Females in dark elf society were not warriors – they were wizards and teachers and took care of families. Kamendar had declared that it was a blessing that their parents had not lived to see that day. He cast Maelfie out, naming Elspethe as his only sibling since Maelfie “didn’t know her place as a female and thought she could fight like a male.” Elspethe had not spoken to her brother for a long time after that.
It had taken years for them to come back together and become a family again, and the catalyst for that change had been Maelfie’s death in the wilds of Orana with Cursik. Elspethe could remember with pinpoint accuracy the moments just before and just after she had opened the missive addressed only to her with the seal of the Aynamaedean High Council leaders impressed on it in green wax.She remembered thinking that of course it was green—sent from the treehouses where they had chosen to live—and ripping it open with distaste. There was paragraph after paragraph in Elvish, but the middle of the note was burned in her memory. It contained the words “death of Maelfie, of the house of Turlach…” To this day, Elspethe couldn’t recall anything else that had been written on the page save the name of that cursed wood elf, Cursik.
As Elspethe passed the common room and reached for the handle on the door leading to the bedroom she used to share with her twin, she thought about the day she had confronted that wood elf about his part in her sister’s death. He had pleaded with her, not begging for his life but instead swearing his undying love for her twin sister. It had turned Elspethe’s stomach to think of those filthy oaken-tinged hands touching her sister’s cerulean skin. With each blast of lightning she called down onto him, Cursik had cried out to Maelfie, speaking her name and calling out to her in D’leesh – the language of the Ikedrians – begging her spirit to intervene. His knowledge of her native tongue, coupled with his cries, had only made Elspethe even more furious and deadly in her strikes. Finally, he lay dying on the mossy ground in the Great Forest, and she leaned over him, staring down into his green eyes as the light they held grew dim.
“You look so much like her,” he whispered. “So much like my Mae, except her hair was dark.” He coughed, his entire body wracked with spasms as he clung to the last bits of life it held. “She loved you, and she knew…” Another round of coughing interrupted his words. Elspethe started to move away, but he reached out with the strength that only those close to death possess and grabbed her hand. “Of course, you don’t understand me, do you? She knew that you and her brother still loved her. She knew that you three are not like the rest of your kind…” Elspethe yanked her hand from his grip and stood back from him, staring. He was speaking D’leesh too well for someone not born into her race, and the only way a wood elf would be able to do that was that Maelfie must have taught him. “Mae…I am coming to you…” Such a thing was punishable by death, and at that moment, Elspethe had a clear understanding of just how much her twin had loved this man, to defy death for him. He was indeed Maelfie’s mate. His body convulsed just before he passed, her sister’s name the last sound he uttered. Elspethe stayed nearby to Cursik’s body for a long time before disappearing into the tree line as his kind drew near and discovered his body.
Elspethe shook her head to clear the memories as she entered the room. There was no use dwelling on the wood elf’s death—or her sister’s, for that matter. All of her sister’s possessions had been gathered up and disposed of when she left Ikedria, so there was nothing left to even suggest that Elspethe had ever had a sister. She hung her rucksack just behind the door, taking note of the hole in the wall next to it. Kamendar had even removed the nail where her sister hung her bag. Elspethe shook her head sadly and then sat down on her bed. She could hear her brother moving around and knew that he would soon be knocking on her door, asking for his dinner and wondering where she had been all day—if he had even noticed she was gone, that is.
“Ellie?” Kamendar called out just before rapping on the door with his staff.
“Come on in, Kam, you know I can’t lock the door,” she replied, her tone sounding more annoyed than she’d planned. Her brother entered the room, and Elspethe gasped when she saw him – he seemed to have aged overnight, and his robes hung on his frame. “Kam?”
“It is my time, Ellie,” he said, his voice husky and far away. “I have grieved my Lairky enough. It is time that all our wrongs be righted, and I stop hiding here behind my family name. It is
