Page 118 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

Kolfinna stiffened and grabbed ahold of his face with both hands. “They did that to you?” She couldn’t hide the alarm in her voice. It only made sense that these fae, who belonged to Queen Aesileif’s army, would resort to such wicked tactics. The fae had the ability to draw and manipulate life—that was what naturemanipulation was—but they also had a darker ability, the ability to drain mana and life force from a living being. “How much did they take?”

“Not much,” he said with a frown. “But a few of them did that with every attack. Normally, I wouldn’t ever let anyone get that close to me, especially not an enemy, but at some point, I wasn’t able to use my magic. I don’t know. Maybe a rune or something caused that?”

“There was a ring of runes in one area of the field.” Kolfinna lowered her hands.

Blár grimaced. “I hate that they can do that. I’m guessing you broke them?”

She nodded.

Blár appraised her wounds with a furrowed brow and touched her shoulder lightly. “You look pretty beat up.”

The wound near her neck had already closed up, but her abdomen was still sore and stiff with blood.

“I’m fine.” She moved his hand away gently and glanced at the other soldiers. She had to make sure Inkeri, Herja, Eluf, and the rest of their group was okay and alive. Also, maybe there was something she could help with? She had healed Inkeri’s snakebite a few weeks ago, so maybe her abilities were needed again? “Anyway, let’s go check on everyone else. We might have won this battle, but I highly doubt this is the last of it.”

“Agreed.” Blár’s mouth screwed shut and his expression turned grim once more. “I’m going to round up the rest of the enemies. You go get checked up, all right?”

“Don’t boss me around,” she said jokily, pulling away from him. “You need to get patched up too.”

He chuckled and nodded to the left. “The physician tent is that way. I’ll get checked out when I’m done. Meet me there, okay?”

Kolfinna wovethrough the crowds of soldiers for the fifth time that past hour. Now that the battle was over, the other soldiers were taking their comrades to the physician tents and tending to them, rounding up the enemies, dragging corpses to one side of the field, and taking account of the damage and seeing who was still alive. Kolfinna had been looking for Inkeri and Herja the whole time.

Her gaze landed on Ivar, who was hunched over a fallen soldier. He rested a hand on the soldier’s face and gently closed the man’s lifeless eyes. When Kolfinna approached, he looked up at her with a weary expression.

His face was spotted with blood, and there was an ugly gash across his cheek up to his ear, which was a bloody, mangled mess.

She gasped at the sight of it. “Ivar, yourear.”

He cringed and rose to his feet. “I can still hear out of it.”

“You should?—”

“Get checked out? Maybe later.” Ivar turned his head toward the field of soldiers, both dead and alive. He pursed his lips together. “So many are dead. We didn’t stand a chance once we couldn’t use our magic.”

Kolfinna stared at the right side of the field, where the bodies of her comrades were being lined up as they were talking. It was hard not to notice the devastation the fae and the elves had wrought on them. Many of the soldiers had been crushed with stone magic, clobbered to bits by the earthen creatures, or killedwith arrows from the sky. Not to mention the blasts of shadow and light the elves possessed.

“We’re not equipped to fight fae,” Kolfinna found herself saying. “I don’t know how to stop the elf magic, and I’m sure most of everyone hasn’t ever faced a full-fledged fae before.”

Ivar nodded grimly. “Honestly, I think it would be smart to start training with you. We’ve faced fae before since we’re at the southern border, but most of them weren’t that great at using their magic. Not like these soldiers, at least. And most of everyone has never faced anything like it before. If it wasn’t for Blár …”

There was something that was still bothering her about the battle. The fae troops had been winning, and even though Blár’s presence changed the tides of war, the retreat had been too quick. These soldiers didn’t seem like the type to run at the first sign of danger. So why?

“Have you seen Inkeri or Herja?” Kolfinna asked.

Ivar bobbed his head slowly and pointed to one of the erected tents. “Inkeri is in the physician’s tent helping the wounded.”

Relief pooled in her chest. “I must’ve missed her when I went back there.”

Truthfully, she had been avoiding the physician’s tent since Hilda was supposedly in one of them, so she hadn’t looked very hard in the first place.

“She’s been going in and out and getting other soldiers in there.” Ivar rubbed the side of his face that wasn’t wounded, and suddenly appeared exhausted. He gestured to a cluster of soldiers to one side. “Herja went over there to talk to Haakon Lykke.”

Kolfinna tried not to show her surprise. Haakon Lykke, the man Herja had slept with at some point. From what it seemed like, Herja had been torn on whether she wanted to see him or avoid him.

Ivar must’ve read her expression because he said, “Don’t worry, it’s not like he’ll do anything to her. Pretty sure Herja can burn him off the face of this land if she wanted to. And besides, the man’s clearly head over heels for her.”

“Really?” Kolfinna tilted her head to the side. “She doesn’t seem to reciprocate, though.”

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