The week following the jailbreak came and went in a noxious blur. The party traveled during the night, utilizing the dark to cloak their movements, whilst bunkering down during the day when the realm patrols were most active. Daana caught only short bursts of sleep between stops and rotating watch shifts. When she awoke, for what might have been the third time that day, she was surprised to find the sun was already setting beyond the horizon. Its final rays filtered in through the dense trees, coating the moss riddled ground in eerie patches of waning pink and orange light.
Easing upright, Daana took stock of her surroundings as the hazy visions of sleep slowly faded from her waking mind. Snag was gone, as was Wormy, the goblin’s trustworthy horse. Ellisar’s pack was on the ground beside her saddle and the only things that looked to be missing were her bow and quiver. Off hunting, probably. Ashwyn was seated on the trampled dirt near the center of camp working a needle in and out of a cut of cloth.
Daana had seen Oralia do similar work around the campfire before. The notable difference was that Oralia made it look soothing. From the way Ashwyn muttered and cursed her way through, pausing every few stitches to suck the sting of a needle prick from her fingertip, it was not an activity she enjoyed.
Stifling a yawn, Daana moved forward in an awkward shuffle. Her sore legs and hips protested any and all movement. Her knees buckled the moment she reached Ashwyn and Daana went down with them, managing to make her descent look more like an intentional sit and less like a full-bodied flop. Ideally, she would have worked the ache from her unruly limbs through stretches, but with the threat of another torturous ride looming in the near-future, she was going to take advantage of the stillness for as long as possible.
Daana’s dazed stare moved to the large cut of cloth clenched in Ashwyn’s hands. “Making a blanket?”
The orc’s dominant hand jerked to an abrupt halt. “A tunic, actually.”
“That was going to be my second guess.”
“The flattery is not necessary, Peaches. I know dog shit when I see it.” Ashwyn stretched the garment between her hands and held it aloft, examining the uneven line of sloppy stitches with a growing scowl. “I wanted something that didn’t scream ‘I’m wearing my bigger sister’s secondhand clothes’ quite as loudly as what I’ve got on now. Thought I could fashion something myself. I think I’d be better off with a potato sack at this point.”
Daana nodded along, too preoccupied with the nervous fluttering in her stomach to offer anything more than a smile. She’d waited all week for the opportunity to approach Ashwyn alone, and now that she finally had it, she couldn’t summon the courage to turn her thoughts into words. They all just jumbled together in a useless string of nonsense that clogged the inside of her throat, making it impossible to say anything.
“Got something on your mind?” Ashwyn offered a knowing wink before Daana could sputter out an excuse. “Looks like you’re about ready to ask me to the winter solstice ball with the way you’re blushing.”
Her skin burned hot against the cool evening air as her embarrassment crept from her face to her ears. “There is, actually,” Daana said, still fighting the stubborn lump caught in her throat. “I know there wasn’t time back in the cell, but do you think you could, well, tell me about my mother now? What she was like?”
Ashwyn’s eyebrows pressed together as her unsteady hand slipped the needle in and out of the garment once more. “Did I know her?”
“Larkspur, remember?”
The orc’s gray-blue head swiveled around in surprise. “You meant that?” She must have seen the seriousness in Daana’s face because Ashwyn’s expression transformed from surprise to utter confusion. “You’re Lark’s kid, for real? Did she have more children or…”
“I was the one put on the boat headed for the flatlands. I didn’t know until recently, but Ellisar said you would be able to give me answers.”
“Me? Ellisar was the one with ties to your mother, not me. I barely knew her.”
“She was?”
Ashwyn said, with much more hesitation this time, “They were a couple, formerly. Long before Ellie and I met. That’s the entire reason Larkspur reached out to us for assistance in the first place.”
“What?”
With a sigh, Ashwyn dropped her work into her lap and rolled back her head, groaning, “Of course Ellisar didn’t tell you.”
“No, she didn’t!” Oh gods, a troubled thought flashed through Daana’s mind. “Please tell me she’s not my father.”
“How would that work?”
“I don’t know. I’m just learning a lot of new information right now and I don’t like it!”
“Alright, alright, easy, Peaches. I’m sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Ellisar didn’t say anything before.”
“Because she’s a manipulative bitch?” Daana ventured through gritted teeth.
“Precisely.” When this failed to lighten the mood, Ashwyn continued, “Look, from what I understand, their relationship was very…volatile. Ellisar didn’t want anything to do with your mother afterwards. When Larkspur reached out after the division had taken her captive, it was me who convinced Ellie to help.”
Apparently not just a manipulative bitch, but a heartless one too. Was it wrong that Daana was siding with her mother without even knowing the circumstances? At this rate, no. It seemed perfectly reasonable.
Ashwyn looked like she wanted to say more, but did not yet know how. Slowly, she reached out and rested the flat of her hand on Daana’s knee. “May I ask why you’re not with your mother now? If learning about her was your goal, this seems like a very convoluted way of accomplishing that.”
“Because she’s dead?”
The orc’s gray eyes grew wide. “Larkspur died? When did that happen?”
A nagging idea pulled at the back of Daana’s mind. Something about their stories wasn’t aligning and she couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, some way, it was all intentional. “Of course she’s dead. Your sister killed her!” Daana gestured with her hands as she spoke. “Why am I even explaining this to you? You were there, weren’t you? Shouldn’t you know all of this?”
Ashwyn’s painfully blank face said far more than words could have.
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Daana attempted to jog her memory with a brief history lesson. “It was a pivotal moment following The Night of Stolen Lives. The Protector of the Realm, your sister, chased those responsible across the territories, cornered them in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and slew the main instigator, Larkspur Denari. It’s in all the history books.”
“That’s the funny thing about history, Peaches. Tends to change depending on who’s telling it.”
Daana dropped her hands into her lap in defeat, shoulders slumping. “So what are you telling me? It didn’t go down that way? Because Ellisar said otherwise. Warned me not to tell Oralia who I was because she was the one who killed my mother. Implied she’d kill me too if she found out.”
“That’s…not right.”
For what felt like an eternity, Ashwyn said nothing else, silently stewing in whatever thoughts were slowly unraveling within her head. Finally, with a hard glint in her eye, the orc lifted her fingers to her mouth and blew a series of sharp sounds that were remarkably similar to birdsong. Daana had heard Snag and Ellisar use similar calls to communicate with one another over distance. She could differentiate the ‘danger’ whistle from the ‘all clear’ and was even starting to get a grasp on Ellisar’s infamous ‘fuck off’ warning, but this sound was new to her.
“There’s no point in you and me trying to figure this puzzle out on our own if we’re missing half the pieces,” Ashwyn explained. “We may as well consult the source.”
It was not long before Ellisar’s tall shadow slipped from between the dark tree with a pair of rabbits thrown casually over her shoulder. “I hope you have a good reason for interrupting me,” she grumbled as she made her way towards them. “You scared off a nice fat one.”
“We need to talk,” was the only thing Ashwyn managed between clenched teeth.
The elf huntress stopped near her saddle, a good three meter stretch from where Daana and Ashwyn sat. Ellisar’s golden eyes swept between the pair, silently gleaning unspoken bits of information from their varied expressions whilst keeping her own strategically blank. Whatever eventual conclusion Ellisar reached, she kept to herself. She tapped her foot impatiently at Ashwyn and said, “You interrupted my hunting to have a conversation? Surely you’re not serious.”
“I am.” Ashwyn accentuated her next statement with a stern finger pointing. “And you are not going to do that thing you do. I am focused.”
Ellisar tilted her head to the side curiously. “What thing I do?”
“Where you try to distract me by–gah! See? You’re already doing it. Not today, miss. Walk yourself over here and take a seat.”
Wordlessly, Ellisar slid the rabbits and quiver that hung from her shoulder to the ground in a single, fluid motion. Reaching back, she unfastened her waist length hair from its tie, flipping the straw colored mane from her face with a casual whip of her head. When the cascade of hair settled, her face had changed. Softer somehow, and lacking its usual steely coldness. With her primping finished, Ellisar approached, adding a subtle sway to her hips as she strode confidently towards them.
Daana sat utterly petrified. The hairs on her neck stood on end as she found herself wondering when exactly Ellisar had developed hips. The technique wasn’t bad. Quite the opposite, actually. Which by itself was alarming enough to make Daana consider darting into the trees and ducking under a shrub to wait out whatever in chaos was about to take place.
Ashwyn patiently awaited Ellisar’s seductive approach. An unamused scowl pulled at corners of her mouth. “You are really out doing yourself here.”
Ellisar reached Ashwyn and extended her hand downwards, cradling the orc’s chin in the center of her open palm. Her voice was nearly as soft as the uncharacteristic lift in her eyebrows. “I knew our time apart would come with changes. Mostly for you, a few for me, but the malnourishment was a real shock. Even now, I hardly recognize you.”
“This is not the conversation we are having.”
“You’re right. Because I should be out fetching your dinner right now. That dungeon left you skin and bones. If I’m going to get you back to your original strength, I can’t waste prime hunting hours on silly conversations.”
Ashwyn’s formerly fixed expression started to slip as her eyes wandered down Ellisar’s lean figure. “I’m the skin and bones in this scenario? Me? The one who had nothing to do but lift heavy things over my head and eat two regular meals a day for the better part of a century?”
“I didn’t want to say anything before, but I think I might actually be able to take you.”
“My arms are bigger than your head!”
Ellisar slid her arms around her lover’s shoulders and collapsed against her back, nuzzling her head into the crook of Ashwyn’s neck. “Hush now,” she whispered, with a sympathetic pat to the top of the orc’s head. “That’s the delirium speaking. You’ll come around once we get a few rabbits in you.”
“If your master plan is to fatten me up so I can’t catch you, think again, miss. I’ll have you face down in the dirt before you can say uncle.”
The flicker of excitement that lit in Ellisar’s golden eyes caused Daana’s stomach to churn. “Hold up!” Daana injected before Ellisar was given the opportunity to incite a chase. “What in the name of chaos is happening right now?”
Ashwyn flipped Ellisar over her shoulder and into her lap. “You never seen flirting before, Peaches?”
“I have. This is not that.”
“Says the unbedded one.” Ellisar was a melted puddle within her lover’s arms. Daana had seen enemies cut down for merely looking at Ellisar wrong and yet, suddenly, the blasted elf was as docile as a kitten.
“First of all, that’s not true. Secondly–” Daana addressed Ashwyn, attempting to rekindle some of her previous fire “–I thought you called her here to set the record straight?”
Ashwyn’s brow furrowed. “Did I?”
“Yes!” Daana slapped her open palm to her forehead, groaning, “Our stories don’t align, remember? I was led to believe that your sister killed my mother and that seemed like news to you.”
“Seven realms, Ellisar!” In a single swoop, the orc lifted the elf from her lap and deposited her onto the patchy ground beside her. “You shameless cad! It’s cheating to butter me up with your sultry little hip waggle and you know it.”
“As it happens, I have some butter on hand. I was saving it for later.” The elf leaned closer, long hair cascading over her face as she whispered, “But if you want it now, simply say the word. I’ll have you slick and glistening like a roast duck fresh out of the oven.”
Daana choked on the vomit that was desperately trying to evacuate the inside of her throat. “Dear gods, make it stop.”
Ashwyn struck the flat of her hand against the ground. “Ellisar Winifred Farrow, for the love of goddess, stop trying to seduce me and start talking. Starting with, why does Daana think her mother is dead?”
In the span of a single heartbeat, Ellisar’s sultry pout disappeared. Her mask of indifference returned with twice its normal severity. “Was I supposed to tell her something different? I thought the point of a good cover story was to keep our lies consistent.”
There was a definite edge to Ashwyn’s voice now. “Did you let Daana think her mother was dead this entire time?”
“This really shouldn’t surprise you.”
Ashwyn lifted her hand and held all four fingers and thumb splayed for Ellisar to see. If it was meant to be a threat, all it did was coax a half smile from its recipient. Ashwyn closed her hand into a fist and lowered it, gritting out through clenched teeth, “I don’t understand. Why would you have not told her? You could have alleviated years of heartbreak at no cost to yourself.”
“There was a cost,” Ellisar disagreed. “Daana would have dropped everything to go find her mother. Goddess knows Oralia would have bent over backwards to help if she found out. Obviously I couldn’t let that happen. I needed Daana to get you out.”
“You could have found another way, I’m sure.”
“That’s the catch though. If all else failed, I planned to make a trade with Geralt. Daana for you.”
It was Daana’s turn to raise her voice. “You were going to do what?”
“I don’t know why any of this surprises you, kid. Don’t ever trust people who take an interest in you. It’s rarely for your benefit.”
Ashwyn caught Ellisar’s stare and the two appeared to battle one another with only their eyes. Finally, after coming to some form of conclusion, Ashwyn turned back to Daana. “As my wife clearly has not been forthright with the truth, I will. Your mother is alive Daana. My sister never killed her, that was simply a cover story. Larkspur took her escaped followers, fled the realm, and took up residence in the flatlands. She has dedicated herself to helping other witches escape the control of the Division of Divination. It is my understanding that she is still there, amassing a sort of magical resistance.”
Ashwyn allowed the weight of this to sink in a moment before asking. “Would you like to meet her?”
Daana’s head snapped upright. The sting of betrayal was lessened by the sudden joy bubbling up inside of her like an uncorked bottle of fizzy spirits. She was so excited she wanted to scream and yet, her words were uttered barely above a whisper. “More than anything.”
“Then I’ll be happy to take you to her.”