Holding Onto Hope Read online

  This temple had been abandoned for a long time, but it had never been sacked.

  “The Dawn Temple,” she said. “Heffog once worshiped the sun. The nobles still do but it’s not quite the same and they never come here. Some of the poor do to make offerings, but not many of them. Worshipping the dawn or the dusk is…old-fashioned. Only a few of the oldest families do it, and those in this part of town usually offer prayers to the dusk.”

  Ben focused on her with genuine interest. “Why?”

  Elantria’s smile was distant and her words sounded like they came from a lifetime away. “To worship the dawn is to embrace what the day will bring. To worship the dusk is to embrace the chaos and magic of the night and hope that tomorrow will be different.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the district of fishers and beggars. It wasn’t hard to imagine how they would wish for tomorrow to be different from today and how they would not greet each dawn with celebration.

  “Are you from one of the oldest families?” he asked her.

  She smiled. “Yes and no. My mother was. Then she fell in love with a human and bore a bastard daughter.”

  Ben swallowed uncomfortably.

  “My grandmother used to tell me that Heffog lived ever in decline,” she said. “She said it would never reclaim its glory, nor would it ever lie abandoned. But she wanted more for her family than this. They left when I was younger and they took all their children, including my mother.”

  “They didn’t take you,” he said quietly.

  “They tried,” Elantria said. She smiled at his look of surprise. “I was still their blood. They would have found a place for me, even in the new monarchy. But I didn’t want to be someone’s shame. They wanted to reclaim the glory of the elves and I couldn’t ever be part of that. I was thirteen, but that was old enough to know I wouldn’t ever fit there. I didn’t like any of the messengers the new elven king sent.” A flash of humor brightened her eyes. “And none of them liked me, either.”

  “You chose to stay,” he said. He couldn’t help but be incredulous. “You were only thirteen but you wanted to stay. Didn’t your mother—”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I never met her. She was pledged to the temple and then to another elven lord. I was raised by my grandparents and a nanny. They loved me, you know. They were proud of me and wanted to bring me with them because they loved me.”

  “But—”

  “But no matter how much they loved me, it would always be despite half of what I was,” Elantria explained. The pain was so long gone that it had folded over on itself, ebbed and flowed, and turned into something quite different. “I made the choice they couldn’t. There wasn’t a place for me in the world they wanted to build.”

  Ben, to his surprise, found that he was angry. “They loved you but they were trying to build a world that you could never be part of, where—”

  “Where people like me would never be born,” Elantria said bluntly. “Yes.”

  “Then how could they—”

  “Love is complicated.” She raised a shoulder in an offhand way. “Ben, I learned long ago that they could love me and also hate the fact that I was born, and that I could try to accept those two things and move on. Or I could keep thinking about them and try to reconcile them and be angry forever. The two of them don’t go together, but that’s how people are. They think things that don’t match and they believe them all. I merely did what I needed to do so I wouldn’t have to live in the shadows.”

  He scowled but considered what she’d said.

  “Don’t pity me.” Her voice held a warning now. “I don’t need pity and I hate it. If you want to pity me, I will throw you out on your ass and you can find a new teacher.”

  The fierce attitude drew a guffaw from him. “I guess…”

  “You’ll have many things to think about,” Elantria said, “if you’re anything like everyone else I’ve ever told my story to. So do me a favor. Think those thoughts for yourself. Don’t tell me about them.”

  It was a fair request, he had to admit, and he nodded. “Right. Out of curiosity, though, why did you tell me?”

  “Because you’re a stubborn idiot and you would keep asking until I told you,” she stated without rancor. “And because you don’t have the first fucking idea of how to survive here and the more you can learn of our history, the better off you’ll be. My story is rather…illustrative.” She cleared her throat and pointed to the top of one of the columns. “Anyway, climb up there.”

  “What?”

  “I brought you here to climb.”

  “Isn’t that…sacrilegious?”

  “If the gods are as ancient and powerful as everyone says, I can’t imagine they’d give a damn about someone climbing in their temples,” she said with a shrug. “It would be a different thing to interrupt others’ prayers, but no one is here to pray right now. So. Climb.”

  “Uh…” Ben decided to obey her before she made good on her threat and left him there. He walked forward to study the column. There was no way up the pillar itself, as it was carved and buffed to be absolutely smooth. He studied the plinth and the distance between the columns. His scrutiny made it very clear that he would have to get to the second level in some other way and over to the top of the column from there.

  Yesterday morning, he hadn’t climbed at all in ages. Now, he would make the jump from what was essentially a basic climbing wall to free-soloing a monument.

  That had escalated quickly.

  He walked through the temple with Elantria trailing behind him.

  “Can I ask questions about the city while I climb?”

  “Please do.”

  “Okay.” He looked at the outside and decided to take his chances with the carved wall. If he climbed that, he could probably make his way across the roof and down from there. “So, you said the elven part of your family left to be part of the new elven monarchy. I’ve…had some experience with them.”

  “Not a pleasant experience, to judge from your tone.” She looked curious. “But I thought you came from far away—have they spread so far?”

  “Do you want the truth or something more believable?” He chose his holds and began to lever himself up the wall. He still needed to watch each limb as he moved it, which made the whole thing more awkward than it used to be.

  Elantria laughed. “The truth.”

  “I wound up—by accident—in the fae kingdom,” Ben said.

  “You’re right, that isn’t believable at all.”

  “I warned you.” He looked at his legs as he pushed and tried to look up quickly enough to move his arms to the next hold. It failed spectacularly and he landed on the rock-strewn ground outside the temple. “Fuck.”

  “Up.” She offered him her hand. “Up and try again.”

  “Yup.” He winced as he sat.

  “I’m still waiting for the rest of the story, by the way.”

  “Right. Ah…well, to make a very long story short, an elven agent in that court tried to assassinate the king.”

  “That does sound like the elves,” Elantria said.

  “You said your family left to go be part of the monarchy,” he called, “but there are still many elves here.”

  “So you noticed that, did you? Heffog was one of the places the elves settled. The prince is elven.” She shrugged. “Some of them like it here. They like being big fish in a small pond. Others—”

  Ben looked down when she stopped speaking and she put her finger to her lips. She beckoned him down, motioned for quiet again, and crept to the edge of the outer wall to peek into the temple.

  He followed her as quietly as he could and heard the murmur of voices and the crunch of footsteps. Unsure what Elantria had heard, he strained into the silence until he noticed the clank and rustle of armor and weapons.

  “Why would they come here?” a male voice asked.

  “Fuck if I know,” another responded. “We weren’t hired to ask that. We were hired to bring the
ir heads back, so spread out and let’s find them.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Ben,” Elantria said with a studied sweetness, “did you piss the elven monarchy off?”

  “I assume so,” he muttered in return. “Let’s simply say I told you a very abbreviated version of the story and they weren’t too happy with their agent, either.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment in a way that said she wanted to beat her head against a wall. “Zaara mentioned you could fight—can you?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Gods help us.” She handed him a short-sword. “Don’t get yourself killed, will you? I think there are three of them.”

  “Right.”

  “You hide, be patient, and eliminate one of them if you can do it quickly and quietly. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  The woman was gone a moment later and scaled the side of the building with impressive speed. Of course, if she came here often to climb, he thought, she would know which routes to take and which holds to use.

  His objective right now was very different—namely, where to hide. He glanced around and saw nothing that could conceal him on the rocky scrap of ground between the wall and the cliff. Ignoring the pounding of his heart, he hurried to the edge and saw that he could climb down to a small ledge and might even be able to hide under an overhang.

  It was his only choice. He put the short-sword through one of his belt loops and levered himself over the side.

  Ben paused and reminded himself that he could not fuck this up. That was all there was to it. If he fell, he would one hundred percent turn into a splat on the rocks below. It wasn’t even a long enough drop that he would die quickly. His heart thudded even more alarmingly and the sound of waves and wind, gulls, and distant shouts from the market suddenly sounded deafening. Everything was too loud and he couldn’t think.

  He felt below him for footholds and scrambled down as quickly as he could. The voices were getting louder, and all the care in the world wouldn’t help him if he was still visible when they came around the side of the temple.

  To his surprise, he encountered a very good foothold—good enough that he almost moved away from the wall to look at it.

  Fortunately, he ignored the impulse. He wasn’t completely stupid. A glance to his right revealed a handhold with a slight dip in the top for his hand to hold. Excellent. Now, he would hopefully find one for his left.

  Another handhold appeared, seemingly miraculously. He peered as closely as he could and noticed little scratch marks around it. Someone had carved these. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse, but he was more hopeful that there would be a rest point somewhere below.

  Ben crept down with a determined focus on the rock in front of him, desperate to forget that he had an entire sea at his back and a cliff face stretching away beneath him. Hell, for all he knew, there were people on the ships or the piers who had noticed a lone human climbing from the Dawn Temple.

  No, it was best to not think about that. It made his palms sweat.

  All his muscles were trembling by the time he reached the ledge. There was, in fact, an alcove, although it was not so much a place to rest comfortably as a cranny in which to huddle out of the wind.

  Still, he would take it. He wedged himself as far back as he could and waited. There were shouts above but he wasn’t sure if they were from the piers or the people. He was too distant and surrounded by too much wind to hear any footsteps.

  This was useless. He had no idea what was going on. With a sigh, he shifted to poke his head out until he remembered Elantria’s order. Be patient.

  He had to think about this logically, he decided, scratched his head, and tried to do that. If he looked out and saw nothing, maybe he could climb up and look over the ledge to see where the attackers were. What could he do with that information? Not much, unless one was alone and he had the opportunity to attack them before they could call out.

  And if they saw him—especially if there was more than one of them—he was shit out of luck.

  If he stayed there, however, someone might climb down alone and he could attack them while they were vulnerable. Also, there was the chance that they would peer down the cliff, decide there was no one there, and decide to leave.

  Of course, this meant he couldn’t help Elantria, but he wasn’t sure he could do much if he were there beside her. He wasn’t an assassin or a trained fighter and had merely done the bare minimum against the fighters who broke through competent ranks in front of him, and against a lone opponent wracked by hatred and bitterness who also underestimated him.

  Being patient, however, meant waiting and he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about that. It was difficult to wait at the best of times, not to mention when he was in the midst of an adrenaline rush.

  A rock dropped in front of him, bounced on the ledge, and skittered off the edge. Ben jumped and pressed his lips together so as to not make a sound. Someone had at least looked over the edge, and it took a surprising amount of self-control to not poke his head out and look up at them.

  The human drive for information was idiotic. If he couldn’t control himself, it wouldn’t be the cat that was killed by curiosity.

  There was the sound of arguing. He strained to listen but he couldn’t make the words out. All he could tell was that two people were unhappy with one another. He sighed and waited until another few little rocks and pieces of dirt fell from the edge.

  One of the assassins must have ordered the other to climb down and check if their quarry had perhaps descended.

  Ben’s blood thrilled and he began to ease the sword carefully out of his belt. He couldn’t let it strike the rock and he couldn’t let it catch the sun and reflect light upward. And avoiding both those things in his cramped quarters was surprisingly difficult.

  What was his game-plan? Wait until the person was halfway down and stab them?

  After a moment’s thought, he put the sword behind him and leaned it carefully against the rock. He might need to retrieve it at some point, but this didn’t seem like the moment for a sword. It was a moment for swift and decisive motion.

  He bounced a little on the balls of his feet and tried to remember how to breathe. Two voices and some scrabbling noises drifted to him as the climber maneuvered downward. He could make words out now.

  “Try there—to your right. No, your left.”

  “Fuck.” The one who was climbing was annoyed. “I swear you’re making it worse.”

  “Do you want me to leave?” the other one demanded.

  Say yes, he pleaded silently. Please, be an ass and send him somewhere else.

  To his annoyance, the other man revised his opinion. “Just…let me find the holds and you keep an eye on my back.”

  Silence followed. Now, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. If there were two of them, he could eliminate the climber easily but would have given up his element of surprise. He would be trapped there, and while the other one wouldn’t want to climb down, he also wouldn’t be able to climb up.

  Given that they were talking about killing him, however, he couldn’t think of a better option than to get rid of the first one. It was the best, he concluded, of his limited options.

  A foot appeared in his field of vision, searching for the next hold. His heart leaped. Not yet, he told himself. Close, but not yet. One more hold? Or two?

  He knew he had to move quickly and decisively.

  The foot found its hold and the other foot began to move. The climber eased over the jut of rock, which meant his body had to bow out. He would never be in a more vulnerable position than this. Ben wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt.

  This was a person who came to kill innocents, he reminded himself. They were prepared to kill and make the city more violent, and if he killed them, he began to heal the city. He couldn’t sit back, let them kill him, and know they would only go on to kill others.

  The next foot swung out, searching, and he seized his chance. He grasped
it with both hands, yanked hard, and let go.

  With a scream, the climber plummeted past him. He cartwheeled out and spun in the air. almost horizontal as he fell. His arms stretched uselessly and his gaze met Ben’s for one second.

  In an instant, he was gone.

  “Mateo!” His companion yelled his name, his voice raw. “Mateo!”

  He pressed a hand against his mouth to stop the instinctive yell and wedged himself as far back as he could in the alcove.

  A second body hurtled past him—the man who had yelled, he assumed— but his eyes were wide and staring and a red stain spread on the front of his shirt. Ben uttered a yell of surprise before he could stop himself.

  “Ben?” Elantria called, and she was close by. “Ben? I dealt with the three of them. Well, two.”

  “Elantria!” He tried to throw his voice as hard as he could, but he knew he couldn’t make it carry well. He edged out to look up and jumped when she peered down at him. “Thank God it’s you.”

  “Which god?” she asked curiously. “No matter. Can you get back up on your own?”

  “Uh…give me a sec.”

  “Do you have the shakes?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I always get them after killing someone,” she said matter of factly. “I used to think it would go away at some point but now, I don’t think it ever will.”

  “That’s…depressing.”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat for a few minutes while his heart rate slowed and deep exhaustion began to settle over him. Then, worried that he might fall asleep where he sat, he began the ascent. It was a miserable climb between the dead bodies below him, the genuine tiredness in his fingers and forearms, and the trembling. Elantria caught hold of him close to the top and helped to haul him to safety in a scrabble of rock and dirt.

  Ben collapsed with a little noise of exhaustion and relief. “I would have preferred the temple climbing. And don’t say I have to do both.”