Tor with an ‘oomph,’ his arms instantly wrapping around me.
“Oh yeah, you look great right now,” Naril chimes in. I glare at him, but I don’t miss how pale he looks, and I realise it must have been quite a shock for him to see his brother return from training covered in blood, then witness me breaking the spell. I’m quickly learning that breaking magic is not easy, or pretty.
“I’ll go, but I’ll walk.”
Vaeril grumbles beside me, now also on his feet, but he nods his head, knowing it’s pointless to argue with me. Tor just seems happy to have me in his arms, although he’s still wearing a frown as he looks down at me. Eldrin has moved away slightly but hasn’t taken his gaze away from me, his eyes burning my skin.
“Wait,” I call out when I see the tribesmen are about to take Speaker Hawthorn away. Although I’m putting on a brave face, I know I won’t be able to keep up with them, and there’s something I want to ask before they take him to the healer’s tent. Walking up to the side of the stretcher, I clasp his hand again, squeezing gently. “Why are you here? You came all this way to find me?” The question doesn’t come out how I want it to, but I’m too exhausted to rephrase it. Thankfully, he smiles at me slightly, understanding I don’t mean it to sound rude.
However, his smile doesn’t stay there long, and he glances over at Fawne and the other wood elves, who are following behind anxiously. “The queen is out of control. You must stop her.” His voice is stronger now, and I can see the fear in his eyes, but there’s something else too, something I’ve not seen in him before. Anger. He’s angry. “We have come to pledge our allegiance. We will follow you in the war, beloved.”
“I don’t want this.” My voice is quiet, but there’s no mistaking the note of grief as I poke the fire with a stick, stirring the embers and ash, absentmindedly staring into the flickering flames. It’s hypnotising, but I’m not really paying attention, my thoughts consumed by the weight of my responsibilities.
Someone shifts on the wooden bench next to me, their hand reaching out as a moth flies past, protecting it from the flames it was heading towards. “If you wanted a war, then we would be putting our faith in the wrong person,” Speaker Hawthorn responds as he gently cups the moth between his hands. Our eyes meet as he acknowledges my pain. “It was the queen who started this long before you were born. Be at peace, beloved, all will be well.” Raising his cupped hands to his lips, he whispers something in elvish, and when he opens them, the moth sits in his palm. It’s beautiful. I’ve never taken time to examine the creatures before, but its wings almost appear to be shiny, and what I thought was just a brown colour is actually made up of blues and greys. It stretches out its wings and flies into the sky, avoiding the flames completely. Mesmerised, I stare up, watching the moth fly away.
“How can you know that?” My voice cracks, and I hate that I sound so unsure, like a child in need of reassurance. Except when the stakes are so high, I can’t hide my insecurities. If it was something smaller, more trivial, then I would push it back, I would endure, just like I have in the past, but this is about people’s lives. If I make a single mistake…
Pulling my gaze from the empty sky, I turn to the speaker, begging for him to understand. “I don’t know the first thing about war, and you are putting all of your faith in me.”
After Hawthorn was taken to the healer and we were given time to recover, there was a meeting with the chiefs. It was tense and awkward. The wood elves explained they would no longer follow the elf queen. They described the darkness she was infecting the land with, and how it started to infect their sacred forest, their home. Speaker Hawthorn told us about a ‘sickness’ that infected the plants and trees, making them shrivel and die, and how huge swathes of the forest perished. Many of the wood elves present shed a tear, including the speaker as he spoke of the devastation to his home, and my heart felt like it was breaking a little. Although