Page 1 of Sun Elves of Ardani

Prologue

Through a haze of fever, Neiryn became aware of a pair of slender, pale hands waving over his body.

He paused, taking in the canvas walls around him. He was lying on a cot inside a dark tent with his hands chained above his head and a magic-suppressing collar around his neck. His entire body felt heavy and sore and too hot, and it was a struggle to keep his eyes open.

He could not recall how he’d come to be here. So he thought of what he did remember: The forest. Running. Sickness. Darkness.

And then he remembered the ambush.

He’d been captured by humans. He was a prisoner in an Ardanian army camp. Which meant that if the fever didn’t kill him, the humans probably would.

His eyes darted toward those waving hands again. Though it hurt to move, he tilted his head to look up at the figure standing beside his cot. To his surprise, it was not a scowling Ardanian man in stained armor, but a young woman in a clean uniform. He watched the magic glowing around her fingers, and panic gripped him. She was a mage.

“What are you doing to me?” he slurred.

The human gave him a disinterested look. “Healing you.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Healing?”

“Yes. You’re very ill.”

She placed her hand on his chest, and he flinched, preparing for pain. But then a comforting, cooling sensation spread through him, and suddenly the burning ache in his limbs was lessened.

She looked up when he flinched, arching an eyebrow. “Does that hurt?” she asked doubtfully.

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “No,” he said, surprised. Slowly, his thoughts became clearer. He watched her face as her hands skimmed over him, pulling and prodding at him gently with strands of magic.

She was short and a bit bony, wearing an expression that was focused and severe, with a combination of pale skin and deep mahogany hair that implied she didn’t spend very much time in the sun. Her hands were small and delicate-looking, but there was something intimidating about the precision and confidence with which they moved.

If someone had asked Neiryn to picture a human army healer before this, he would have imagined a glorified butcher. Perhaps an angry fighter who had been pulled off the battlefield just long enough to shoot some poorly formed spells in his direction before finding some excuse to let him die.

She finally glanced up at him and sighed. “Stop looking at me.”

He tried to look charming, which was probably a lost cause given that he was covered in sweat, blood, and dirt after getting ill and wandering in this godsforsaken forest for days. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re very nice to look at,” he said, mostly because it was true, but also because flattery never hurt anything. If he wanted to get out of this camp alive, it would be wise to become friendly with whoever he could.

Evidently it was the wrong thing to say, because she immediately stiffened and glared at him. She didn’t resume her work until he looked away.

“Aren’t you going to interrogate me?” he said.

“No. They’ll do that later.”

Nerves made his stomach turn. The woman’s hands paused over his abdomen, apparently noting the change.

“Relax.” She said it like an order.

He swallowed tightly, making an effort to stay calm. “Don’t you at least want to know who I am and what I’m doing in the forest?” he asked conversationally.

“Not really.”

“Now I know you’re lying. You must be curious. Coming across a human, a night elf, and a sun elf, all traveling together instead of trying to kill each other? It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.”

“Quiet.”

Her hand hovered over his thigh, and magic tingled over the days-old infected arrow wound there: the source of his illness. He gasped in pain, and his body tried to gather magic to bring fire to his hands—an instinctive, reflexive reaction to the discomfort—but the collar on his neck stopped him. Trying to use magic while wearing the collar was like trying to breathe underwater. Useless, and supremely uncomfortable.

The woman pulled back a little when he gasped, frowning. “Apologies.”

He mentally added another line to his list of unexpected behavior from an Ardanian: apologizing to an enemy.

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