The skin had healed. Quite well, in fact. Better than she could have hoped.
But her eye . . .
She brought the fingers of her left hand up and felt the eyelid that had been sewn shut. There was nothing behind it. Nothing behind the skin.
“Elina?”
She looked over at Celyn, who’d been sleeping in a chair beside the bed, but was now wide-awake.
“Hello, dragon.” She turned back around, continued to stare at her face in the mirror. “I warned you, did I not? Glebovicha hates me.”
“Elina, I’m so sorry.”
She waved off his words. “There is nothing to be sorry about. At least now I know where I stand among my people. Where I will always stand. Because no one except Kachka stood up for me. No one.”
He moved behind her, gently placing his large hands on her shoulders. “I can’t believe your mother did this to you.”
Elina let out a deep, long sigh. “Well . . . it could be worse.”
Confused, Celyn studied Elina in the mirror. “It could be worse?”
“She could have taken both eyes. At least she only had time to take one. Thank you for that. For your help.”
She stepped away from him, replacing the bandage over her damaged eye and tying the material around it that held it in place.
He shook his head. “You don’t want—”
“Food?” she asked. “I am a bit hungry.”
“No. You don’t want revenge? Are you at least angry? Sad? Devastated?”
Elina faced him. “Over what?”
“Elina, she took your eye.”
“I am aware. It was my eye she took.”
“But you’re . . . you’re . . .”
“I am what?”
“Not angry. How can you not be angry?”
“What would anger bring? It will not give me back my eye.” Her words were simple, her voice calm but sad. Yet that was all. How could that be all?
“It will not make my mother care that she took it,” Elina flatly went on. “To be quite honest with you, I am glad to breathe. I am glad to wake up in bed and find you beside it. Because I knew if you were at my side, I was safe.”
Kachka’s voice cut in. “Sister?”
Elina turned from him. “Kachka, I am—”
“Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Do not say what you are about to say. What we both know you are about to say. I have no regrets. And neither should you.”
Elina took in a large breath and let it out. She nodded.
“Good. Now . . . there is food. Cooked food. Would you like some?”
“I would. I am very hungry.”
Celyn, unable to take this anymore, said, “Elina, wait.”
“Yes?”
“Is that it?”
“I do not understand.”
“How are you not . . . angry or sad or . . . or something?” The sisters looked at each other, then back at Celyn.
“I am sad,” Elina said.
“You are?”
“Of course. I had two eyes. Now I have one. If something happens to that one, then I will be blind. I will need horse to lead me anywhere I need to go. But not your big Southland horses since I am not plow.”
The sisters chuckled and again started to walk away.
But Celyn, who had never really been able to let things alone, tried once more. “Elina—”
“We are done with this conversation, Celyn.”
“Yes, but—”
Celyn’s words were brutally cut off when a chair slammed into the wall a few feet away from him.
“Were you aiming at his head?” Kachka asked Elina.
“I was.” She let out a breath. “Guess my life as an archer is over as well. I will need to grub in dirt for berries in order to survive. Like weakest of animals.”
“When you are ready, we head back to the Southlands. The decadent fools will give you food that you never worked for on plates of gold while the masses starve. So you have nothing to fear. Now, come. Let us eat.”
“You’re shirtless,” Celyn pointed out.
“I doubt these people will care but here.” Kachka went to a chair that hadn’t been destroyed and grabbed a blue cotton shirt that someone had put out for Elina earlier.
Kachka helped Elina put the shirt on. “There. You already look like a Southlander.”
“If you try to hurt me with words, sister, you do good job.”
“Do not be so sensitive, sister. It is not like I ripped eye from head.”
Celyn listened to their laughter echo against the cave walls as they left the room.
He glanced over at the chair Elina had smashed against the wall. “Well, if anything, she’s definitely angry at me.”
Elina sat down at a big wood table and Kachka pulled out a chair beside her.
In their own language, Kachka said, “You shouldn’t be so hard on that dragon.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You threw a chair at his head.”
“You mean I tried to throw a chair at his head.”
“Do not whine, sister. In time, you will adapt to the loss of your eye.”
“Of course, I will.”
“There it is,” Kachka accused.
“There is what? I was agreeing with you.”
“No. You were feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Am I not allowed? It was my eye the bitch took! My own mother tried to kill me!”