The Price of Survival

by Meagan Hurst

  “Should we establish rules?” he called out while he watched her movements.

  “No deaths?”

  “Sounds good to me,” he agreed, and then he attacked her with lightning speed.

  Laughing with open delight, Z brought Kyi’rinn up easily to block his strike before whirling with grace that was a result of her immortality, and spinning calmly away from his second attack before she attempted to land one herself. He blocked it without effort, but his counter never made it—once again she moved before he could try.

  Shaking his head with a dark laugh, he increased his speed and his weight behind the blows as he began to adjust to her new grace and speed, not to mention her strength. He wasn’t the typical mortal either, but his immortality was stolen, so her new gifts helped balance her strength to his much more than she had expected. But he had ten millenniums of fighting behind him. She had a little over a decade and a half.

  He brought his sword up and the two of them locked blades for a moment before Midestol made an attempt to free his and land a blow before she could parry it. She managed to stop it, but not completely—a thin line of red touched his blade and she saw it pulse with excitement.

  “I hope you told your sword we are not trying to kill each other,” she told him mildly.

  “I am the master of my blade.”

  “As am I, but I do like to warn it on occasion.”

  Midestol snorted, and then grunted as she scored a fairly deep slice across his chest. His blade hadn’t moved quickly enough to block hers. “Yes, you do seem to relate to inanimate objects far better than you do breathing things,” he pointed out as he moved his left leg behind her right and attempted to off-balance her while throwing in a complicated attack at the same time.

  “They tend to do less stupid things,” she pointed out, as she evaded both his attempt to trip her and his strike. Dancing out of the way, she smiled and began to widen the circle in which their feet had been slowly stamping into the sand.

  He followed her without obvious difficulty—feinting now more often than striking. She was mostly on the defense, but he knew her well enough to know it was her way of feinting. She would hold back, judge her opponent, learn his basic blocks, movements, and speed, and then attack. He might not know all of her strike patterns, but he knew he was being set up.

  This time, however, he didn’t care. This was the first battle they had truly had for fun. No expectations, no tests, and no fear of what was coming after the match ended. Midestol’s smile was genuine and pleased with her talent, and she knew for once she wasn’t an opponent; she was his granddaughter. It shouldn’t have brought the pleasure it did.

  This is how we could form a bond. Not forever, and not strong, but enough to be … family for a time. No promises, no requirements from each other, and no disappointment over choices. Just … fun.

  And it was fun. Z was openly laughing thirty minutes into their dance, and Midestol’s smile never faded, but grew. She moved from formal skills to trick fighting without dropping her guard completely, and Midestol’s form was flawless but relaxed.

  Both of them took injuries, but they were minor. As Z couldn’t feel hers, and Midestol wasn’t taking so much as a misstep, she didn’t worry about anyone being in danger. Instead she could focus on the fact there was nothing but a strike, parry, counter, or evasion, and the fact that here she felt partially at home with a man she would have sworn she would never have gained even the smallest amount of connection with.

  At long last, Midestol’s sword left his hand after a challenging disarming move worked properly. She had been attempting it every so often at the end, and it had been after the fourth time that she had succeeded. Midestol was panting lightly, but his eyes were bright with pleasure and his smile hadn’t faltered at all. He retrieved Swyante with ease, cleaned the blade, and slid it into its sheath without any apparent concern.

  “Very nice job,” he applauded her honestly. “You really are quite the adversary. I only wish you were on my side, but, what is done is done.”

  She offered him the warmest smile she had ever managed to give him. “You’re not bad yourself,” she teased as she cleaned Kyi’rinn out of habit, not need, and also slid the blade into its sheath. Vanishing it with a thought, she eyed Midestol for a moment in silence before holding out her hand in a comrade-like gesture. He accepted it without hesitation. “We will have to do this again,” she admitted.

  “Most certainly. I may even decide to train you if you would be willing to accept the not-so-honorable fighting styles I have learned over the years.”

  “Like my fighting can be considered all that honorable,” she retorted with a snort. She smiled again at his words and inclined her head. “I would like that,” she told him truthfully. Glancing around the practice area, she shook her head. “Nice illusion.”

  “It’s a little bit lacking, but it is good enough,” Midestol said dismissively. He offered her his arm. “Shall we return to your room? I plan to stay elsewhere tonight.”

  “Probably advisable,” she agreed as she placed her hand on his arm. “Maybe you won’t have to leave a path of ashes on the way back.”

  “Overly optimistic, aren’t you?”

  “I can but try at times.”

  Midestol laughed softly as they walked, but she felt a surge of power and knew he was clearing the path to the small stronghold he had built for his daughter, his son-in-law, and her. Clearly, he was a bit upset over losing a couple of his men, but as it had been his idea to turn his men into blackened piles of smoldering ashes, she didn’t know why it was now her fault.

  They made it inside just as the sun set for good, but instead of letting her go to her room Midestol led her instead down a hall on the main floor. She assumed he meant to dine—and therefore dine with her—but she couldn’t help letting the silence between them grow slightly pointed.

  “Yessss?” Midestol drawled when he noticed.

  “Who’s coming to dinner?”

  “Ah. That. Well, I thought since you seem to be on a bit of a hit list here, and I must say that is quite the surprise,” he remarked innocently. “I thought it would be far wiser if it was just the two of us.”

  “Unspeakably wise,” she agreed.

  The heavy double wooden doors swung open as they approached, and Z took a quick note of the room they had entered. It was fairly large, considering this building had only been built for a family of three, but like every other room she had seen so far—minus the one she was staying in—the walls were stone, marble in this case. Black marble. It was decidedly creepy. Seeing her reflection distorted in its flawless surface was just odd, and it brought all of her alterations into sharper focus.

  Thick wooden tables filled the room and gold was inlayed within both them and the chairs that surrounded them. Midestol didn’t stop at any of the tables on the main floor—and she knew better than to hope for that anyways—and he led her instead all the way up to the platform in which a white marble table with emeralds inserted all around the edge awaited them. Seeing food was already there, Z hesitated slightly as she glanced at some of the meat dishes.

  “None of this is human,” Midestol assured her.

  “Mortal?”

  “No—Well, are we counting animals among the mortal?” Midestol glanced at her as he took a seat in a smallish marble throne and gestured at her to take the second. “The only thing here—as I promised—is animal meat, Zimliya. Nothing more.”

  “Good. If you’re lying I will forewarn you now that I will be spitting it at your face.”

  “You always are the most charming when testy.”

  Chapter 21

  Three weeks later, Z got ready to ditch the relative safety of the room she had been staying in while visiting Midestol. The sun was now creeping over the horizon, but she hadn’t slept the night before. She rarely slept here, but each night she did retreat to this room to give herself space from her grandfather, and to give him space from her. They were never going to be c
lose, not the closeness she shared with her allies, or the closeness she had shared with Nivo before his untimely death, but the daily sparring matches had given them something to connect with. As a result, Z knew she would and could visit Midestol without being ordered to by Nivaradros.

  The Dragon would like that. She would like it more on his behalf than for herself, if she managed to lie to herself convincingly. She could never forgive Midestol for his deeds, but she could ignore them while she was here, so long as he didn’t shove them in her face. For example, she knew he had been sneaking slaves or a woman he had kidnapped from a surrounding human village into his rooms for the last two weeks, but he didn’t mention it, and she never heard anything. Because of that, she could ignore it, though it took work. She wanted to storm up to his rooms and rescue whoever was trapped with him, but it would backfire on her in the long run if she did that. He was who he was, and one day she would kill him for it in battle; that, or he would kill her.

  Until then, however, she had gained something from all of this. Midestol could touch her in a caring manner and she was able to handle it. She also had learned to trust him as her grandfather—not, however, as the Dark Mage. It was a small oozing wound in her heart that was now open, but since the Tenia King’s treatment of her was so different from Midestol’s attentiveness, this was something the Dragon had foreseen correctly; she had needed this.

  Despite their different sides, Midestol spent hours working with her in the practice courts. He also attempted to build a stronger relationship between them in several ways. He tried to lavishly spend money on her whenever she permitted it, he had released a captive for her when he had noticed a shift in her eye color, and he had gifted her the use of his library, even arranging for the library present at this miniature castle to swap out books from his main castle for her as she had read through them.

  He also, she suspected, had realized she would not ask questions about her parents, fearing it would award him power over her she could not ignore. As a result, he offered information freely, and Z had learned more about her parents in three weeks than she would have been able to learn in her lifetime without his aid. Midestol knew, he knew his daughter. They’d been close, and when her father had come into the picture, Midestol had learned about him. And everything he’d known was now being offered to her freely. It led her to only one conclusion.

  He cared. He honestly cared for her. Opposite goals in life or not, she saw it in how he treated her, and she found despite all the years she had gone without something like this, she wanted it. Had she been a different person or possibly ten years younger, Z knew she would have flipped sides. She never let Midestol know just how much his grandfatherly concern and interest truly meant to her, but she could only lie so much to herself. When they met together in this manner, he would not only kill to protect her, but she suspected he would die to protect her as well. She wasn’t sure how she felt about either stance.

  Stranger still, Midestol had been comfortable enough with her to spar without a shirt on, and Z had seen his scars. Scars that should have cost him his life. Perhaps she was not the only member of her family to be difficult to kill. That, in its own way, had been reassuring. There were other humans out there like her. The Rangers, as a whole, were close, but perhaps other humans had survived the unthinkable before she had.

  Closing her eyes when she finished changing her clothes, Z leaned against the wooden walls of her room and struggled to gather her thoughts. Midestol was going to teach her some of his dark magic methods, and if she didn’t plan to use them—and she didn’t—she knew the value of knowing the thought process of a mage when it came to the certain use of magic. After the brief despicable magic lesson, they would head back out to the practice courts, and she would teach Midestol a harmless move that she had promised to show him while he once again taught her a trick or two that he knew.

  It was one of her favorite parts of the day; the exchanging of information regarding fighting tactics. Highly valuable for when she returned to the field, it was also extremely fun, and Z couldn’t remember the last time she had enjoyed something quite this much—certainly not since she had gotten back. It was hard to remember Midestol as the Dark Mage when he was acting like her grandfather, but she refused to forget that while she spent time with him, people and beings she cared for were dying. Dying while fighting for their freedom or dying while fighting for her for others’ freedom.

  Exhaling when she had firmly fixed that thought into her mind again, she moved to open the door when it swung open all on its own. Staring at the figure in the doorway in shock, Z recovered immediately and then sucked in her breath when her eyes met Midestol’s. Something was wrong.

  He entered without permission and barely met her eyes. “Sit.” His tone held a command within it and Z obeyed without thinking. He moved to the other side of the room, and leaned against the siding as though he could barely stand on his own. “Zimliya—” he began in a tone of voice that was so pained she wanted to cover her ears. Something had happened on the battlefield. Something horrible enough that Midestol felt honor-bound to tell her. She’d been without information regarding her allies since her return, and guilt over that decision swarmed her as Midestol struggled to speak.

  He met her eyes for the briefest of seconds before he turned his gaze elsewhere. “Your Dragon is dead,” he told her flatly, and in a rush as though it would make the words less painful to hear.

  She stiffened at once. Shocked into silence. Closing her eyes, she struggled to master herself. This was no game—he wasn’t lying—and she couldn’t afford to reveal a moment of weakness or vulnerability to him, if she hadn’t already displayed one. The logical part of her mind was quick to inform her it was time to head into battle, because without Nivaradros—even the thought of his name was a blow to her senses—her allies were at risk. She managed to open her eyes, but her thoughts stayed distant. Questions she couldn’t ask, couldn’t safely think, began to flood her mind.

  Nivaradros’s demise wasn’t something she had expected—feared, yes, but expected, no—and, as a result, she didn’t know how to respond. She couldn’t, however, breathe. The being’s words came back to her then, and a flash of anger struck her. He’d promised her he would protect Nivaradros, but his lie had already caught up to him. The Dragon—her Dragon—was dead. If there had ever been a chance of anything happening between them … Forcing herself to pull her thoughts away, she struggled to focus on the present.

  Midestol kept talking when she didn’t respond, and she heard enough to learn Midestol hadn’t targeted Nivaradros directly—somehow the Dragon had gotten himself in harm’s way. It seemed impossible. Nivaradros, after surviving millenniums under attack by his own kind, and thousands of others, had fallen. How could it have happened?

  “Evidently—and I only have reports for this part of this—the Dragon was trying to get the young Alantaion heir out of danger. He managed,” Midestol added with a trace of annoyance in his tone despite obvious efforts to squelch it. “The Alantaion is safe. The Dragon, however, was hit with some sort of barbed arrows during his flight to gather the Alantaion and get him to safety. He crashed into, and then through, some of the denser parts of the Balsirrie forest after dropping the Alantaion off just out of the reach of my warriors. I went there,” he added quietly. “We cannot find his body, but there is far too much blood for him to have survived.”

  And since Midestol had hunted Dragons before—with limited success—he knew what he was talking about. The inability to speak was still there, and she was fighting to get around it. She had to speak. If he knew he had wounded her … Swallowing hard yet again, she compelled herself to meet his gaze. But what could she say to him?

  “I should probably go,” she managed in a forced steady tone. “It is time I arrive on the field.”

  Midestol’s expression darkened with three conflicting emotions: anger, pain, and resignation. “My presence is needed on my side of this battle as well.” He opened his
mouth as if he wanted to say more, but he closed it before even a word escaped.

  Standing slowly, she changed out of the clothing he had gifted her with, back to a clean set of clothing she wore when she was on the field or traveling. Forcing her muscles to keep from shaking, she folded the clothing with care and put it in the wardrobe before turning to face him. He was watching her intently, but she couldn’t read him as well as she would have liked. She was shaken enough she had no idea just how much she was giving away regarding her thoughts.

  “Perhaps when—if—things settle down, I can still show you that move?” Here she couldn’t keep the slight tremble out of her voice. Nerves had taken over, and as they were better than the ache she was trying to force away, she held on to them tightly.

  Midestol stared at her in disbelief. “You would consider returning?” he asked in astonishment. His voice was no more secure than hers, and it gave her a small piece of relief at a time when it would be a while before she could feel anything more.

  She managed a smile, she wasn’t sure how. “War has a cost. I’m trying not to hold this against you. You have, after all, been very kind.” She closed her eyes and struggled to keep her composure. “But if you don’t wish to see me, we can just end this experiment now.”

  “Of course you are welcome to return as something other than a captive!” Midestol rushed to tell her. She opened her eyes to read him. His eyes burned, but they were still shocked, and if she was off balance—and she was, deeply—he was no less than her. Perhaps he wouldn’t gain as much from this as she feared. “I just thought you wouldn’t want to.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll try to warn you next time,” she promised quietly. “Goodbye, Grandfather.” She used the term without thinking, and as she slipped into the shadows the sight of his orange eyes widening in surprise burned itself into her memory.