“Of course.”
“When Tesni was eight, she witnessed the head of the Thieves Guild proposing marriage to Arya. She got upset and ran to me. She told me that Arya was in love with me, but that she thought that I didn’t care for her as anything more than a friend. I made the mistake of shrugging her off. I guess she went to Arya, then, and told Arya how I felt about her, because the two of them got into an argument.”
“What happened?”
Ryder sighed. “Tesni ran off. She ran into the woods, with only the most basic of survival training. Arya and I searched for her for two days. The evening of the second day, Arya started to hyperventilate, in a panic because she was blaming herself for Tesni running off. So you know what I did?”
Rowan shook his head. “What did you do?”
“I kissed her in order to shock her back into a normal breathing pattern. She surprised me by returning the kiss, and shortly after that, we found Tesni in one of the emergency shelters. The next morning, she and I admitted how we felt about each other.”
Rowan looked at Ryder, suddenly wary. “Is this a trap?”
Ryder was confused, at first, by his protégé’s question. Then he realized that he had basically just told Rowan to go kiss Tesni, and that was the last thing he wanted, was another boy to keep an eye on. He understood, suddenly, the boy’s suspicion, and he laughed. “No, Rowan, this is not a trap. This is me telling you that when you are twelve, and you tell a ten-year-old girl that you will court her when she comes of age, and then you don’t follow through six years later, she is going to think you have no interest in her, and she is naturally going to seek attention elsewhere.”
“You knew about that, too?” Rowan asked, his eyes wide with fear.
“Not until she mentioned it last night,” Ryder said. “She was practically sulking over it and trying to cover it up with the joy of Aeron paying attention to her.”
“That Aeron…” Rowan said, starting to get angry. “I have been waiting patiently for six years. He comes into camp, and suddenly he gets the girl I’ve waited six years for, all because I was too shy to approach her?”
“And why were you too shy to approach her?” Ryder asked.
Rowan sighed. “To be honest, I thought you might kill me if I dared to even ask about courting Tesni.”
“Rowan, you are a good kid. No, scratch that. You are a good young man. I actually dislike the idea of anyone courting my daughter, but Arya has convinced me that I need to let it happen, or else Tesni will just resent me. At least you had the decency to come talk to me about it, first.”
“So what do I do, now?” Rowan asked.
“You and I are going to work together,” Ryder said. “We are going to find a way to break them up. I don’t know why, but something unsettles me about that kid.”
“You don’t trust him, either.” Rowan finished up his sword, sliding it into its sheath.
“No, I don’t,” Ryder admitted. He sheathed his sword, as well. “I can tell you this, though. He clearly isn’t interfering with her training too much. If he was, Arya would have made it clear, and probably would have seen him out of camp at the point of her arrow.”
Rowan laughed. “Something tells me you would have joined her, with your blade at his back, as well.”
“Oh, aye,” Ryder said, “absolutely.”
The logical part of Tesni’s mind was telling her to put a stop to this immediately. Aeron was rushing things. He was pushing too far, too fast, and if she didn’t stop him, soon, she could kiss her virginity goodbye. Her father and Arya both would be disappointed in her. She would be disappointed in herself.
Tesni really wanted to tell that part of her to just stop thinking. There was something about Aeron that made her want to just do anything he asked of her. Every time he looked into her eyes, she could sense that he wanted her with every fiber of his being, and it made her want him just as much.
The one thing that Tesni didn’t dare do was miss out on her training. This left her little time to actually kiss Aeron, but she did it, anyway. So it was that she found herself sneaking out late one night to meet him in his tent. He was alone, that night, his mentor out on patrol, Aeron too early in his training to go along.
“A man could get lost in your eyes,” Aeron whispered, staring into them. “They’re such beautiful, deep pools of sapphire. I would gladly drown in them.”
His words made Tesni melt the way they always did. Every time they were together, he was finding some new way to compliment her eyes. They were, he said, his favorite part of her features. They were windows to the soul, and her eyes told him that her soul was a good one.
“Aeron… Do you think we might need to slow down a little?” she asked finally.
“Why should we slow down? Aren’t we in love? In fact, Tesni, would I be too forward in asking for your hand in marriage?”
“My father would not approve of me marrying so soon,” Tesni said. “I haven’t earned my bow. I haven’t even earned my sash, yet, and we are still so young.”
“Then let’s not even ask him,” Aeron replied. He and Tesni were lying on his cot, and he moved over her, staring into her eyes again, his forehead resting on hers. “Let’s run away, tonight, and find an official in town. In the morning, we will return, a married couple, and there will be nothing he can do about it.”
He trailed kisses along her jawline, then, and down her neck, leaving her plenty of leeway to give her answer. She had to admit that it didn’t sound like such a bad idea. What was it in the back of her mind that was keeping her from saying yes? “I don’t know, Aeron,” she said at last. “We’ve not known each other all that long. We’ve been courting each other for such a short amount of time…”
“And yet part of you really wants to,” Aeron said, “and you know it.”
His eyes were on hers, again. The logical part of her mind was practically screaming at her that this was a bad idea, that if she ran off with Aeron, she would regret it forever. As grey eyes bore into blue, though, she chose to ignore it, and off they slipped through a small hole in the wall surrounding the camp.
They practically ran through the woods, and Aeron took her to a house where he said he knew a sympathetic officiate would wed them then and there. Part of her was still hesitant, even as Aeron knocked on the door, but, she told herself, it was too late to turn back, now.
After a moment, the door opened, and there stood a woman in a cloak. “Come in,” she said.
“You were expecting us?” Tesni asked.
“I get young couples who wish to elope in the dead of night more often than you would think,” the woman said. “I was a priestess of Harena, but I had to leave the temple because I was getting so many. It was disturbing the other priests and priestesses who stayed at the temple with me.”
“So we’re not the first?” Tesni asked.
“Oh, no, dear, of course not. Young couples elope for any number of reasons. Perhaps they just want to escape the idea of a formal wedding. Perhaps they like the excitement. Perhaps their families are feuding, or just one or more parents, usually the bride’s parents, don’t approve of the match at all.”
“That last would be our reasoning,” Aeron said.
“Very well. It is a simple ceremony,” the priestess said. She repeated the magically binding questions that Tesni remembered Enid asking her father and Arya. To all of them, despite her own misgivings about this, she and Aeron answered in the affirmative.
When it was over, Aeron claimed her in a soul-searing kiss. As he did so, however, they were grabbed and pulled apart. As they were tied up, the priestess threw her hood back, laughing, and only then did Tesni recognize Agrona.
Chapter 13
Aeron and Tesni were thrown into a small room in Agrona’s castle. They looked around carefully, looking for some way to escape. Or, rather, Tesni looked around for a way to escape. Aeron just sat on the bed. “You know,” he said at last, “at least it’s a nice room inste
ad of the dungeon.”
Tesni’s temper reached a boiling point. “You are absolutely useless! And you call yourself a Ranger? How did I ever let myself fall under your spell of romance? And now I’m married to you. I took magically binding vows for you! Well, let me tell you something, Aeron Windrunner, as soon as we escape, we are going to find a way to get this marriage annulled. The Windrunner name is shameful to me, but the Greenblade name will always hold honor. Even the Redleaf name holds more honor than yours!”
Aeron grabbed Tesni and pinned her onto the bed. “Are you saying you’d rather be married to a thief?” he asked. His eyes had turned dark, from granite to the color of storm clouds.
Suddenly, Tesni found herself afraid of him as he forced another rough kiss on her. Her mind reeled as he began tearing at her clothes, and she remembered that he had taken her to that house. He had sworn that there was someone there who would marry them right that instant, at a house that she now remembered had always been empty before.
Again, her temper rose up, and she threw him to the floor. She kneeled over him, her hand flying to his throat. “YOU! You knew it was Agrona! You work for her, don’t you? Well? Tell me the truth!”
“You’re….choking…me…” Aeron’s voice was ragged as he spoke.
As dawn broke over the horizon and the first rays of the morning sun spilled in through the window, Tesni’s eyes darted around the room. She realized that Aeron had been allowed to keep a knife, likely so that he could force her to submit, and she grabbed it out of his boot and held it to his throat. “Speak.”
Ryder, Arya, and Rowan all awoke with the dawn as usual. It was Tesni’s custom, as well, but the girl was no longer in the tent. She hadn’t been in the tent since late the night before. It was only now, at dawn, that any of them realized it. “Where’s Tesni?” Rowan asked.
Ryder and Arya both looked over to where Tesni should have been lying and found her cot empty. Ryder darted out of the tent to look for his daughter. He was met by Aeron’s mentor, Liam. “Ryder! Have you seen Aeron? I came back from patrol to find him missing.”
“Tesni is missing, as well,” Ryder said. Then his eyes went wide. Had Tesni and Aeron really been that stupid? He knew that there was a romance blooming between the two of them, but could they really have decided to elope?
If so, there was a possibility they might be in town, still. He voiced his suspicions to Liam, who nodded. “It is a possibility. I know the boy seemed to mutter in his sleep a lot about the need to marry her, and fast. I never did understand why, though. It isn’t as if one of them was dying or she was pregnant.”
Suddenly, both of their eyes flew open. Ryder began to twitch even more than he had before. He ran back to his tent and grabbed his sharpest blade. “Did you find her?” Arya asked.
“No, but Liam and I have a fairly good idea about what happened,” Ryder said, explaining it.
Arya sighed. “If your theory is right, killing Aeron is not going to help in the slightest. It would just deprive the babe of his or her father, the way Tesni was deprived of hers for the first nine years of her life.”
That stopped Ryder in his tracks. “Well, I’m still going to take the blade. You know, just in case they’ve found themselves in danger and that’s why they’re not back yet.” Rowan hadn’t voiced it, but Ryder was pretty sure the younger man would certainly step up to the job if Tesni would let him.
They mounted up and ran into town as fast as they could. All the way there, Ryder prayed to Harena that he and Liam had been wrong.
“Well?” Tesni asked. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Alright, you’re right,” Aeron said. “You are absolutely correct. I work for Agrona. My job was to seduce you, wed you, and get you pregnant, then just leave you as if we were never wed, leaving you disgraced and unable to train.”
“And just what was the purpose of that?”
“It was to make you desperate enough to turn to Agrona for help. I would have been here waiting for you, ready to tell the truth, that you and I were legally wed, as soon as you got the orb.”
“Well, it didn’t work, did it?” Tesni frowned. She was unsure about what to do at this point. She wasn’t in an extremely high tower. She could probably escape if she tied enough things together. But how was she going to keep Aeron from sounding the alarm? She didn’t want to kill him.
“Oh, it will work,” Aeron said. He rolled her over and pinned her down, taking the knife from her. “The knife was enchanted so that if anyone other than myself handled it, Agrona would be alerted to send her guards in.”
At that very instant, four huge men burst into the room. They tied Tesni down, and Aeron grabbed a small vial that she hadn’t noticed before. He uncorked the vial and forced her mouth open, pouring in the pearlescent pink liquid.
It tasted sweet, but Tesni knew from experience that anything provided by Agrona could not be good for her. She spit it out, right into Aeron’s face. “Get off of me,” she growled.
Aeron slapped her across the face. “You are about to learn what it means to know your place.”
“I know my place. I am a Ranger of Linwood!” Tesni cried. She kicked the two guards at her feet square in the stomach, causing them to double over in pain. The other two guards tightened the ropes at her wrists, lest she punch them, as her hands were in the perfect place to hit the spot on their bodies that would cause the most pain.
One of the guards tilted Tesni’s head back. Another plugged her nose, forcing her to breathe through her mouth. Tesni separated her lips only, breathing through her teeth. A third guard came up, squeezing on her jaw, forcing her mouth open all the way again, and Aeron grabbed a second vial of the potion that Agrona had set out as a backup.
The potion ran down the back of her throat, and Tesni found that she had two options. She could swallow and accept whatever consequences it brought, or she could choke on the vile liquid and possibly die. As she started to gag, she began to fear that she would throw up.
Then an idea came to her, and she swallowed. She waited a minute, and she did not feel any different. She had a theory as to what the potion might be for, but she had no desire to actually test it. Instead, she continued to make herself gag and cough. She thought of every disgusting thing she could, including what Aeron was planning to do to her.
Tesni’s stomach began to churn, and she saw Aeron and the guards back away. One guard loosened a rope, knowing what would happen if she threw up on her back, and she took advantage of this. She shoved Aeron off of her and threw up all over his face and chest.
As she looked at the pearlescent pink froth that she had brought up out of her stomach, she knew that she had accomplished two things. The first was that she had managed to get Aeron off of her, and he wouldn’t be getting back on for a while. The second was that she had managed to get whatever it was out of her system before it really had a chance to work.
She slugged the nearest guard right between the legs, sending him to the ground, and untied her other hand. As the other guards came near, she did it to them, as well. She used the time it bought her to untie her legs, and she ran over to the window.
She was a good twenty feet up, she estimated. She made the jump, tucking and rolling with the impact. She could already feel the bruises developing, but she didn’t care. She sprang to her feet and ran.
Tesni was nowhere in the city of Linwood. Liam, Ryder, Arya, and Rowan had searched everywhere, and could find no sign of her or Aeron. Now, as it approached noon, the four of them sat at a table in the inn, planning their next move. It was clear to them that they were in Agrona’s grip, somehow. How Tesni and Aeron had been taken together, let alone why they were alone together that late at night, remained a mystery to the four of them.
They ordered roast vegetables and mead to quell their hunger. The innkeeper also brought out a fresh loaf of hearty rye bread and a pot of butter.
&
nbsp; “Has it occurred to any of you that Aeron works for Agrona?” Rowan asked at last.
“Now I know you’re jealous,” Liam said, “but that boy is as good and honorable as any of us here. In fact, how do we know that it isn’t Tesni that works for Agrona? How do we know that the constant attacks and kidnappings aren’t just to make her look innocent so that she could get the training she needs to steal the orb for her mistress?”
Three pairs of eyes all turned and glared at Liam, clearly not pleased with his suggestion. Ryder started to growl, but Arya placed a hand on his shoulder. “Liam, you know Tesni as well as we do, and you know that she would never work for Agrona.”
“You are treading on dangerous ground indeed, Liam,” Ryder said, “speaking about my daughter like that.”
Liam held his hands up, palms out, in defense. “Alright, alright, calm down,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. All I meant was that we can’t assume anything and start claiming that people are working for Agrona based on arbitrary reasoning. Rowan made the claim about Aeron simply because he’s jealous. I was illustrating how a similar claim could be made about Tesni, not actually accusing her.”
The other three at the table seemed to calm down at this, but Rowan was still convinced that he was right, and he continued to glare at Liam. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I am jealous. I have been planning to court Tesni for six years, and then Aeron arrives at the camp and just takes her like an owl swooping down on a helpless field mouse.”
Liam snorted. “I would hardly call Tesni helpless, and I wouldn’t let her hear you use that metaphor, if I were you, or you might be the mouse gotten by the owl.”
Arya shook her head. “To be honest, so long as Tesni is the owl, I don’t think Rowan really cares,” she said, a smirk gracing her lips.
Rowan just sank down into his seat, blushing. First Ryder, then Liam, and now Arya? Was he really that obvious?
The door to the inn flew open, then, and a form stumbled in. It was early winter, and the form, a young woman by her shape, surprised everyone, for she wore no traveling cloak. She wore boots, but only a ragged and torn shirt and a pair of pants. Her long blond hair hung over her face, and she fell, shivering, in front of the fire.
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