Two years later
“Six months,” Salnath spews, pacing in my office as he throws his hands in the air. “You’ve been a Lieutenant for six months, brother, and yet you insist on presiding over that puny little Camp Sunset.”
“Horizon,” I answer, adjusting the things on my desk neatly as I wait for Salnath to finish. He’s been on me to transfer out of Camp Horizon since my second month stationed there, and I haven’t. He was thrilled when I made Lieutenant as the offices are on Oshta so I could move back home, but he expected me to move up through the ranks like him.
I know that there are greater things out there. I know that I have even been picked for them and have subsequently turned them down. And for a Lieutenant General, my decisions seem to be ill-informed at best and careless at worst. But I don’t care. I’m not making logical decisions.
I’ve been waiting for her to come back for two years.
“Whatever,” he snarks. “It is high time you get out of that place. That camp is where elves go to die.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say lightly, softly.
I’m not really bothering with this argument. I know in my heart that I will only ever leave Camp Horizon if I find Layla. Camp Horizon is all I have left of her and all the memories we made can’t part with it, not until I know that I’m only going to be adding to those memories.
And right now, I’m still searching for her transfer papers. Unfortunately for me, the Lieutenant that preceded me was a mess and kept very poor records, clearly expecting no one to notice a missing human.
“Their careers,” Salnath sneers.
“Perhaps.”
He stops, narrowing his gaze on me. Always the older brother, always the perfect child. Salnath has succeeded at everything I never could. He’s a high-ranking and well-respected miou who has a wonderful mate and is expecting a child.
And I lost the only person I love and am punishing myself for it.
A knock on the door halts my brother’s rant, and the door pops open. “Lieutenant–” The dark elf freezes when he sees my brother, bowing his head immediately. “My apologies, Lieutenant General. I hope I was not interrupting.”
Just like at home, my brother has more respect than I do. Even at my own base. I’m so used to it, it almost doesn’t bother me anymore. Almost.
“No, not at all.” Salnath is all smiles for the soldier – one whose name I’ve forgotten. He’s a new transfer.
“What did you need?” I ask, distracting him from mycelebrityof a brother.
“Oh.” He blinks as he reorients himself. “Right. Sorry, sir. We’ve uncovered some files that you might need.”
I take it from him, flipping open the folder and finding itemized lists of guards, inventory, imports and exports. It seems there was someone keeping the books but no one organizing them. Hopefully this will help me fill in the gaps as I try to improve the camp.
“Where did you find these?” I ask as I flip through them.
“The canteen, sir.”
I stifle a sigh. “Of course you did. Behind the barrels, I assume?”
He nods. “Yes, sir.”
Well, their previous Lieutenant was nothing if not a drunk.
But then, as I flip through, I spot a date. It’s almost two years prior, and my heart stutters. That’s when I was stationed there. And more importantly, that is when Layla was there.
“You’re dismissed,” I say, sinking back in my chair and flipping through the papers. The door clicks shut, and I don’t look back up, so absorbed in the file.
“Anyway, as I was saying–”
“You, too.” I cut Salnath off immediately.
The silence should have clued me in, but I don’t look up. Not until he takes a step forward, a hand coming down on the edge of my desk. “Excuse me?”
My eyes drift up. “You are dismissed from my office. Thank you for visiting, Lieutenant General, but you are discussing a personal matter when I’m trying to work, and that’s not a good use of time, don’t you think?”
His lips press into a thin line, and he finally spits his response through gritted teeth. “We’re not finished with this conversation.”
My gaze is already tracking across the page again, looking for any whisper of the information I need. I’ve done a good job at piecing together labor and export percentages, but there is some information I have no way of tracking – population being one.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I mutter, and Salnath huffs.
When I don’t give him even a parting glance, he spins on his heel, the click of his shoes against the wood floor announcing his departure. And the slam of the door.
A small part in the back of my brain is telling me not to get my hopes up, but I can’t help it. I’ve looked for her for so long. I can’t understand how someone can just vanish without a trace, and I’ve even been tempted to transfer just to get my hands on other records. I keep thinking that I may be able to figure out where she’s gone and transfer there, but no place has ever struck me as right.
Maybe because I don’t get why she left. It was so sudden with no change in her behavior. I didn’t even see them collect a group of transfers, and the guards weren’t notified of it. She must have been a solo transfer, which was usually only for medical responses. Not that the dark elves cared about their humans but they didn’t want to waste resources on someone who can’t work.
That thought has tormented me over the years. Could she have been sick, too sick to work? Could she be…
I can never finish that thought, every time it crosses my mind it drifts off there. I can’t imagine a world without Layla, even if I’ve had to live a life without her. That alone is killing me enough.
My heart stops when I pause on one of the last pages. ‘Human Transfers’ is in bold across the top and I drag my hand down my face. I don’t know if I can stomach it.
What’s worse is I don’t know if I’m more afraid to see her name or not. If I do, do I go after her? I will be faced with a new dilemma.
I sink back in my chair, gripping my hair at the roots. I’ve wanted to find her for so long, but I’ve never considered what would happen when I do. Will I tell her? Or should I leave her be?
It’s killed me to just know that she’s okay, that she’s alive. I want to know why she left me, but I’m not sure I want to impose in her life. And daily, Amara’s words have plagued me.
If she wanted you to know, she would have told you.
Numerous times I’ve told myself to let go of this human woman who fled from me. I’ve considered that she left simply because she didn’t want me and didn’t think she could tell a guard in her camp that.
I’d hope that Layla knew I’d never hurt her, but from the way Amara reacted to me, I was never sure. I’m still not. All I know is that Layla didn’t tell me when she was leaving or where she was going. She let go of me. And I could never let go of her.
I have to look, though. I have to at least knowwhereshe is even if I may never knowwhy.
With my heart leaping into my throat, I lift the paper back up in front of my eyes. Panic surges through me as I scan the list, and then, as if I can’t believe it, I reread it. Over and over.
And no matter how many times I do, it doesn’t change what is written there.
Layla Whitlock. Zerva transfer for Bronchite Marias.
Bronchite Marias. More commonly known as the kiss of death. It’s a disease that plagues the young and the old typically – the weak – and it destroys their lungs until they die of asphyxiation. It’s not contagious, developing from an inhaled particle in the air, so we transfer those afflicted instead of ending them.
And it kills the afflicted within a year of diagnosis.
Pain, hot and fresh, lances through me. I collapse against my chair, it groaning beneath me, and the papers fall to the floor. Of all the possibilities, I hadn’t expected to see something like that…
Frantic, I pick it back up, searching for the death toll. Layla’s name isn’t on it, but the records stop a few months after her transfer, and I’m still missing most of the data from the year after. I have no way of knowing if she’s still alive.
The only blessing I have is that Zerva falls in my jurisdiction. It’s the largest of the isles right off the coast of Camp Horizon, a perfect place to put the old and sick. And as it has such a small output, it never needed its own Lieutenant. It just fell underneath Camp Horizon.
I jump out of my chair, knowing that I won’t be able to stomach being in this office another second. With quick strides, I’m out of the door before the chair even crashes to the ground. The guards outside my door jump, but I don’t care.
Instead, my eyes land on the first medium-level soldier I can source. “You!” I have no idea what his name is, either. It’s very low on my list considering I’ve been scrambling to find the correct data to run my outpost.
“Me?” He looks around, realizing I’m stalking toward him, and then stands still, bowing his head to me. “Yes, sir.”
“Arrange for me to sail to Zerva.”
He looks up at me, confusion coloring his eyes, but he doesn’t dare question me. “When, sir?”
“Tomorrow.”
