by D. E. Morris
She nodded against him but said nothing. It didn't matter who saw them or what was whispered behind their backs because of this small interaction – everything they did was scrutinized and judged – Kenayde just didn't care. It seemed Jaryn was fairly unbothered as well, keeping a solid grip on her until she initiated pulling away, still watching her with concern. “I remember being a child,” she told him, brushing a strand of hair from her face, “and feeling so desperate to grow up. Now I wish I could go back to when it was all so simple.”
“It was never simple,” he argued gently. “We just didn't know about everything that was going on around us.”
She nodded, a small, sad smile on her lips. “I suppose that is true.”
“Are you sure you're all right?”
With another nod, she stretched her lips into something more of a believable grin. “I just needed a hug from my brother. Is that crime?”
The answer was enough of a stroke to his ego to momentarily distract him, making him wink at her. “Of course not.”
Quick to change to subject in an effort to take the attention off of herself, Kenayde asked, “Actually, since I ran into you, are you busy?”
He snorted. “High King.”
She made a face. “Right.”
“Why, what do you need?”
“Elas is not feeling well and I always play for him when he's sick. He said it soothes him. I thought adding another instrument or a voice might make for a nice change.”
Jaryn frowned in disappointment. “He's sick?”
“Not sick, per se. He thinks he pushed himself too hard when he was out for a swim.”
“Ah. Well, as much as sitting at your husband's bedside, singing him lullabies sounds appealing...” Jaryn couldn't keep the laughter from his voice. Pausing, he tapped his chin. “Vala plays, though. She sings, too. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to accompany you, especially after you took care of her the way you did.”
Kenayde tilted her head. “Vala, hmm? Any idea where she might be?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
She sighed. “I suppose I will go looking for her then. Thank you, Jaryn.”
“There he is. Your Majesty!”
Jaryn glanced over his shoulder to see Niam and Connor coming his way, then shrugged at Kenayde. “See? If I do happen to run into her, I can tell her that you are looking for her.”
“Thank you.”
They separated, both of them moving in opposite directions, but before they were too far away from one another, Jaryn turned so he was walking backward to call to her. “Kenayde.” She paused to look to him in question. “Don't think I'm so thick that I don't know you purposely tried to distract me. If you decide you want to talk, find me and I will make time for you.”
Both touched and amused, she crinkled her eyes and nose and answered in a soft voice, “Ceud taing.”
He touched a hand to his heart and gave a slight bow of his head. “'S e ur beatha.” Turning back around, he met the two younger men who approached him with anxious excitement and walked right through the middle of them, signaling them along behind him. “Walk with me.” They trailed behind like obedient pets as Kenayde disappeared down another hallway.
“We have estimates,” Connor told him. “Before you tell us we should be searching for the masked intruder, we know, and we're still doing that. We're multi-tasking. Also, we're not the only ones looking, so...”
“Estimates for what?” Jaryn asked, thoroughly confused. He glanced back at Connor but didn't stop walking at his brisk pace. “You're not supposed to be estimating anything. You are under specific orders.” Turning to shoot an accusatory glare at Niam, the younger man gave him a look of apology and handed over several sheets of parchment.
“For the dragon armor, Your Majesty, and you're right, this is completely inappropriate.” He took the glare given to him and turned it on Connor. “Someone wouldn't stop bugging me so I figured if I just got this done, maybe we could get back to doing what we were supposed to be doing.”
“We were multi-tasking,” Connor reminded, his shorter legs causing him to walk at a speed that was close to a jog. “This is important, too.” He reached over Jaryn's shoulder to drag his finger along the lines of numbers on the first sheet Jaryn examined. “I had Niam break it down not only by dragon size, but thickness of metal, metal used because we could go with anything from basic aluminum for economy class all the way up to gold, silver, maybe higher grade metals if we can get a good trade deal with the right miners. Then, if you turn to this page right here...”
Connor tried to lift the sheet to another but Jaryn dropped his hands and turned just as they were within a few feet of the doors to his office. “Connor, you do this every single time you get an idea for something. You don't listen to anyone else or pay attention to any other responsibilities that are given to you. You are so frustratingly single-minded, and sometimes that is a quality that I admire, but sometimes it makes me want to ring your neck.”
The three men stood in the hall, an awkward, uncomfortable silence settling around them that didn't appear to effect Connor. He rocked on the heels of his feet as though waiting for Jaryn to continue, brows raised. When nothing more was said, he looked at Niam, then back to Jaryn and asked, “Which one is it today?”
Jaryn dropped his chin and peered at the younger man through lowered brows. “Get back to your stations,” he ordered, careful to keep his voice low and steady. “If I see either of your faces again before the masked intruder is caught, I will have you stretched for so long that you will have to duck when you walk through doorways. Do I make myself clear?”
Niam swallowed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Connor echoed, more disappointment in his tone than fear. Niam grabbed his arm and tugged him along, eagerness evident on his face to be anywhere but in the presence of the man he'd clearly disappointed.
Standing with the list in hand for a moment, Jaryn could only shake his head and sigh. There were moments that Connor's decisiveness and maturity astounded him. Then there were moments when he wondered how the boy even knew how to put his trousers on in the morning. He questioned Ashlynn's approval of a marriage between Connor and Lilia, thinking, not for the first time, that he was glad Connor had been deposed as High King of Ibays. As much as they all disliked Fionn as a human being, he was much better at wearing the crown than Jaryn suspected Connor would have been.
Looking down at the lists given to him, he couldn't help but marvel at the work. When the boy put his mind to something, there was little that could stop him from getting it done. Jaryn turned for his office and opened his door, eyes scanning the numbers that had been carefully laid out in categories that made perfect sense, every detail and expense explained down to the last cent. More thought had gone into this than Jaryn had ever given any of his own ideas and that was impressive, he had to admit. It was something he would have to examine more closely when there was time, but other things required his attention first. He lifted his head, stepping close to his desk, and froze, coming to the sudden realization that he was not alone.
Vala stood on the other side of his desk beside his chair, her expression blank. Jaryn, confused, looked behind him to the closed door, a dozen different questions running through his mind at once. The only thing that he managed to say, however, was, “Kenayde was looking for you.” She blinked her wide doe eyes at him but said nothing. “What are you doing in my office, Vala?”
In a calm, casual voice, she replied, “I was looking for something.”
He gave her a fleeting smile, brows twitching together. “Well whatever it is, I can guarantee you that you won't find it here. In my office.”
Her chin angled to the side and a small, wicked smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Can you?” One of her hands rose to reveal all of the pages of runes that had been collected over the years clutched carefully in her delicate fingers.
Jaryn's stomach dropped. He felt his heart beat f
aster but fought to keep his demeanor cool. “What could you possibly want with those?” he asked, his voice calm and even.
“My master needs them.” Her gaze slid to the runes with mild disinterest. “My father was supposed to have already taken these from you, but he let his hatred of the Gaels and the dragons take over his emotions. He lost sight of what his true mission was.” Dumbfounded, Jaryn could only watch her, wondering what she was talking about. His expression must have amused her; when she looked at him, she laughed, light and musical, all innocence. As her laughter faded, the sweet girl everyone knew Vala to be began to change before Jaryn's eyes. No longer did she appear so vulnerable and helpless, but there was something cold and vicious behind her narrowed eyes that reminded him of someone he couldn't name in the moment.
“You really are quite easy to manipulate.” Her voice had changed as well. There was a husky undertone that had never been there before, something sinister she'd kept hidden under a false gaiety she'd adopted the entire time she'd been at Altaine. “So easy,” she practically purred, “especially when it comes to Ashlynn. I barely had to work for what I wanted.” A pout crossed her face, making her look like a little girl; it was a complete mismatch to the way she spoke. “That took some of the fun out of it for me.”
“You're not Vala,” he claimed, taking her words into consideration. His stomach clenched, realizing the woman who had been the source of so much pain and discomfort between he and Ashlynn stood before him. “Who are you?”
She fluttered her lashes. “Oh, I'm Vala, as much as anyone could be Vala. You see, she's not real. I made her up.” As Jaryn watched, her dark brown hair straightened and turned black. Her eyes slanted, becoming slimmer and a bit more set apart, a deeper brown than they had been before. Her petite frame barely changed, but he could see, even beneath her clothing, that she was well toned. Her angular face bore a remarkable resemblance to someone he did indeed know all too well, and not simply for the eastern heritage they shared.
“Ah,” she breathed, her thin pink lips lifting in a serene smile. “Finally, a reaction I longed for. I see you struggling. Shall I give you a hint or just tell you flat out?” She glanced at the window, thoughtful. “I suppose the time for playing games is running short so I have to pick and choose when to dangle a carrot and when to just shove it down your throat.” Folding the parchment so she could tuck them down the front of her bodice, she smirked. “It is no small wonder that Misuzu and I look so similar given that we share a father.”
Jaryn's brows lifted in disbelief. “You're Misuzu's sister?”
“Well don't sound so surprised, and don't look so uncertain. As I said, I'm still the same girl who has been working in the castle this past year. And don't think about calling to your guards. They won't hear you. As soon as you closed your door, you sealed a muting spell I put on the room.” She giggled. “I could slit you to ribbons and make you scream bloody murder and still, no one would come running because no one would hear you.”
“You're sick. Guards!”
“No,” she barked, all of her sweet pretense replaced by volatile poison, “you're sick. You're the one who took one look at the pretty little girl with the big brown eyes and decided to become her hero. You're the one who saw her crying all alone in a room and simply had to be the one to comfort her. And I told you that no one would hear you!”
He waved her off in disgust, trying to mask his distress over the fact that he was cut off from his only source of protection. “I didn't even know it was you.”
“You knew it was me when you went rushing into what was left of the market at the games to find me, all crumpled and injured, weeping.” She came around the desk, sinister amusement on her face. “Tell me you didn't get some sort of thrill from scooping me up and saving the day.”
Anger flared within him at what she was implying. Jaryn started forward with his teeth bared, fingers curled into fists. “I felt nothing but duty.”
“That's far enough.”
She waved a hand and his legs stopped moving. The abrupt halt of his forward motion would have sent him sprawling had he the ability to fall over, but he simply flailed his arms and righted himself. Panic began to set in as he tugged and shifted, willing his legs and his feet to move, but to no avail. When he looked up, she was leaning back against his desk, watching him with her arms crossed and that dark, twisted smile lifting just one side of her mouth. “What have you done to me?”
“Nothing ever went according to plan,” she mused, ignoring him. “I know Merrik thinks it did but he wasn't here. He didn't see everything I had to deal with on a daily basis. He's just been...” She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “It doesn't matter where he's been. But I've been here, I have done everything I was told to do up to this point, even improvising when I had to, but nothing ever happened the way it was supposed to. Part of me didn't want to kill Mairead that day at the games, so I was glad she made it out alive. I actually really like her as a person. I just didn't count on it rising up this fire in her that would send her to Cieria. I didn't plan for Cieria at all. None of us did. Of course, the man and his children weren't supposed to be brought back here alive, either. That entire family was supposed to have been bled out and left for the crows in the field.” She hissed through gritted teeth. “Idiots. Although, everything that happened after that with my clanswoman, the one your wretched little brat killed...” Vala trailed off to take a deep, calming breath. “Well, that only aided me in my ultimate conquest.” She threw her head back in a high-pitched chuckle. “All I had to do was tell Ashlynn that the boys were not sleeping well, giving me complete freedom to occupy the vacant space in your bed.”
“Why?” Jaryn asked, helpless to do anything but stand there and listen to her mad raving. “If you were so bent on hurting Ashlynn, why save her from the elf the day of the execution?”
Vala pressed her lips together and stared at him for a second. “Are you really that dense? No wonder this country is little more than a full chamber pot waiting to be tipped over. Do you really think I wanted to save her? Who do you think told the hunting party that she was out flying that day she was captured? Killian wasn't supposed to be there. Ashlynn was supposed to die, but like her ever-present hero, he dashed in and saved her yet again because her husband was at home feeling sorry for himself. I would be as well, if it makes you feel any better. The odds are quite against you at this point. Don't you ever get tired of seeing him with her...the way he watches her.” She bit her lip. ''You don't have to be a mind reader to know what he's thinking about when he looks at her half the time.”
“Shut up.”
His snarled response only brought back her grin. “I like feisty Jaryn. He's much more fun than whoever has been plodding around the castle these past few weeks. Maybe that Jaryn would have realized that sweet little Vala charmed her way down into the dungeons to see the imprisoned hunting party to give the elf who escaped a copy of the keys to his shackles. It was then his job to stir up the crowd enough to free himself, steal a weapon or create one out of magic – we can do that, you know – and take aim for Ashlynn. I, of course, would throw myself in the way of the arrow and take the hit, thus further endearing myself to her and hopefully gaining future goodwill.” She pushed herself away from the desk to circle around behind Jaryn, running her fingers along his shoulders and scraping her nails around the back of his neck. “I had hoped my injury and the reason why I had received one at all would make you a little more inclined to spend time with me, to show your gratitude.”
As she circled back around in front of him and pressed her tailbone against the edge of his desk once more, he stared at her as though she had lost her mind. Whatever sort of reaction she was hoping for, whether she was trying to seduce him or woo him into some sort of stupor, it wasn't going to work. He could only pray that he could keep her talking until someone inevitably came knocking on his door. His solitude never lasted long, even when it was requested. Sooner or later, Cailin would surely have some sort of
report for him, and she would be granted access no matter what, given the state of things.
Something in his expression made a muscle in her jaw twitch. It was a brief glimpse of a crack in the impenetrable exterior she tried to present, and it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. All too soon, she was smirking again, sly and sure of herself. “Maybe you'd be more comfortable,” she simpered, her features changing before his eyes, “if I looked the way I did the last time we were close.” The transition was seamless, pale skin replacing tan, dark hair turning blonde. Even the emerald color of her eyes was spot on. Had Jaryn closed his eyes as Vala shifted and opened them again when she was through, he never would have guessed that it was not his wife standing before him now. “Is this better?” she asked in a voice that did not belong to her.
His stomach churned as memories came flooding back to him, feelings of betrayal and self-loathing reopening poorly healed wounds inside of him.
She laughed at his anguish, Ashlynn's lovely face twisted in hatred. “Oh, Jaryn...do you think that's the worst of it? That night? If you only knew half of what I have done since I've been here.”
An anger more powerful than anything he'd ever felt before sparked within as she gloated over her secret destruction. With everything in him, Jaryn strained against whatever hold she had on him, crying out in a silent prayer, Giver, free me!
There was no visual evidence, but he could feel something shatter around his legs. Before Vala knew what was happening, Jaryn closed the distance between them, jaw clenched and muscles taut, and wrapped his hands around her throat. Her eyes bulged as her head was forced back, her small frame lifted off the ground from the sheer force of the impact and the strength of Jaryn's anger. There was genuine fear in her ragged breathing. The quickened pulse he felt under his palms told him she had not been expecting him to break through her spell. Yet she recovered quickly, masking her surprise with a slow, choked laugh.
“Is this how you and Ashlynn play?”
Seeing the face of his wife turning red beneath his grip, hearing her voice asking him such a question confused his senses. In disgusted confusion, he half threw Vala aside, half shoved her away from him, shaking his hands like he had touched something dirty and infested. She stumbled but didn't fall, catching herself on the edge of the desk and straightening as she returned to her true form, laughter lifting her shoulders.