The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  It really was the perfect hiding place.

  Aik caught her eye from the corner, and inclined his head towards the hallway. Ashlyn hurried towards him, shrugging off her jacket, harness and knapsack and hanging them on the antler coat hanger on the wall outside the corridor before following Aik to the door at the end of the hallway.

  Ashlyn opened it hesitantly and looked inside. Sara was standing next to the bed, writing something on her clipboard. She looked up as Ashlyn entered, and smiled. “He’s been asking for you,” she said.

  Biting her lip, Ashlyn moved to the foot of the bed and stared down at her dad. The outline of his body was so tiny and frail beneath the covers, and the shadows beneath his eyes were more prominent than before. His long, dark hair was splayed around him on the pillow, and Ashlyn noticed for the first time that ribbons of silver were snaking through the strands. Lord Li had always been so ageless and powerful, commanding respect by his presence alone. Now he just looked like someone’s very sad, very sick grandpa.

  “Has he been asleep for very long?” she asked Sara.

  The older woman shook her head. “No. But he did ask me to wake him up when you arrived. He knew you’d be coming. Actually, I think he thought you were already here, but for some reason didn’t want to see him.” She stuck her pen behind her ear. “I’ll give the two of you some time alone.”

  “Wait. Is he going to be okay?”

  Sara nodded. “He lost a lot of blood, but he should make a full recovery. This-” she indicated the clear bag of liquid hanging from a hook on the wall, which was connected to a tube that ran underneath the covers- “is helping with rehydrating. I need to get some sleep, but if you’ll come get me when the bag is empty, I’ll switch it out for a new one.”

  “Of course,” Ashlyn said, realizing that the other woman probably hadn’t slept since Lord Li was brought onto the airship. “Thank you so much, Sara. I can’t…I really just can’t thank you enough.”

  “I’m happy to help.” Sara smiled, and her eyes were tired behind her thick glasses.

  Ashlyn glanced at Aik. “I’ll stay with him for now,” she said. “Can I come get you when I need a break?”

  The wolf nodded, and followed Sara from the room. The door shut quietly behind them.

  Ashlyn took a deep breath and looked back at her dad, reluctant to wake him. As she stood there, though, he stirred, his eyelashes fluttering before he opened his eyes. Ashlyn said nothing, watching him as he gained his bearings. He stared at the ceiling for a handful of heartbeats before his gaze flicked down, focusing on her.

  There was a pause as they regarded each other silently.

  At last he smiled, his eyes crinkling with laughter as he fumbled to get his arms out from underneath the covers and reached for her. “My sweet girl,” he said softly in Toryn.

  That was enough to trigger the waterworks. “Hi Dad,” she said tearfully, and went to him, wrapping her arms around his neck like she used to when she was a little girl. It should have been awkward, trying to hug him when he was lying in bed, connected to tubes and needles, but somehow she managed. Ashlyn squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to remember this moment, wanting to make it last forever.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said at length, and she laughed through her tears. Typical Li- no subtlety whatsoever.

  “I thought you were crazy,” she countered, straightening up and wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt.

  His eyes were dark and warm, a rich ebony that reminded her of home. “We were both mistaken, then.”

  She smiled. “I guess so.”

  His hand grasped for hers on top of the covers, and she threaded her fingers through his. It was the first time in over a decade that she’d held her father’s hand, and it felt strangely wonderful.

  “Where were you?” he asked. His voice was soft, but steady.

  “For the last three years?” She shook her head, trying to think of where to begin. “I’ve been all over. Landi, Storim, the grasslands- I even stopped by this inn once, a few years ago. For the last seven months I’ve been in Endro.”

  “The…” He took a breath. “The dead city. That explains…why I could not find you. Kou- Devlyn- said he had seen you killed in the Heavenly City. He said…a wolf attacked you…and you fell to your death.”

  “He’s a liar,” Ashlyn said fiercely. “I haven’t been to the Heavenly City since…well, since Jenn. And the only wolf I’ve seen in years is my friend Aik. You know they’re nearly extinct.”

  “Shift…some of the more powerful shift stanes can transform their users into wolves,” Lord Li said, pausing every couple of words to take a breath. “It is difficult because the magic is so unpredictable. But it is possible.”

  Ashlyn paused, remembering the dogs who had attacked her in Landi. At the time she’d thought they looked more like wolves than dogs, but had dismissed the idea for its absurdity. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a stretch after all. “Is that why you believed Kou? You thought I’d been killed by a shift monster?”

  “No.” Her father grimaced at the memory. “I did not believe him until a peddler came to Toryn with your bo shuriken.”

  Some of what Kou had told her was true, then.

  “Do you know where that shuriken is now?” she asked.

  “Kou has it.”

  Ashlyn shook her head, staring down at their linked hands. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I know I shouldn’t have run away. I know I should have stayed and trained for Ladyship. If I hadn’t been such a selfish jerk, none of this would have happened.”

  “Kou did this, Ashlyn. Not you.”

  “Yeah, but he wouldn’t have been able to if I’d been there.”

  “Perhaps,” her dad said simply.

  Ashlyn brushed a lock of hair off his forehead affectionately. “Sara says you’re gonna be okay,” she said, changing the subject. “All you need is time to recover.”

  “And no one else draining my blood,” he answered.

  “That, too.” She pursed her lips in thought. “How did Kou even figure that out? That he could inject the blood and use shift? It seems so random. Not to mention dangerous.”

  “I am afraid that was my idea,” Lord Li said ruefully. His voice grew weaker as he continued to speak. “He came to me with his vision, and after I found your shuriken, I trusted him. I asked him to help me test the magic. We injected him with my blood. But there was a difference. He could not control himself in animal form, and he became addicted to the magic much more quickly than I did.”

  She wondered if she ought to stop her dad .from using his strength to keep talking, but her curiosity won out. “Why did you let him keep doing it?”

  “I did not. I told him we had to stop, and destroy the magic, but he would not listen. It was then that he took me captive.” Lord Li stared out the window moodily, and Ashlyn followed his gaze, noting that it was early evening and the sky was darkening outside. She caught a glimpse of the moon before it disappeared behind the clouds again.

  “Dad,” she said. “Can I ask you something?”

  He blinked tiredly and met her eyes. “Yes.”

  “I’m…I’m really scared about becoming Lady of Toryn. I know I should feel ready, but…I don’t.”

  His gaze softened as he looked at her, and he slowly raised one thin hand to cup her face gently. Ashlyn put her hand over his, holding his palm against her cheek.

  “You remind me so much of myself, at your age,” he whispered. “You are very much a natural leader, Ashlyn, but that does not mean it is your calling.”

  “It’s my destiny,” she said. “My birthright.”

  His lips curved slightly. “That is what my father told me when I declined to ascend.”

  “But you did it anyway, because it was your responsibility.”

  “I did it because I felt I had no other choice, no obligation but to the people of Toryn.” He paused, seeming to consider his words. “I was wrong. I had an obligation to myself.”

  What? Ashlyn
let her dad’s hand lower to her lap, still clutching his fingers tightly.

  “Toryn broke my spirit,” he said, and his eyes were misty with memories. “I wanted to save my kingdom, but I could not fully dedicate myself to a cause I did not want, and Toryn and I both suffered for my half-hearted attempt at ruling.”

  “Dad,” Ashlyn said unsteadily, “I’m not trying to get out of being Lady of Toryn. I’m not running again.”

  He smiled gently at her. “If you want to lead, Ashlyn, I will help you. If you do not wish to become Lady of Toryn, however, that is your decision. I would not force you to accept your birthright. Perhaps…” He trailed off, visibly exhausted, before continuing, “Perhaps I would have, three years ago. But not now. Besides…” His eyes fluttered shut, his whisper barely audible when he said, “There are other…options.”

  Ashlyn waited for a moment, dying to know more. But her dad was fast asleep, his fingers lax against hers. Sighing, she placed his hands on his chest and glanced up at the IV bag. It was still more than half full.

  She lied down beside Lord Li and put her hand over his. She’d be here when he woke up. They’d already spent far too much time apart.

  Eventually she drifted off to sleep, but her dreams were violent and fitful- reenactments of the battles she’d fought over the last week, with different endings each time. The worst memory was from when she had rescued Lord Li from Kou’s army, and Drake had lost resist. Each time she relived the incident, something different happened. Once she had to kill Drake to save her father. Once she watched helplessly as Drake bit Lord Li and drained what was left of his blood. Once Skye entered and engaged in a bloody battle with Drake, with Ashlyn at a loss as to how she could help.

  It was a relief for Ashlyn when she finally woke up, and when her eyes opened, the first thing she saw was her dad’s peaceful profile, a slight smile on his lips. The light was still on, and Ashlyn shifted on the bed, thinking she should probably turn it off.

  As she rolled onto her back, she started at the sight of a man standing beside the bed.

  It was Kou.

  He smirked down at her. “Hello, Ashlyn.”

  In the next instant she saw the flash of her bo shuriken in his hand, and he brought it down, intending to impale her with it. Ashlyn rolled off the bed, crashing into his legs as the shuriken ripped into the mattress where she had been lying moments before.

  Her mind was still fuzzy with sleep, but Ashlyn had the presence of mind to grab onto Kou’s leg as it moved right by her head. She bared her teeth and bit fiercely into his calf, eliciting a squawk from the Toryn man. He fell backwards, colliding with the wardrobe against the wall. His momentum knocked the huge piece of furniture sideways, and it scraped along the wall as it fell, landing with a crash on the floor in front of the door.

  Ashlyn leaped up and danced backwards as Kou swiped at her legs with her hira shuriken. He scrambled to his feet, edging around the bed as Ashlyn advanced on him. She glanced over, noticed that the window was open and immediately cursed her stupidity for not considering it as an entrance point sooner.

  “Did you forget about reveal?” Kou taunted her, waving the hira shuriken in front of his face. Her stanes glittered at her from the weapon. Ashlyn hadn’t known that anybody outside of FLD even knew how to use reveal, but she was so livid that she didn’t stop to wonder how Kou had figured it out.

  “You are dead,” she hissed, advancing another step.

  “I don’t think so. Correction: your father is dead,” Kou snarled.

  Ashlyn’s heart skipped a beat.

  Things seemed to be moving in slow motion as she turned her head, looking at her father, who was still lying in bed, sleeping peacefully. Ashlyn’s eyes moved to his IV tube, and she saw with immense horror that there was a depleted syringe poking out from the tube, its needle embedded into the IV line.

  The terror in her heart nearly caused her to miss Kou flinging the shuriken at her, but Ashlyn saw the glimmer of the weapon from the corner of her eye and spun aside just in time. The shuriken grazed her neck, and she simultaneously felt the sting of the cut and heard the shuriken embed itself in the wall behind her.

  There was a rattling at the door. “Ashlyn!” Aik bellowed, and the door shook as he flung himself against it from outside.

  When Ashlyn turned back, Kou was gone. She rushed to her father’s side. “Dad!” she cried, shaking his shoulders. “Dad, are you okay?”

  Lord Li did not respond.

  “Dad!” she screamed in his face, shaking harder. “Wake up!”

  “Ashlyn, let us in!” Sara’s voice, high and fearful, permeated the haze of Ashlyn’s consciousness. She stumbled to the door and grabbed the edge of the wardrobe. She couldn’t move it. Grunting, Ashlyn threw herself down on the floor and braced her feet against the heavy wood bed, pushing her back up against the wardrobe and shoving it out of the way of the door.

  The door banged open, hitting her in the arm, but Ashlyn was too numb to care. “Help my dad!” she yelled at Sara, pointing at the bed. White-faced, the older woman ran to Lord Li’s side and began searching for a pulse.

  “Help me move him to the floor,” she called after a moment, and Ashlyn scrambled to grab her dad’s legs, helping Sara to haul him out of the bed and onto the rug.

  Sara crossed her hands over Lord Li’s heart and began to pump. “One, two, three-”

  Ashlyn drew a breath, hardly realizing she hadn’t been breathing at all this whole time, and turned her horror-stricken gaze to Aik, who was standing in the doorway. His wolfish expression, normally so serene, was grave.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Sara chanted as she pressed on Lord Li’s chest. She stopped and crouched down, fixing her mouth over his and breathing life-giving air into his lungs.

  Ashlyn sat silently as Sara worked, her blood roaring in her ears. This was not possible. This was not happening. Any moment now she would wake up next to her dad, and he would be fine and they would be safe, and Aaron would be coming to get them tomorrow.

  She stood, and wandered to the hira shuriken in the wall. It stuck fast when she tried to pull it out, embedded too deeply into the thick wood to be removed easily. Ashlyn slid reveal out from its slot. Better to keep the magic safe with her, where no one could get hold of it.

  The bo shuriken caught her eye next, poking comically out of the mattress. Ashlyn walked to it and pulled it free from its feathered resting place. She finally had her bo shuriken back. That was better, too.

  She turned back to Sara just in time to see the older woman sit back on her heels, tears streaming down her face.

  “I’m sorry, Ashlyn,” Sara said, and her voice was muffled, like it was coming from inside a bubble. “He’s gone.”

  This is not happening.

  Ashlyn tried to draw a breath, but it caught in her throat, and she backed away from Sara. “I don’t understand,” she said, and her voice was muffled, too.

  She bumped into the open window, feeling the cold draft from outside, and shivered. Kou had escaped through this window.

  Kou had killed her father.

  Ashlyn turned and climbed out the window, sinking up to her ankles in the snow outside. She vaguely heard Aik and Sara calling her name, but she ignored them, running into the night in search of her father’s murderer.

  Chapter 10

  The Vision

  Her breath came in quick, painful gasps, more like a habitual spasm of her lungs than the act of breathing. The reveal stane was clenched in her fist, bright orange rays emanating from between her fingers and tracing the path before her as she ran. The bo shuriken was in her other hand.

  Ashlyn’s heart was pouring from her, sucked from her with every agonizing exhalation. The pain was indescribable. There was a gaping hole inside her, as though she’d been stabbed through, but with no physical evidence to show for it.

  Her intent was single-minded.

  Find Kou, and kill him.

  It was bitterly cold, and she’d been runnin
g for what seemed like hours. The tears on her face had long ago turned to ice, melting and re-freezing as she pushed her body beyond its intended limits. Still the orange path stretched on before her.

  It was dark outside of North Camp, with the only light coming from a sliver of moon above that disappeared behind the clouds intermittently. The only sound besides her breathing was the crunch of her sneakers in the snow. The shifting light from the stane cast everything in an eerie light, the shadows stretching beyond the illumination proving almost more ominous than the darkness itself.

  She had some idea of where the magic was leading her, but nonetheless felt a surge of uncertainty when the first spire of the Heavenly City rose up out of the darkness before her. The City was dead, a graveyard filled with whispering spirits and lingering magic. She hadn’t ventured inside since Jenn’s death three years prior- few people did.

  Ashlyn paused at the edge of the cliff, allowing for only a split second of indecision before she turned, shoving the reveal stane into her pocket and the bo shuriken into her waistband as she pushed sideways, her sneakers sliding on the slick incline as she skidded down the canyon wall. The blackness came up and swallowed her as the magic of the stane dwindled, and Ashlyn scrabbled for a hold on the cliff face, slowing her descent as much as she could.

  She landed waist-deep in water at the bottom, and momentarily forgot how to breathe as the freezing cold enveloped her. Ashlyn drew in a shaky breath, feeling it rattle in her lungs, and whispered a few words through her chattering teeth. The reveal stane lit up from her pocket, a flickering trail of orange fireflies tracing a path through the water. She eased forward, pushing chunks of ice out of the way, shivering violently and trying to make as little noise as possible.

  Jenn had once told her that without the power of the Angels, the Heavenly City would someday begin to sink into the icy depths of the lake on which it rested. It appeared that the other girl had been right. From what little Ashlyn could see, the water covered everything. The stunning pearl-tiled street glinted at her from beneath the water, ominous and un-alive in the eerie stillness. Ashlyn paused, fresh tears springing to her eyes as she remembered the last time she had walked these streets, three years ago, wondering if her father would ever believe her when she told him of the grandeur she had witnessed.