He who accepts a bribe grows wealth and no reputation, but he who offers the bribe grows reputation and no wealth. Both lack honor.

  He who lives in shadows knows only the dark, yet he who stands in the light shall be seen. Fate has deemed it.

  -Selection of Brikhvarnni Proverbs

  Krid shook the fog from his mind and saw the situation clearly. A clearing, no more than ten paces in diameter, was sheltered by a tangled thicket on all sides. On a pile of bones picked clean, the maker of the nest stood singing, birdlike. It had a long neck and a mean, hooked beak. The beak would be its primary weapon, but its feet were nastily clawed, and Krid would no more want to be sliced by one of those than bitten by the powerfully-jawed desert dogs. And last, he needed to watch for the whiplike tail, splay of feathers and all.

  He roared a rallying cry and charged. The others did not follow. Chirrups erupting behind him told him that some hatchlings had jumped from the edge of the thicket. In thoughts faster than words, he wished his allies would leave those be and attack the mother, the source of the spell.

  As he ran, he threw a handaxe at the creature. It sailed over the hen’s lowered shoulder and into the brush. The creature raised again from its evasion and squawked at him. Krid drew his shield and sword as he kept charging. Rearward, squalls of pain told him his companions would remain distracted with the chicks. Even so, he focused on the hen, circling her in search of an opening.

  A clang like a deep, terrible gong made him glance back just in time to witness Fenn and two hatchlings falling away from Gale as the ground rippled around her. That glimpse also confirmed his suspicions: anyone should have known the babies were secondary. They were small and weak, especially compared to the mother.

  A melody whistled in front of him, the song lifting up from the mother’s throat once more.

  She needs protection, the song probed.

  No you don’t! His stomach rumbled in anger, and he spit the charged energy at the monster. Lightning crackled from him into the creature’s wing as it sheltered itself. Despite the smell of charred feathers, the hen was barely hurt. However, it ceased its song to screech at him. That was enough.

  Never one to waste momentum, Krid raised his sword for a swing. The monster lunged at his other side, curving its neck out of the way. Its beak met Krid’s damaged shield with a rough crack, the impact shuddering down Krid’s arm.

  Krid’s sword met its shoulder, purplish blood spilling onto it. The creature wailed and slashed at him with a foot. It scraped against his shield, and with its long, curved neck, it reached over to bite him. With his shield grappled in the creature's claws, he couldn’t dodge it. Pain seared behind his left earhole, its needle-like teeth finding purchase between his scales. He could feel a presence on his right; whether someone had come to help or hinder, he could not tell.

  He would not wait for them to act.

  He stabbed upward, thrusting his swordpoint into the bird’s breast. It stumbled back, warbling in pain, head thrashing like a decapitated snake. An arrow protruded from the other side of its neck. The others had finally shifted attention.

  In the next instant, Krid observed three important things: First, the presence beside him was Fenn; second, Fenn was completely disarmed, a hand reaching toward the bird as though he would pet it; third, one of Syrdin’s daggers was planted in the ground between Fenn and the bird. The instant passed, and with the bird’s head still thrashing angrily, it reached for Fenn. Its beak ripped into the Newt’s side. He screamed with pain and Krid saw his pupils snap into focus, only for him to be tossed. Even before Fenn rolled to the ground, the lost chunk of flesh was regrowing with a glow. Magic.

  A white fire erupted next to the bird as it dodged Krid’s next blow. Gale was screaming something over Mell’s spell utterances–which of them had formed the fire, Krid didn’t bother guessing. Instead, he took two running steps. An arrow pierced the hen’s chest and pulsed with light. Before the pulse had time to spread, the dagger from the ground flew into the hen’s body, propelled by magic–magic he recognized as Fenn’s.

  The breast isn’t a weak point, Krid realized. It’s the neck.

  The creature snapped at him, but he was ready. He battered away its beak with his shield and swung his sword over it. At the moment it impacted the creature’s neck, a fluttering light zipped into his sword. A thunderous resonance like that which had radiated from Gale drowned out the crunching of the creature’s spine as he broke it, half-severing the head severed from the body. The mostly-beheaded carcass took a few staggering steps, and then collapsed in a pile of feathers, never to sing again..

  “Fenn!” Gale’s cry sent Krid whirling his head in that direction.

  The Newt was on the ground panting, but very alive. Anger flooded Krid as his battle-focus subsided. Fenn would not have been so fiercely bitten if everyone had followed his lead and attacked the mother. He clenched his claws. Behind him, the evidence of their foolishness was strewn about. Four chicks lay on the ground in an array of deaths: daggers, arrows, burns. They had killed the babies before joining him.

  He growled in his throat as he watched Gale slide to Fenn’s side, her hands trembling. But it wasn’t just Fenn who could’ve been killed. He raised a hand and pressed where blood flowed from the wound on his head down onto his neck. The hen had missed a vital point by mere inches [centimeters], scraping against horny bone instead of sinuous nec.

  The others needed to learn to heed him, or they would die. All of them.

  “Fenn!” Gale’s cry ripped from her as she dashed across the nest. In her anguish, she forgot the burning scratches across her shins and the beak-sized hole in her thigh, forgot the thicket that enclosed them, forgot the arguments and betrayals, and even the condition of the others: the bite Mell suffered, the kill Krid had wrought, the slaughter Syrdin had executed on the giant chicks. Only Fenn mattered.

  He had stumbled in his bewitched walk and had nearly freed himself from it. But then the great shoth had sung again. Frostsbitten bird! Tears stung her eyes. Fenn had been unarmed and unprepared for the bite that had thrown him to the ground. It had been everything her fearful mind had imagined while they’d been apart. And though she’d been there to witness it, her arrows had not protected him–though her healing helped.

  Strewn on the dirt near the feathery carcass, Fenn raised himself to all fours, his eyes pinched shut as he panted and shivered. Gale knelt beside him, placing a hand on his back. Finally, after this fight, her emotions didn’t float away. Instead, agony, fear, and relief assaulted her all at once. Her voice cracked with the overflow of them. “Fenn?”

  After her spell, his pale ribs had appeared whole inside a blood-ridden tear in his shirt. Still, he groaned with pain. She rubbed his back, searching him over with her gaze. “Are you all right? Are you still hurt?”

  He waved a palm toward her as if to say “wait a moment.” Then, with an arm wrapped around his stomach, he lurched forward and wretched.

  Somehow, that was more shocking to her than the blood. Her own stomach turned, but she kept rubbing his back. She waited for him to finish, which took longer than their small meals merited, and then handed him the strip of torn fabric she’d been using as a handkerchief.

  Gasping for breath, he nodded his thanks.

  She studied his pallor. It was even paler than usual and a bit yellow. “It hasn’t poisoned you, has it?”

  He shook his head. “It’s–It’s just the blood. It–” his back convulsed under her hand, and he turned away from the bleeding pile of feathers in front of them. “It makes me nauseous.”

  The blood. She circled around him and knelt between him and the carcass. As she moved, realization washed over her. Despite his betrayals, his efforts in the fae, and even his promises that they would protect one another, Fenn was no more accustomed to bloodshed than she was. It made sense. He had been a teacher of some sort, and a researcher, not some adventurer. Not a fighter. And he had always been squeamish about blood. There had been an incident with a skinned knee once, long ago. She could still recall his shivering and whining.

  She squeezed his shoulder. “I don’t care for the blood, either.” She grimaced at the chicks, murdered brutally. Could I really grow accustomed to violence like Krid? She hoped not. It wrenched her gut to consider it.

  Nearby, the drakeman let out an exasperated harumph. “You two would be less like sick fennec foxes if everyone had rallied to me and charged the mother. If we had killed her quickly, the hatchlings would’ve scattered, and Fenn would not have been bitten like that.”

  “Oh really?” Sarcasm billowed from where Syrdin knelt to clean a dagger. “I thought our priority was protecting the others. Those chicks went straight for our caster–oh but I forgot! You don’t know how to fight alongside mages, do you?”

  If the Night Elf meant to critique something about the way Krid took command in moments of danger, then zhe was approaching it with too many insults and not enough sincerity. Such an imp.

  Krid huffed, impatient, a hand on his hip, the other on his hilt. “There are times to scatter like rats, and times to swarm like locusts. This enemy could make us lose our minds with magic, so killing the strongest and protecting others was one task. This was a time to swarm. ”

  Syrdin shrugged. “So you say, and yet it worked out. This was a victory. Fenn is fine, even if you turned your back toward him.” Zhe clicked zheir tongue. “Protect the weak, you say.”

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  Gale bristled at the double insult, closing her fist on Fenn’s back where they still sat in the dirt. He was no warrior, but weak? He’d thrown a dagger into the creature with magic.

  “Easy to say for a coward who hides in others’ shadows.” Krid retorted with nostrils flared in fury, his honor disparaged. “You wouldn’t step into the light to save your own kindred.”

  Gale’s eyes widened. She glanced and saw a similar expression of bewilderment on Fenn’s face. Until now, Krid had never expressed distaste for Syrdin.

  Syrdin’s came from between gritted teeth. “You know damn well that my people are more effective in a fight that way.”

  “They don’t have to be. I’ve seen them learn honorable methods of fighting.”

  Gale looked between them. Tension built like static ready to flicker into sparks. Her own grievances with Syrdin rose. Zhe did fight like a coward, dashing around tossing daggers on enemies otherwise occupied. Dirty. Dark. If Krid said Syrdin was wrong about this, zhe was. “I think Krid is right. If we focused on the hen, then Fenn wouldn’t have been wounded. It may not have been as deadly a bite as I first feared, but that was a stroke of luck!”

  Syrdin scoffed. “Oh? And a little flower knows just so much about combat tactics.”

  Gale bristled. Syrdin’s statement held truth. She had no practical battle experience, not like Syrdin and Krid.

  “Actually,” Fenn sounded distantly matter-of-fact, “Etnfrandians do have a mandatory conscription period. We serve in the Everguard for at least twenty years.” Fenn’s support warmed her, even if he was just clarifying a point. She still didn’t have real experience.

  “Ha!” Syrdin put a gloved hand to zheir mouth. Zhe shook in silent laughter. “Sorry, it’s just… the Everguard. What do you do? Stand on city walls all night? Maybe shoot some archery matches? What a joke!”

  The assessment hurt no less for its accuracy. Gale sprang to her feet. All of her built-up anger rose within her like an ugly, snarling monster, and that monster let out its roar. “Oh, yeah, and what was your battle education again? Some grand secret. Probably assassinations and poisonings, judging by the way you skulk around all of the time!”

  All the mirth that had been in Syrdin’s stance evaporated. Zhe strode toward Galendria in short, silent steps. “If you must know, I practiced for endless decades under the finest masters until I perfected every method to silence all of the assassins and warriors vying to de–to destroy my clan!”

  Gale squared herself, giving a calm demeanor despite her inner seething. She would not be intimidated by this creature, not when zhe came so near to letting zheir true nature slip. “And clearly those methods weren’t very effective, or you wouldn’t be following us around in the Faeworld, would you? I bet you failed, and that’s why a little monster like you is living beside more respectable people.”

  Syrdin snarled and took a ready step forward. “Say that again, I dare you.”

  Gale gritted her teeth. “You failed your clan. You know it, too. That’s why you’re angry now.”

  A dark blur crashed into Gale. Then a small, wiry body was pressed against her back, and cold metal tickled her throat.

  Fenn released a wordless cry of surprise.

  “Syrdin!” Mell bellowed.

  “Listen close, princess,” she could feel Syrdin’s breath hot on her cheek, “Only one person bears the responsibility for the murder of my athyr and detan, and it is not me.”

  Father? Brother? Gale craned her neck as her feet scrambled over the red dirt,, struggling to neither fall backward into Syrdin nor sideways into the knife at her neck. Syrdin’s arms held her fast, zheir strength a cage. When she peered back, the eyes that glistened back were red like blood. Horror trickled down Gale’s spine.

  She had wanted to expose Syrdin’s nature, not die.

  “Say it to my face, Etnfrandian.”

  “Syrdin!” The Dark One was pulled away by Mell’s thick arm, Krid only a step behind her. “That is not what ‘not harming them’ looks like!” Mell yelled into zheir face. “Get ahold of yourself!”

  “She deserves to be put in her place!” Syrdin spat.

  “No! Enough!”

  With her captor’s support gone, Galendria’s feet slipped out from under her. Fenn’s large hand wrapped her arm, lifting her upright. She couldn’t remember when he’d stood.

  “See,” she whimpered, pressing herself against him. “Zhe’s a monster.” She searched for his eyes and found them inspecting her neck. With his other hand, he twisted her chin. Her heart fluttered, but he released her a moment later with a sigh of “Thank the gods.”

  Gale touched the spot metal had tickled a moment before. The dagger had been flat against her, so there wasn’t even a scratch.

  “What’s wrong with you! Do you want to get left here by yourself?!” Mell was yelling at Syrdin. “She may not know better, but you sure should!”

  Know better? Syrdin had proven zhemself evil. Gale took hold of courage and reached for the dagger secured in Fenn’s belt. He yelped his surprise.

  “No you don’t!” Mell pointed to her, commanding her still without magic. “Enough! Enough! Enough!” She screamed now, pointing at each of them one at a time. “I did not refuse a leave of absence to raise my own flesh and blood just to babysit you all during my sabbatical! You are behaving like children! You elves are over two-hundred years old! Act like it!”

  She whirled her pointed finger around. “You too, drake! You can’t just expect everyone to fall in line like they’re your soldiers,” Mell puffed at Krid, who was growling with a small ax in his hand. Then she shoved Syrdin back by the shoulders–away from the group. She kept shouting. “And if you can’t stop picking on the Etnfrandians, on Gale, then you will find your own way through the Faeworld. You got that?”

  Syrdin hissed–zhe actually hissed–then stalked out of the thicket.

  The drakeman’s tail swished dramatically as he paced across the nest.

  Gale released her breath, realizing she had held it for Mell’s entire speech. “Fenn?” Her voice quivered with the accusations she wasn’t sure how to make.

  “Yes?” he released his hand from her. It had changed from support to restraint when she had grabbed his dagger. Now he tried to smooth his shirt, assessing the hole by pulling the gaping, red-stained sides together.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything about Syrdin?”

  His movements stopped.

  She studied him. He had frozen in place, his hands still raised to his side. He didn’t look as horrified as she felt. Instead, his was an expression of deep thought.

  Surely… She turned to Krid, who was easily within earshot inspecting the chicks. He met her gaze and gave a shrug, returning his stare to Fenn. It was up to him.

  She couldn’t believe it. “Fenn, zhe almost killed me.”

  Fenn pushed his glasses into place, then placed his hands on each of her arms. “I’m sorry, Galendria, I am.” Her full name, like they were strangers. “It’s just, for the rest of us, zhe isn’t our first Night Elf. If zhe meant to more than intimidate you, zhe would have. But zhe used the flat side of zheir dagger and–” he cut off, noticing her horror with pinched brows. “Had you any knowledge of Hethbarn, you would know better than to antagonize zhem.” He gave her a gentle squeeze, like those condemning words were supposed to be comforting.

  She felt dizzy with hysteria. “And so almost having my throat cut is my fault?”

  Fenn’s gaze dodged away, “Like I said, if zhe was going to do that, zhe would have. And there’s other evidence: first, there’s that zhe crossed the barrier. And then helped us escape. And protected Mell just now from the hatchlings. And you also, only more indirectly. Besides, Mell trusts zhem. She’ll talk to Syrdin I’m sure.”

  Mell nodded severely. “And so will you.”

  Gale pushed from his grasp, instantly strange on her arms, and gestured to the woman. “Fenn, Mell is human! She doesn’t have the same history! And the barrier?!” Realization struck like lightning, sudden and burning. “Beauty’s sake! Fenn the Night Elves could be staging an attack now!” She shook his arm. “We need to warn our people! We can’t stay here and let zhem trap us!” She couldn’t believe he would defend their nation's greatest enemy. The ones that tried to annihilate them, who had given themselves over to a human sense of greed and power.

  He flinched away from her, his face hardening. “First of all, human history overlaps largely with ours. Humans were the ones subjugated by the Night Elves when the Etnfrandians retreated into the barrier. Secondly, Syrdin crossed on zheir own. Zhe can’t be hell-touched.”

  Not hell-touched? Gale didn’t know what that meant. As if anything could matter. Syrdin was the enemy. She huffed and stomped a resolute foot. “Yeah, and that’s why zhe has been so beautifully kind since I met zhem. Fenn! Are you paying attention?! Zhe has been nothing but rude and cruel. And humans? They don’t live long enough to remember like we do. Syrdin is just like the stories!”

  Fenn furrowed his brow. “Gale, please.” He lifted a hand again, like he would reach out to her. “Mell just asked–”

  Mell trusts. Mell asked. What about me? “No.” Gale stepped back from his reach. “Don’t.” She turned to go.

  “But Gale–”

  “I can’t accept this!” She was tired, confused, and somehow Fenn’s absolute trust in Mell’s judgment over her own hurt more than his withholding of the information in the first place. “I’m going back to camp.” She marched the direction they had come, ducking toward the entry to the thicket.

  “Wait! Gale–”

  “Later!”

  “Your arrows.”

  She huffed and turned a glare back. She was betrayed, and all his stupid brain could worry about was arrows? She winced at the sight of them stuck in a hatchling like needles in a pincushion. “Leave them.” She bent and shot out of the thicket.

  “Gale, not alone!” Fenn’s call faded behind her.

  “I’ll follow her.” Krid’s rumble chased her out of the thicket.