The prisoner jerks up from his bed as the cell door opens. He squints into the unsteady light of the candle I carry. “Elia?”
The key, though cold now, scalds my skin. I don’t answer.
He sits, shivering, clutching his ragged blanket around himself. I wish I could do the same. His cell is as cold as the night outside.
I wish I could wrap my arms around him and calm his shaking.
He blinks the sleep from his eyes. “What are you doing here? You never visit this late.” His voice is filled with unspoken hopes, unspoken fears.
I stand as still as ice. “Why did you become a soldier?”
“What?”
“You joined the human army. You swore an oath to eliminate the Lura’e. Why?”
He sighs. “Don’t do this, Elia. Don’t open a door that can’t be closed again. Just let us have this time together, for however long… however long I have left.” His voice catches, but he quickly recovers. “Here in this cell, there are no humans, and no elves. I don’t want to ruin that.”
His words cut me to the bone. “Is that how you think of me? That I’m not Lura’e? That I’m not the same as the people you killed?” He was right. My words have opened a door, one that will never close. A chasm yawns between us now, as wide and as deep as the river that runs between this world and the land of the dead. Between me and my massacred sisters calling out for vengeance.
“I didn’t kill anyone. I told you that the day we met. I tried to follow my orders, but when I smelled the blood… when I saw…” A shudder ripples through him. “I hid in the guard tower, trying not to hear. That’s how your people found me.”
“Answer my question.”
“My answer won’t change anything. It won’t change what happened to your temple, or what happened to me. Aren’t you the one who keeps telling me not to dwell on the past?”
“I told you to answer me.” Feelings I would rather not examine thicken my voice.
Another sigh, long and low. “Because we remember. We may not live for hundreds of years like you, but we remember. Your parents, your grandparents, dragged my ancestors in chains to your damned forests. Any human villages that resisted, you leveled to the ground, and planted trees to erase the fact that they had ever existed. But we never forgot. We never forgot how we labored for you, fought for you, died for you, so you could sit in your temples and keep your hands clean.” His voice is rough with emotions long held back. “I was born the year my people discovered magic and used it to break free. But my parents made sure I knew our history. The eight hundred years we spent as slaves, the humans who sacrificed their lives so I could live my life in freedom. I joined the army to honor their memory. To ensure that my future children, and their children, could never be caged in the forests of the elves.”
“There are no forests anymore.” I can’t look at him. Can’t listen to the human hatred pouring from his mouth. “You burned them all.”
“You’ll only replant them. If we stop fighting, if we forget what you’re capable of, soon enough the leaves will blot out the sun again like they did for eight hundred years.”
“If you escaped, would you fight for them again?” My voice is made of stone. I wish I could say the same of my heart.
“Elia…” His voice holds a quiet plea. “El, don’t.”
But his appeals have come too late. They can’t close the door I’ve opened. They can’t silence these questions, can’t lighten the weight of the key against my skin. “Would you?”
“I would never hurt you, Elia. Never.” His eyes beg me to let that be enough.
“Do you think your armies would care? They won’t rest until even the memory of us is gone.”
“I would find a place for you. I would keep you safe.”
“While you devoted your life to wiping out my kind.”
The plea in his eyes dims. He shakes his head. “I can’t say what you want me to say. I can’t pretend I don’t believe in the cause I fought for. We won’t be your slaves again.”
“And we will not be destroyed.” With a silent groan, the chasm between us rips further open until I can barely see him. His face blurs before me as I turn away. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Elia, wait. Please.”
A tear runs down my chin and splashes to the cold stone floor.
“Elia, I…”
My hand tightens around the stolen key as I open the door.
“Elia, I love you.”
The door falls shut behind me, and the temple is silent once again.