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Essie gripped the leather strap holding her gun across her back and tried not to shift.
“Yet here your sister stands while my brother is still captured.” King Weylind glared.
Averett glared right back. “Because of your brother’s courageous sacrifice.”
“You do not know what they have already done to him.” King Weylind’s mouth twisted, his eyes pained, even as he reached into his tunic and yanked out a package of folded canvas. “The trolls left this at the northern border.”
Essie’s stomach churned. The canvas wasn’t stained red, so hopefully King Weylind wasn’t about to reveal Farrendel’s severed finger.
King Weylind flipped open the canvas, revealing a cascade of something glinting and silver-blond.
Farrendel’s hair.
Essie’s breath caught. The trolls had chopped off his hair. She reached out and tentatively stroked a strand of it as it lay across King Weylind’s palms. “Farrendel depends on his hair when he fights. This will be like robbing him of one of his senses.”
“An elf warrior’s hair symbolizes his honor. It is considered a dishonor to have one’s hair shorn. It is a shame done to traitors and cowards.” King Weylind cradled Farrendel’s hair across his palms. “Farrendel is not the one who should have suffered this.”
No. Melantha was the traitor. She was the one who should have been subjected to that humiliation.
Instead it had been Farrendel shoved onto his knees, a troll grasping his hair, slicing through it with a knife.
King Weylind’s gaze was pained. “Last time, they did not cut his hair. He was tortured as part of his capture, but back then, the trolls had been focused on using him as a trap for our father. This time...” King Weylind held up Farrendel’s hair. “They have many reasons to wish revenge on Farrendel. They will torture him for the sake of causing him pain. This will be worse than before.”
The torture had already begun. Essie hugged her arms over her stomach. Farrendel’s worst fear had come true. He had been captured by the trolls.
Survive. It was the one thing she’d asked him to do. Just survive.
How long would it take to rescue him? Could he survive the days—weeks—of torture? How much of her Farrendel would be left when they rescued him?
“This”— King Weylind jabbed Farrendel’s hair forward, stopping only an inch shy of Averett’s chest— “is what your failure to protect him has cost. I trusted you, and you failed to protect my brother.”
Averett faced King Weylind without flinching and shouted right back. “He’s our brother too.”
King Weylind blinked. He straightened. Blinked again.
“He’s our brother too,” Averett repeated at a lower volume and waved to Julien and Edmund standing behind him with arms crossed. “And we intend to get him back. You can either help us or you can get out of our way.”
King Weylind’s gaze searched Averett’s face before he turned to Essie and spoke in elvish. “Does he speak the truth?”
Would King Weylind believe her if she said yes?
Yet, he had asked. King Weylind wouldn’t have bothered to ask if he didn’t believe she’d tell the truth. “Yes. Farrendel is a part of my family, and my brothers take care of their own.”
King Weylind’s expression softened a fraction. “What exactly do you intend?”
“Operating on Escarland’s soil, as the trolls did, is an act of war. As soon as I return to Aldon, I will be declaring war on Kostaria, and Parliament will vote to approve. After one of their own proved to be a traitor and with all the evidence we have of the trolls meddling in Escarlish politics, the vote will be close to unanimous.” Averett stuck out his hand. “I would like to expand our treaty and fight alongside you to defeat the trolls together.”
King Weylind stared at Averett’s hand before he tipped a slight bow and touched his hand to his forehead, mouth, then chest. “Very well. We elves will accept your aid.”
Typical elves. Even now, King Weylind managed to sound condescending toward humans.
Yet, Essie now recognized the significance of the forehead, mouth, chest gesture. It meant something along the lines of good thoughts to each other, kind words to each other, and loyalty to each other, and meant more than the coldly formal mouth to forehead motion.
King Weylind folded the canvas back over the remnants of Farrendel’s hair and turned to Essie. “Is he still alive?”
“Yes.” As of a few minutes ago, at least. “I know that much.”
Essie gripped the strap of her gun, heat building inside her chest. The trolls had turned Melantha against her own brother. They’d organized several traitors inside Escarland and Tarenhiel. And now, they had Farrendel and would torture him.
