Page 0,18
snatched away when the worst happened.
Well, the worst had happened. And yet he was not broken.
What was a little pain? Torture? It was nothing he had not faced and survived before. It was just a few weeks. What was that compared to the decades—no, centuries—he could have with Essie if he lived through this?
If he survived, he was going to stop holding back and instead fully trust her with every shattered piece of him. He would dream of a future and build a life worth living instead of apathetically existing from day-to-day.
Far away in either Escarland or Tarenhiel, Essie was crying. She did not cry like Jalissa or Melantha, their nearly silent tears trailing an elegant sheen down their cheeks. No, Essie’s tears were loud with blotchy, red cheeks, puffy eyes, and drooling, wet sniffles.
How dare the trolls make Essie cry. He did not care what they did to him. But they had hurt Essie by capturing him. They would hurt her even more every time they hurt him.
The heat added strength to the core of raw steel inside him. Farrendel clenched his fists. “I chose this. I chose you.”
His words echoed against the cold stone of the ceiling. Essie could not hear them. She was far away. Though, perhaps, she could feel the sense of them from the strength welling in his chest. She stopped crying, and he could feel her internally reaching for the heart bond.
One of the last things he had told her was that he intended to die. He could not let her continue to think that. She needed to know he was going to fight with every shred in him to get back to her.
“I chose this.” Farrendel shouted the words this time, even though there was no one there to hear him. “I chose you, Essie. Do you hear that? I chose you, and I am going to survive this.”
There was the warmth he remembered flooding through the elishina.
This strength was intoxicating. He glared up at the stone ceiling, the cold darkness barely broken by the torchlight, and shouted with all the breath left in him, straining against the stone pinning him to the floor. “I am Farrendel Laesornysh, and I am going to survive! Do you hear that, troll king? I do not care what you do to me. I am going to survive.”
He could not control what the trolls did to him. He could not move more than his fingers and toes. But he could control his mind, mostly. And with his mind, he would win this battle.
Essie probably thought he was out of his head with pain, thanks to the rush of determination and exhilaration she must be feeling from him.
He collapsed back onto the floor, the stone searing his wrists and shoulders. His head pounded as if stabbed with a knife while his throat ached, his mouth far too dry.
But it had been worth it. Instead of giving in to the despair, he was ready to fight.
Perhaps Essie sensed as much through the elishina. She seemed to be trying to tell him something, her own determination sharp and raw. Maybe she was trying to reassure him that help was coming, as long as he was strong enough to wait for it.
Weylind would come for him. Of that much he was absolutely sure.
Essie’s brothers would come too. Averett, Julien, and Edmund had accepted him as he had never expected they would, even though he had only spent that one week with them. Strange how his trust in them was just as unshakable as his trust in Weylind, perhaps even more so. After all, his new Escarlish family had not betrayed him the way his own family had.
Farrendel forced himself to breathe evenly, relaxing his muscles and lying still against the stone. This was not going to be over quickly. He needed to prepare himself for that reality, accept it, and deal with it.
More than that, he had to keep his wits about him. If he saw an opportunity to escape, he would have to take it. When rescue came, he would help any way he could.
Last time, he had been too weak and broken to aid his father, and in the end, his father had died because of it. Now, Farrendel was older, wiser, than he had been fifteen years ago. A seasoned warrior, not the boy captured after only a few battles. This time, he would be ready so that none of his rescuers paid the price for him.