The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  Ashlyn’s eyes widened. “What are you doing? If Kou’s army sees that smoke, they’ll know we’re-”

  “Relax, princess. Trust me.”

  She bit her lip nervously, and Vargo’s gaze locked with hers. He smiled reassuringly. She noticed for the first time that his eyes were bloodshot and he had a black smear on one cheek.

  “Did you get any sleep last night?” she asked suspiciously.

  One eyebrow quirked. “With you out here alone? Knowing that Lockhart lost resist? Yeah, right.”

  His admission that he’d stayed up waiting for her was strangely touching. “You didn’t have to worry,” she said, smiling. “Drake got resist back, everything’s okay.”

  “I’ll always worry about you when you’re not with me,” he answered, and looked as though he wanted to say more, but just then they heard the familiar hum of machinery, and both turned to see the airship emerging over the trees.

  Ashlyn took a few steps back, holding up a hand in an attempt to block the wind as the ship descended. Vargo grabbed his horse’s reins and followed her, staying close.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw Drake emerging from the waterfall. He carried her father in his arms, and as he stepped onto the grassy bank, his horse poked its head out from behind the waterfall as well, seemingly contemplating the route before limping out after its master.

  “You stayed the night with Lockhart?” Vargo said from behind her.

  Um…

  “I was really glad to have the extra help with my dad,” she offered lamely.

  At this point Aaron and a Toryn man Ashlyn didn’t recognize were making their way down the ramp, carrying a stretcher between them, with Sara following close behind. Drake stopped next to Ashlyn, and she gave him a tight-lipped smile before reaching over to smooth her father’s damp hair back from his face. He was still asleep, and in the sunlight his face looked even more gaunt and pale than it had the night before.

  “Dad,” she said softly, trying to rouse him.

  “Let him sleep,” Sara advised, pausing in front of Drake. “His body needs to heal itself right now.” She quickly lifted Lord Li’s hand, examining the scarred flesh of his forearm before checking the pulse at his neck. “Drake, would you mind…?” she asked at last, motioning to the stretcher.

  The vampire gently lifted Lord Li onto the stretcher, being very careful as he withdrew his hands from beneath the other man. Ashlyn’s throat tightened as she watched the simple action. Most of her excitement was because her father was alive and safe, but the compassion that Drake was showing to Lord Li made her heart flutter.

  Aaron and the other man began carrying her dad towards the airship, and Ashlyn followed closely. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked Sara.

  The shorter woman shook her head. “We’ll do everything we can for him, but it’s too soon to tell. I’m sorry.” She followed Aaron up the ramp, quietly issuing orders about how to carry her new patient.

  Ashlyn stopped at the base of the ramp, feeling very discouraged and worried. She shouldn’t be surprised- Sara was a realist, and Ashlyn didn’t want the other girl to lie to her, not really. But right now all she wanted to hear was that her father was going to be all right. After everything they’d gone through, after she’d waged war inside herself for the past several weeks over whether she could truly challenge him or not…after thinking that he might be lost to her forever, Ashlyn couldn’t help but feel that a little optimism was deserved. Her father had fought to survive against all odds, when people were draining his body of its life force. Sara would save him. Perhaps Aaron could even take Lord Li to Cosmea, where the healers were renowned as the greatest in Kresmir.

  “Don’t sweat it, Ash,” Vargo said to her, squeezing her shoulder. “Your dad’s gonna be fine.”

  She smiled up at him, grateful for his unexpected kindness. “Thanks.”

  “Ashlyn.” Drake appeared beside her, and gestured up the ramp, indicating that she should ascend. He followed by placing his hand at the small of her back, pushing lightly. Confused, Ashlyn obeyed the pressure, and Drake walked up the ramp beside her, keeping his hand against her back, his horse following behind them.

  It occurred too late to Ashlyn that Drake was deliberately moving her away from Vargo, and also making his intentions towards Ashlyn clear to the red-haired Spartan. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Vargo standing at the bottom of the ramp, eyes narrowed as he stared at her.

  He wasn’t stupid- he had to know that something was going on.

  The last thing Ashlyn wanted to do was cause tension within FLD. Her feelings towards Vargo were decidedly mixed, especially now. She’d thought earlier that there was no danger of ambivalence regarding the situation with Drake, but after seeing Vargo again, she felt…well…she felt confused and sick to her stomach over the entire situation.

  When Drake turned towards the wing of the airship where the horse stalls were located, Ashlyn firmly stepped away from him. “I’m going with my dad,” she said. Drake nodded, but she knew that as astute as he normally was, he probably would not miss the warning in her eyes. She didn’t like the thought of men fighting over her, and she especially disliked the idea of Drake staking his claim as though she was a piece of property.

  By the time she made it to the infirmary, her dad had already been moved into a bed. Aaron was gone- presumably prepping the airship for lift off- but Sara was carefully inserting a needle into Lord Li’s arm. The older woman looked up as Ashlyn entered the room, and her blue eyes were warm behind her glasses.

  “I’m going to set him up with an IV,” she said. “He needs to get hydrated if he’s going to recover.” She worked quickly and efficiently, hooking a tube to the needle and connecting it to a hanging bag of clear fluid. “I hope I didn’t scare you earlier, Ash. I didn’t want to give you false hope, but honestly, the fact that your father has made it this far bodes well for him. He must have been in exceptional physical condition before this ordeal began.”

  “He was…getting a little tubby the last time I saw him,” Ashlyn said affectionately, smiling slightly at the memory. “But he’s always been fit.” She stared down at her father’s thin face, noting how very different it was now than it had been during Lord Angelo’s reign. It doesn’t seem right, she thought. Lord Angelo couldn’t break my dad, even when he had control of Toryn, but Kou managed to do it just by telling him that I was dead.

  “Aaron wants to talk to you,” Sara said. She had a stethoscope around her neck, and fidgeted with the earpieces for a moment. “You should probably head to the bridge. I’ll let you know if anything changes with your father’s condition.”

  Just then, the airship rose off the ground, and Ashlyn clutched the railing on the side of the bed, her stomach flip-flopping. “I hate flying,” she said out loud, and sighed, shaking her head. You’d think at almost nineteen I’d be over this. “But I’ll go find Aaron. Thanks, Sara.”

  The other woman nodded to her distractedly, and Ashlyn turned to leave.

  She half-expected either Vargo or Drake to be outside the infirmary, waiting, but she was relieved to see that the corridor was completely empty. She just didn’t want to deal with romantic entanglements right now. Holding one hand to her stomach and the other one to the wall as she walked, she made her way up the hall towards the bridge.

  She paused outside the doorway, leaning up against the wall for a moment and welcoming the feel of the cool steel against her flushed skin. So much had happened, and she’d hardly paused to process any of it.

  Unless Skye had confirmed his death, there would be no way to know if Kou was still alive or not. But the fact remained that he had survived being shot by Drake and falling from the top of Na Michico. His survival was something Ashlyn wouldn’t have believed if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

  Her dad had clearly been held hostage this entire time, helpless to stop Kou from taking more and more Li blood to enable the army to use shift. Perhaps the reason Kou had been searching f
or her and had brought her back to Toryn in the first place was because her father was growing too weak to supply blood anymore. But she still wasn’t sure why Kou had lied to her, pretending to be her brother. Had he been toying with her? Or was he just trying to figure out if she would join his cause? The unanswered questions and possible answers disgusted her.

  Her thoughts were about to turn to her own mess of a personal life, and the situation with Drake and Vargo, when Aaron suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  “You gonna stand out here all day or what?” he barked. “We got things to talk about!”

  “Like what?” Ashlyn answered testily. “Can’t it wait until we get to the city?”

  “Hmmph.” Grabbing her none too gently by the arm, Aaron stomped into the bridge and lead Ashlyn to the viewing screen. “They’ll be arrivin’ at ‘bout the same time we are,” he told her, pointing.

  Ashlyn pressed her hands up against the glass, heart sinking as she surveyed the lines of ninjas crossing the cliffs below. Kou’s troops were moving towards Toryn, and although their ranks had thinned significantly after the two attacks yesterday, there were still more than enough soldiers to potentially overpower the inexperienced Toryn army.

  “Crap,” she muttered.

  “That’s one way to put it,” Aaron observed.

  “We can’t take my dad to Toryn, not with them so close,” Ashlyn said, glancing over at the pilot. “Can’t you…can’t you just drop me off and take him to Cosmea?”

  “Already talked to Skye about that last night,” Aaron replied. “He said Cosmea’s the first place Devlyn’s gonna look.”

  She bit her lip. He was right, and Kou had been to Cosmea once before so he was already aware of the layout. “Skye thinks we should move my dad somewhere…what, out of the way or something?”

  “Somewhere they’re not gonna think to look for him.”

  “Somewhere like…North Camp?” Ashlyn said, picking the most obscure location that popped into her head. “Do they have healers there?”

  “Sara’s not leavin’ him. He’ll have whatever healin’ there is to be got from her.” Aaron scratched his chin, chewing thoughtfully on his cigarette. “North Camp ain’t such a bad idea, kid. I could take ya both there, keep them from gettin’ anymore of your blood. It ain’t likely they’ll track you there, either.”

  “I can’t leave FLD here to fight alone,” she protested hotly. “You can drop me at the city and head for North Camp. I’m not running away.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Vargo spoke up from behind her.

  She turned to see both Drake and Vargo standing there. Vargo tapped his electro-baton against his thigh, trademark smirk affixed on his lips, looking more like his usual sarcastic self.

  “The Toryn army can use all the help it can get,” Ashlyn said, “but I hate to ask you guys to put your lives on the line. There are gonna be a lot more shift monsters down there than there were last time.”

  They acted as though she hadn’t spoken. “We’ll need to destroy the shift stanes after this is over,” Drake said. “You and your father will be targets, for your blood, for as long as the magic is in existence.”

  “Might as well start with that one,” Vargo said, motioning with his baton to Ashlyn.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “The stane in your armlet,” Vargo said. “It’s shift, right? Let’s get rid of it now, before the battle. You don’t want it getting back into Kou’s hands.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. Hmm. She didn’t really feel comfortable giving up shift. It had saved her life in the forest.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea just yet,” she said at length. “I had to use it in the forest when I was attacked by some other ninjas, and then again when I was in the cave with Kou. I might have died without it.”

  “Dangerous magic, Ash,” Aaron spoke up. “Shape-shifting ain’t natural.”

  “But it kind of is, for me. I mean, it felt really natural. I wasn’t in pain and I was in total control of myself even when I was in animal form. I think maybe the craziness and the addiction just comes from the…the dishonest part of what Kou’s doing. Injecting with blood because he’s not really a Li, and all that. I feel fine.”

  “You don’t feel addicted?” Vargo asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you won’t mind if we destroy the stane.”

  Ashlyn rolled her eyes. “Be serious, Vargo. I’m telling you that there’s no need to destroy it. That magic could really come in handy for me in the next hour or two.”

  “Or it could snare you even further under its spell,” Drake said. “You agreed that it was necessary to destroy shift, Ashlyn. What has changed?”

  “That was before I used it,” she retorted, and paused, considering her answer. After watching Tag transform in her basement, she had sworn to destroy shift, but that had been…before.

  Was this what the beginnings of addiction felt like?

  She reached over and pulled the stane from her armlet, staring down at the gem with some trepidation. Drake was right, of course. For as long as shift existed, there was always a danger that someone like Kou would try to steal Li blood so they could wield the magic.

  She still remembered her reasons for wanting to destroy it. Those had not changed.

  Reluctantly, she held shift out to Vargo.

  He took the stane and put it on the control table, then raised his baton above his head and widened his stance, ready to smash the glittering gem.

  “Wait!” Ashlyn said, hardly aware that she was saying the word until it had already passed her lips. She took a step forward, but Drake stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  Vargo brought the baton down hard on the stane, shattering it into a dozen pieces, and she flinched, acutely aware of the sudden loss of power, feeling the broken magic dissipate within her.

  There was a long silence following her exclamation. Ashlyn stood very still, trying to make sense of the conflicted emotions within her.

  “I don’t know if I was addicted,” she said.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Aaron said, moving to the helm. “I ain’t gonna land in the city, we don’t got the time.”

  “We’ll use the rope ladder,” Ashlyn said. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Whatever had happened with the shift magic, addicted or not, she felt very strange now that it was gone.

  As Aaron maneuvered the airship to hover directly over Toryn, Ashlyn briefly considered saying goodbye to her dad, but thought better of it. He was probably still unconscious, and she didn’t have any time to spare.

  She was still wearing her gloves, fortunately, and as she climbed onto the first rung of the violently whipping ladder, she looked down, estimating how much of a jump it would be.

  It was too far down to just let go, but she could slide a bit. Ashlyn kicked her feet off the rung and relaxed her hands. Without letting go completely, she let the ladder slip through her fingers and allowed herself to slide towards the ground. The wind whipped her hair around her face and the palms of her gloves warmed to an almost unbearable heat from the friction, but Ashlyn’s concentration was firmly focused on the ground below, trying to gauge the distance.

  At last she tightened her grip on the ladder, and came to an unceremonious, abrupt halt. The sudden stop felt like it almost yanked her arms out of her socket, and Ashlyn grimaced as she found the next rung with her feet. Maybe sliding down wasn’t such a great idea after all.

  Climbing down the last two rungs, she stepped off the ladder and looked up to see Drake and Vargo making their way down, much slower and more carefully than she had. Ha. Wimps.

  “Ash!” Restlyn enveloped her in a hug. “Are you okay? Where’s your father?”

  Ashlyn returned the hug and looked around, curious at the empty state of the city streets. “He’s on the ship, still,” she said. “Aaron’s not going to set down. My dad’s gonna be okay, but he needs major medical attention, and it’s too risky to ke
ep him here. Where is Skye?”

  “Right here,” Skye said from her right. He nodded to Vargo as the Spartan stepped off the ladder, followed shortly by Drake.

  The crew began pulling the ladder up, and Ashlyn waved to them, her heart in her throat. They had her dad’s life in their hands, and she was letting them leave without her. But he would be far safer in North Camp, especially considering they had mere moments before Kou’s army attacked.

  “Did you kill Kou last night?” she asked Skye as the airship departed.

  The blond shook his head, his dark glasses obscuring his eyes. “No way to know for sure.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” she muttered. “Kou’s troops are on their way. Almost here, in fact.”

  “Ellis and Aik are coordinating the army behind the- well, behind what’s left of the pagoda,” Restlyn said. “Skye and I got everyone else inside. We were going to head back to help the soldiers.”

  Ashlyn looked back, seeing the first of the black cats scaling the city walls. They were already pacing the top, looking for a way down. “There’s no time,” she said. “When will the army be ready?”

  “Thirty seconds, maybe,” Skye said, drawing his sword. “They were distributing weapons when we left them.”

  “Not fast enough,” Vargo snapped.

  Ashlyn reached back and grabbed her sword. Her heart was pounding, but she refused to let her nervousness show. “Are you telling me a Spartan can’t stay alive for thirty seconds until reinforcements arrive?”

  “You challenging me, princess?” He tossed a grin over his shoulder as he faced the walls, baton at the ready.

  “Just wondering if you’re going to turn tail and run,” she retorted, “Not like you’ve ever done that before…on the metro tracks…in Endro.”

  “Hey now,” he complained. “Low blow!”

  “Less talking, more ass-kicking, Spartan!” Ashlyn rushed forward, watching keenly as one of the cats jumped from the top of the wall to the crow’s nest and began bounding down the stairs. Her adrenaline hadn’t quite kicked in yet, but she still knew that being on the offensive was a better idea than waiting for the cats to come to her. She met the panther at the base of the stairs and dove into a roll as the cat jumped at her. Ashlyn came up onto her feet and spun, casting an ice spell on the ground and sending the feline sliding. Vargo was there to intercept where the ice patch ended, cracking his baton down on the panther’s head with one swift movement.