Page 48 of A Broken Promise

“Yes, I do. I used to even have an accent. Little village kids bulliedme for years because of it.” I chuckled, remembering those innocent days when mean names and words were the biggest concern of my life. “Tuluma would beat the soul out of me if I ever spoke in human tongue to her and since she was the only person I had, I spoke primarily elven my entire life.”

“Say something in elven,” Priya eagerly demanded.

I paused.

I hadn’t spoken elvish in years, only occasionally reliving my memories or reading my thoughts.

But I hadn’t said a single thing out loud since the day Tuluma died, sealing those memories.

My mind was tripping over thoughts as they somersaulted from one tongue to the other. A few coarse words came out of my mouth, and it felt comforting. As if I had a glimpse ofhome.

Priya now propped her chin on her hands and curiously looked at me.

“That sounded so ferocious. What does that mean?”

“It means,I taught you better than that, you human filth.”

“Weird choice of words, but okay.” I laughed at Priya’s sarcastic confusion.

“It was my maid's favorite thing to say to me.” Something nostalgic churned inside of me. I could almost hear Tuluma’s voice near me, angrily hissing. That voice, though harsh at times, was now something I wish I could hear just one more time.

“Well, she sounds like a charming lady.”

I chuckled at that. Tuluma was closer to a feral animal than a proper human lady.

“She sure was.”

The crowd below roared yet again.

“I want to know more,” Priya yawned.

“Well, she was very beautiful, even with her sharp pointy ears and elongated canines. Over two hundred years old, though she looked not a day older than us, and her turquoise eyes were so mesmerizing against her pitch-black hair and porcelain skin that as a kid, I often just stared at them to imagine wild oceans.”

But it wasn’t her beauty that I remembered the most. It was the slow spring tracks between small villages that we walked, filled with peaceful quietness. It was the long nights spent listening to Tuluma’s tales of the lost, forgotten elven lands, filled with mystical creatures. It was us celebrating Leuflun, Tuluma’s favorite elven holiday. It was how we danced to worship the Dryads or the songs we sang to Nymphs or the elven chess we played on long summer days, or the elven riddles I spent nights guessing, just for her to smack my head and tell me to try harder. Or the shivering winters we spent cuddled together far in the south to survive.

I told Priya of her.

And of me. Of whom I was before. Before life took my fiery free spirit and molded it, suffocated it with destruction until there were nothing but clumps of coal left.

My voice turned into a whisper. Priya’s eyes were already closed shut, her breathing slowed, and the twisting stopped. I smiled seeing her sleep. Who would have thought a cold-blooded assassin would look so peaceful?

I stared at the low ceiling, still listening to the drunken serenades coming from below, realizing that for once, the memories didn’t hurt so much.

26

The moldy tavern was now long gone, replaced by never ending horizons of ripe fields. Priya was already in a foul mood, and I stayed quiet, though a list of unanswered questions knocked in my mind wanting to barge in.

There were only two things Priya told me before setting off on this journey.

One, the person I was about to kill was a man, and two, he very well deserved to be dead.

The rocks on the gravel path were thinning out, turning our walk even more silent than before. Dust covered our boots all the way to our knees. The occasional breeze and shimmering of cottonwood trees breaking up the fields were the only source of relief against the warm fall sun and heated dark leathers we wore.

The small, nondescript cabin stood at the end of the straight path. Unobtrusively, we approached the crooked door.

This was it. Though my palms were sweaty, my heart beat strong.

I had never killed a man.

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