So I woke, unsurprisingly, in a cell. Alone, also unsurprisingly. From the stone comprising the walls, I guessed we’d been dragged the rest of the way to Nudain; that humans had apparently done so forced me to re-evaluate my cavalier assumptions about an elven revolution. Humanity, confronted at last with merely mortal captors, must have found the rage necessary to accomplish their own liberation. How ridiculous to have come here on a mission of mercy to people who needed a savior not at all! As ridiculous as the possibility that we might die here at the hands of those people we’d intended to succor.

I put my aching head in my hands and reflected on the series of ironies that had composed my life up until now. Surely I was not in mortal peril—I had centuries yet before me for God to fill with many more such ironies, and if my life to this point was any indication, He had too much a fondness for them to let me perish now. Too, did I do anything in as poor taste as die here, Chester would be sorely vexed, and I had no desire to catch a minatory lecture from him on the subject. He had access now to an entire library of arcana; surely there would be some volume on the summoning of ghosts if I had the poor taste to expire before he could reach me to deliver it.

The headache did not pass, and briefly I mourned the loss of elven immortality. Once I was sure I could move without vomiting, I tried crawling to the furthermost wall, which was partially lined with bars rather than more stone. There I found a most salutary sight.

“You live!” I exclaim.

“You would have known had I been dead,” Amhric said.

My brother was in the cell across from mine, sitting cross-legged before his own set of bars. The view, I realized, would have permitted him to keep watch on me. I grimaced and rested a hand on one of the bars. “I am sorry. It must not have been a pleasing vigil.”

“I would have known had you been dying also, brother mine,” he replied. “You will ask me next after the others, and I will say that I know nothing of the remainder of our guard. Nor of Tchanu—they don’t seem to be housed here.”

The metal beneath my palm drew my attention, for it reminded me of the staff. I lifted my fingers, curled them again around the slim cylinder. “We could leave.”

“We could.”

Heady thought. Metal could be subjected to the will of the magics under my command. There was nothing keeping us here, save that concentration was proving difficult; one of my eyes was still narrowed, and opening it caused pain to spike to the back of my head. “You haven’t freed yourself because of me, I take it.”

“I won’t leave you,” he said. And added, “We are in no danger yet.”

Now I squinted at him. “I love you, Amhric, but surely you jest.”

“They have not killed us,” he said. “And Ivy was not imprisoned here that we know of. Nor have I seen the genets. They are likely responsible for our being alive.”

“Which means they are somewhere in Nudain arguing for us?” I grimaced and sat with my back to the wall, stretching one leg gingerly before me and using the other lifted knee to rest my hands. “It seems a credible hypothesis. I will have to hope you’re right, as I doubt I could do anything more strenuous than stumble in your wake if we were to make an attempt at escape.”

“Is it bad?” he asked, soft. “I didn’t see the injury, but you have been unconscious for several hours.”

“I feel as if someone has split my head with a pike.” I paused. “Did someone?”

His soft laugh, barely audible, still lifted my spirits. “We would no longer survive a wound that dire, so it is safe to say you have been spared it.”

“Pity,” I said. “I’m forced to face the fact that a mere blow can cause this much pain.” The stone wall was cold; I tried resting the back of my head against it, and the contrast between it and my fevered scalp was welcome. “Is it what it looks like? The kept humans of Nudain have overthrown their slavers.”

“It seems so, yes.”

“What a mess.”

“Better, perhaps, than the alternative.”

I winced and touched my fingertips to my throbbing temple. “I don’t know that either alternative is preferable.”

“Perhaps not. But there was never not going to be consequences for what happened here, Morgan.” Surprised by the sadness in his voice, I looked toward him. “What we have done in ridding the world of the demon, in freeing the magics long chained from humanity on the continent and in liberating the elves long imprisoned by their curse… all of that was the quick and easy part. What lies before us now—the rapprochement of the races—will be our real life’s work.”

“I… had not thought that far ahead, I admit.”

I hadn’t thought Amhric capable of anything as indelicate as a snort until this moment. “Tell me a new tale, brother mine.”

“All right,” I said. “Perhaps I had a feel for the scope of the work before us. But it was a nebulous feel, I pledge you.”

He chuckled. “As none of us are given to see the future, I will grant you that.”

I grinned at him despite the way it made the skin of my face ache and subsided into a comfortable silence, and this he kept with me.

The men who came for us were not gentle. The first yanked me to my feet and when I staggered shoved me upright and said, “Stand up straight or we’ll make you.”

“I’ll be sure to vomit on your shoes, then,” I said past the blinding pain. “Or if you prefer, I’ll aim higher.”

This earned me a punch to the gut that flattened me against the bars, and for a moment I lost the world entirely. The sounds of a struggle penetrated my haze and I said, conversationally, “If you are treating my brother as badly as you are me, right now, at this moment, I will destroy you all and care nothing as to the cost.”

“As if you could,” the first guard sneered.

“Would you like to try me?”

“Morgan—” Amhric sounded worried, and that infuriated me. What had they done to him? I pushed myself to my feet.

“Just come along quietly,” said another of the guards.

“No, no. Come at us, please,” said the first again. “I would very much like to ‘try’ you, the way so many elves have ‘tried’ me. Do you have any idea how that works?”

“Yes,” I said. “They tie your hands to a hook on the ceiling and then seal them there with magics you can’t break. And then they stroke you through your clothes in a violation more hideous than anything you can imagine, as if your skin is lacerated and they are digging claws through your spirit and sucking up the blood. And you weep and they laugh and say in a language they think you can’t understand that you are sweet to the taste and they could use you for hours and hours without you running dry.”

I chanced opening my eyes when I heard no movement, felt no new abuse, and found all six of our captors staring at me.

“You can’t know that,” a new one said, uneasy. “Not from the inside like that. You’re an elf.”

“I am now,” I said. “But I was enchanted to seem human. It turns out that elves can also be harvested for magic. Or could, when elves still had claws to do so.”

“And they don’t now,” the first scoffed.

“No.”

“Then how did you—”

“Look,” the second guard said, “this isn’t our business. They told us to bring up the prisoners. Let’s bring up the prisoners.”

“Fine,” the first said and approached me a rope.

“Is that necessary?” I asked, tired.

“No,” he replied, smirking. “But I want to.”

I suffered myself to be bound, hands and neck, only because Amhric’s patient gaze reminded me that we would have an easier time convincing these humans of our good intentions if we didn’t protest.

From our cellblock, once no doubt used to keep humans when elves were ascendant, we were led up the stairs and through what appeared to be kitchens, out into what would have been a courtyard in any other city. In Nudain, it was a fantasy. An enormous cavern that swept downward toward a rocky lip to the ocean, its stalactites and stalagmites extended into arches and carved and painted and inset with precious stones. These arches proceeded up an incline, and as they rose the roof slowly peeled back to reveal the sky and a grassy sward, framed in palms.

From this enormous space led halls, both deeper into the cliffs and higher toward the buildings I could just espy above ground. At the lowest elevations, the halls were replaced with canals, surging and hissing with the tide as the sea filled them. It was breathtaking, and I had little leisure to enjoy it before we were propelled with little kindness toward a door at the end of the cavern.

Nudain’s audience chamber had been delved from the sea cliffs and overlooked both the ocean and the courtyard, by way of twin balconies. It may have once been a beautiful and gracious place; it was now cluttered with the ruins of shattered columns and furniture, and there were suspicious smears on the walls. If there had been a throne, or something like one, it had been destroyed; the people awaiting us were standing, and two of them, I was relieved to see, were Ivy and Kelu.

“Finally!” Ivy exclaimed in Lit, and started for me, only to be stopped by two people with spears. “For God’s sake, don’t be ridiculous. That’s my fiancé. Morgan, these people don’t understand me. Or they’re pretending not to understand me. Kelu, tell them!”

Kelu said dryly in the Gift, “You’re manhandling her betrothed.”

“Her fiancé,” a man standing apart from the others said in response to this. “Really.”

“He doesn’t believe you,” Kelu reported to Ivy.

Ivy’s frustration was nearing extreme proportions, as anyone could tell from her voice even without understanding the words. “As I’ve been trying to tell them since they dragged us here—”

“Enough,” a second human, a woman, said to Kelu. “Tell your human to be silent.” Without waiting to hear if Kelu did, she approached me and gave me a look that made her seem remarkably akin to an elf: as if I was something to be sized up and dismissed as inconsequential. “So. Come to put down the little rebellion, have you.”

“Ironically enough, no,” I said. “I came to liberate you and the genets.”

She laughed. “Oh, ripe one! Please, tell me another!”

I glanced at Kelu. “I presume you two have been explaining our mission at length and they aren’t interested in listening.”

“To be fair,” Kelu said, “we did arrive with Tchanu, who’s responsible for the humans here being food. This isn’t exactly Erevar.”

“Where is Tchanu, anyway?” I asked.

The woman slapped me. “When you are allowed to ask questions, elf, you’ll be told.”

Ivy’s growl was not encouraging. When my headache permitted the formation of distinct words, I said in Lit, “Don’t kill them yet, my love.”

“If they hit you again, I’ll do worse than kill them.”

Kelu offered in the Gift, “She’s going to hurt you all if you aren’t more careful with her property.”

“Her property!” The woman facing me laughed. “You have her well and truly indoctrinated, don’t you. Did you take a fancy to her? Separate her from the herd? She doesn’t know how the rest of us live.”

“She doesn’t know how the rest of you live because she wasn’t born here,” I replied. “She speaks a wholly different language, you’ll note. And doesn’t understand the Angel’s Gift.”

“She is pretending,” the woman said.

“You really are stupid,” Kelu interrupted.

“For a genet,” one of the guards said, “You are incredibly insolent.”

“I was the first genet,” Kelu said. “They fixed that in all the next versions.” She folded her arms. “And those are my elves, and this is my human, and I want them back.”

This development gave them pause. If they’d worked for the liberation of both humans and genets, then they could not fail to accommodate Kelu… but it was plain that they considered all elves their enemies and that nothing would satisfy them but the complete extirpation of the race from the Archipelago.

“All right.” Kelu lifted a furred hand. “You think that’s asking too much. I’ll compromise. I want my two elves,” she pointed at me and Amhric. “My human,” now Ivy. “And my friend, Emily. You can keep the rest.”

“Kelu!” I exclaimed.

“It’s the best I can do,” Kelu said in Lit. “Tchanu was personally responsible for using a lot of these people. Her guards—the ones that lived—either were in on it too, or they’re from other blood-flags and have no one to protect them. I can get you all free or no one.”

“She may be right,” Ivy said. “They are full of rage, Morgan. As I imagine they have the right to be.”

“And you.” The woman had moved on to Amhric, where she stopped, arrested by him in the way that all were when they moved to consider him. I could well imagine the gentle compassion in his eyes, and how unwelcome it would be to her. “No defenses?”

“I am his defense,” I said.

She snorted. “Until you decide you need to sacrifice him to your ambitions. I know how elves work.”

“Do you?” I said. “How old are you? You can’t be over twenty years.”

“She’s seventeen. But I’m not.” The man, who’d been silent up until this point, joined her. He was no graybeard, but there were lines beneath his eyes that suggested he was older than he looked. He regarded Amhric with reluctant interest; well I could read the distaste in his movements. “I don’t recognize you. You’re not one of Nudain’s.”

“I belong to no blood-flag.”

“That doesn’t happen,” the girl said.

“It does for the king,” Amhric replied.

“A king of elves?” The older human hesitated.

“Excellent,” said the girl. “Let’s kill him and behead their nation.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Kelu said from behind them. “Until now he hasn’t had the power to do anything. He’s here to bring all the elves under his rule, so you’re better off making friends with him and convincing him to hear your cause than you are killing him outright.”

“She’s right,” I said. “Do you kill him, your descendants will be forced to bear the burden of surviving while the Archipelago erupts into power struggles that will make your own quest for freedom far more difficult to bring to fruition.”

“Our descendants.” The girl folded her arms.

“Yes,” I said. “Because if you kill him, I will kill you. I accept that your guards will slay afterwards, but they won’t reach me before I reach you.”

“Are you not going to tell your aggressive guard-cat to stand down?” the man asked Amhric.

“I would not. He loves me, saved me from slavery in Suleris, and has warded me through multiple battles with the walking dead and a fight against demons.” Amhric glanced at me and smiled, rueful. “To counsel him against violence in my defense would be….”

“Cruel,” I said.

“A waste of breath,” Amhric said.

“Very pretty,” the girl said. “Fine show of loyalty when we know that you people have none, nor finer sensibilities either.”

The older man was watching the interplay between us with a furrowed brow. Noticing it, I said, “Have we perplexed you? Not fitting into your preconceived notions of how elves behave, are we? What if the genet is right? What if befriending us is your best chance for liberty?”

“Is it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “For reasons I would be glad to explain if you would stop treating us like prisoners.” I grimaced. “And allow my beloved to see to my head.”

“That for your head!” the girl exclaimed, and cuffed me on the temple.

The world erupted into noise and motion; Ivy’s scream of rage, the scuffle of boots, the floor meeting my ribs an instant before it met my head.

When I could see again there were four guards on me, and four on Amhric. Ivy had been added to our number, wrenched to her knees and imprisoned by another three people; while Kelu remained free there were two men before her with spears, watching her warily. And there, I thought, we might have come to a gruesome end had it not been for purest luck, for as the yelling in two languages finally began to die down, a handful of genets entered the room: yellow-coated and brindled and silver and sable, they came with the apparent intention of reporting something to our captors when they espied Amhric.

Nearly as one, they stopped in shock as the magic in them recognized the magic that had made them. Their tails trembled, and their ears, and their eyes grew round... and then they cried out and ran for him. As his astonished guards watched they pushed into my brother’s lap, throwing their arms around him, rubbing cheeks against his and purring and lapping at his skin.

“What the hell?” said the girl. “What are you all doing! Pepper? Moonlight? Marzipan!”

“What, did you name them all after dogs?” Kelu said, disgusted.

One of the genets clinging to Amhric looked over her shoulder at the girl, and her confusion was plain on her face. “But Diantha! It’s the Sire! Don’t you know him?”

“The Fount!” agreed a second, who leaned back to look at him, then let her gaze rise to the guards. Incredulous, she said, “Why are you holding him down? Let him go!”

“Let him go!” said the girl—Diantha. “He’s an elf!”

“He’s our father,” said a third genet.

This revelation astonished our captors into silence. Capitalizing on it, Kelu said, “They’re right. Amhric was imprisoned in Suleris and used to fuel the magics that made the genets. The elves raped him just like they did you, and for the same reason.”

Ignoring her, the older man said carefully, “He… lay down with you?”

All of the foreign genets stared at him, ears sagging: as one would look at a madman, or someone who’d committed a horrible solecism. Their disgust was manifest in the voice of the first when she exclaimed, “No!”

“Then how do you… you call him father?”

“He is a part of us,” the third genet said. “We would know him anywhere.”

“Even if some of us hadn’t seen him escape from Suleris,” agreed the first. She looked past Amhric at me. “It must have been you who helped him? But you look like an elf now. You were human when I saw you.”

“I was apparently always an elf,” I said. “My mother, wanting to save me from the depredations of our kind, bore me among humans and enchanted me to resemble them.”

“Oh,” whispered one of the genets. “She was smart!”

I couldn’t help my laugh.

“There are no good elves,” Diantha said stubbornly, with a brittle anger I found ominous.

“A lot of them are rotten,” Kelu said. “Some of them aren’t. These two would help you, if you let them.”

“They were seen with e Nudain,” the man murmured.

“Yes, well, they didn’t know her well.”

“Kelu!” I said.

“It’s true,” Kelu replied, unrepentant. “Can you vouch for her behavior prior to knowing you?”

I grimaced.

The genets had resumed murmuring to Amhric, obviously distressed at his state. The first stood finally and said, “Ikaros, this is our father! You can’t treat him this way.”

“Your father the king,” Kelu added.

“We could be princesses!” exclaimed one of the genets, much to the amusement of the others. My brother, I saw, was very happy… had his nose in the fur of the golden genet, who had an arm around his neck. I saw the seep of tears off his auburn lashes.

“Shall we be your princesses?” added the golden one, leaning back to look at him.

“You will always be kin to me,” Amhric said. “And my daughters.”