He turned around and slipped back so he could walk somewhat side by side. “Yep, it’s actually a funny story.”
Ariana sighed but didn’t say anything. He took that to be a go.
“You ever hear of RPGs?”
She frowned, “Role playing games?”
“Yeah, that’s right. So my folks, they were big into that world. Cos-play, D and D, you name it, they loved it.” He shifted the weight of his backpack. “From the time that I was a little kid I can remember being taken to all kinds of events. My parents were heavily into the medieval stuff. Horses, knights, damsels, wizards, squires—all of it. Had me learning how to use all kinds of weapons no six year old has any business touching.”
She turned to look at him, her usual scowl slipping away. She was clearly intrigued.
“I took a liking to the broadsword at first. Imagine me, a puny little kid, wielding a big ass sword. It was comical. There are pictures.”
“And dangerous!” she said with a smile.
“Yeah, but it went with the costume.” Lance winked and she turned her face away, eyes focused back on the trail ahead. “I showed an aptitude for it. My folks were thrilled. Fit right into their medieval-minded plans. So they enrolled me in lessons.”
“There are sword lessons? I mean, I know fencing, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re talking about.”
“Nah, not fencing.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I trained from the time that I was about ten, switching up instructors as I progressed in my skill. I was kind of a protégé, of the sword wielding variety. Not really a skill most normal people needed to have.” He chuckled, feeling awkward as the tone of the story started to change. “My last instructor was a man named Anthony. He came highly recommended, really amazingly skilled with his blades. He took one look at me during practice and said that I needed to train with him.”
She looked over at him, her eyebrow cocked.
“Turns out he was a Hunter, from the Order.” Lance winced at the memory. “I was fifteen when he took me out to train. With a sword in my hand, totally and completely unprepared, he exposed me to a beast.”
Ariana gasped. “I heard they did that! Forced your Hunter mark by tossing you to the wolves.”
Lance cleared his throat. “Yeah, I got tossed right into the deep end, that’s for sure. My mark appeared and I had no idea what was happening. Luckily for me, I was trained. Instinct kicked in and I cut the beast down. There was no Huntress at the time so the wolf didn’t die, but neither did I.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him, her hand on his biceps, fingers brushing his Hunter mark. “That’s brutal. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, it was,” he said with a half-smile, knowing that he wasn’t hiding his feelings about that time in his life well. “They convinced my folks that I needed to join the Order. Didn’t tell them, of course, what was really going on. As far as they know to this day, the Order is a special military operation that takes in youth to hone fighting skills. I resented them for a while, a long while after they signed over custody. Visits with them were hard, infrequent. Naturally, I was resistant to the Order’s lessons at first. Acting like the quintessential pissed off teenager, with a sword.” He chuckled. “Never did buy into all the vows, have always been a bit of a rebel when it comes to expectations.”
She nodded and dropped her hand, which he snatched up to lay on his chest above his heart.
“Except for the part about the Huntress. I knew, deep down inside that my Hunter mark meant I was destined to protect someone dearly important to humanity. That one day I’d meet my soul mate and we would fight side by side. Right out of some medieval fairytale, right?” He grinned “So I trained hard and learned what I needed to learn. I became as strong as I could be and all because of the idea of you. My Huntress. The embodiment of every heroine I’d ever seen at a convention or role-play. In a way, I guess I do believe in some of the mystical stuff because I was destined to be a Hunter, been training for it my whole life. Now that I’ve got you, now that we’ve bonded, I fully understand what I was born to do.”
Her eyes were locked with his, her head tilting to the side. “You are such a pussy,” she said with a smirk. “A sweet, little pussy-cat romantic.”
He laughed. Hard. “Yeah, well, when you grow up with Mr. and Mrs. Medieval, you pick up a bit of the romance of it all.”
She smiled, like truly smiled at him, and then pulled her hand away. “You want to see my sword, Hunter?” She reached back and unsheathed it. “I mean, after a story like that, how could I deny you?”
When he saw the blade, he gasped. The thing was masterfully designed. She offered the hilt, beautifully engraved, stainless steel with black leather wrapping. He grasped it in his right hand and felt the perfect weight settle against his palm. “Wow.” He turned his hand, examining the unique twined metals that joined seamlessly together. Steel and bronze? No, that couldn’t be right. He pulled the sword closer, narrowing his eyes searching for where the metals had to have been soldered together.
“Don’t try to figure it out. You might fry your brain.” Ariana touched the engravings. “It’s magically reinforced. Will always hit true and intensify the Huntress poison.”
“And the two metals?” He shifted the sword again, catching it in the light better. The bronze side seemed to shimmer. Okay, maybe there was something to the whole mystical Goddess thing. He’d never seen a sword like it before in his life. And it felt just right in his hand, like it was made for him.
He glanced over at her when she didn’t answer, concerned by the look on her face as she opened and closed her mouth like a fish gasping for oxygen.
“Ariana?”
The ground vibrated. A thundering roar came a second later as branches snapped and trees seemed to sway.
A beast came barreling out of the trees, nostrils flaring, fangs bared. Ariana grabbed for her sickles but Lance forced the sword back into her hand before he slid his own from its sheath.
The beast rose on hind legs, chest heaving. “My Huntress,” it bellowed.
Ariana’s eyes went wide. “It can’t be! I killed it!”
Lance caught movement out of the corner of his eye, managed to push Ariana out of the way as another beast came roaring from the side. It slammed into Lance, taking him down in a rolling frenzy of fur and flesh. His sword was useless and he struggled to free himself from the tangle, all the while keeping his skin from being shredded.
He rolled onto his back, taking the beast with him, searching frantically around for Ariana, his range of movement limited by both his position and the fucking animal that was on top of him. He held the beast by the snout and jaw, prying its mouth open to keep the fangs from sinking in anywhere. Putrid saliva splashed onto his face, chunks of meat trapped between gums adding to the mess. The beast roared, a gust of foul smelling breath washing over him, making him gag.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He was going to die just from the smell. Lance tried to leverage his feet underneath the beast’s body, but as soon as he moved his legs up the beast dropped its weight down harder, forcing all the air out of Lance’s lungs in a whoosh.
It raked its claws down Lance’s arm, scoring his flesh. He couldn’t help the scream that tore from his body. The beast’s claws had to have been hitting bone.
He looked up and there was Ariana, covered in blood herself, a sight that made his heart ramp up even more. She met his eyes only briefly before swinging her sword down to decapitate the beast. One slash and the head popped off, rolling away as the body slumped onto him.
“Holy fuck,” Lance said, wincing. He shoved the body off him with a look of disgust.
Ariana knelt at his side, sword on the ground at her knee, hands gently rotating his arm.
He shuddered as she moved him, the pain almost unbearable. So intense he could hardly think. She closed her eyes
, ran her fingers along the wounds and he felt nothing. No warming touch, no magical spark. Her powers had not yet returned.
“It’s not working.” Panic edged her voice. “I’m not strong enough.”
“Bandage it,” he grunted. “With something clean.”
When she looked up from his wound, there were tears glistening in her eyes. “What? Okay, yes, you’re right.” She moved off to their abandoned packs and started rummaging through in search of something clean all the while mumbling something about Artemis and being bolstered and other things that made little sense to him.
He pushed himself up and shifted so he could lean against a tree trunk, his legs bent to support more of his weight. The first beast, the one that had claimed to be her mate was decapitated as well, its head laying a few feet from its body.
“Are you injured?” he asked, his words coming out slurred, thick. He looked down at his arm, blood coating every inch of his skin. He was bleeding too much.
She came back to him with one of his T-shirts and attempted to wrap the whole thing around his arm.
“No, Ariana, you need to rip it into strips, tie off my wounds to stop the bleeding.”
She looked up at him, confusion riding in her eyes. “Right, yes.”
With shaking hands, she did as he directed, ripping the shirt into thick ribbons and wrapped his gashes tighter after he checked her for being too gentle. “If you don’t stop the blood flow, I’m going to lose it all.”
Ariana gulped, nodded, tightened each tie so tight he winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve never had to do this.”
He touched her cheek, leaving a streak of blood. “I know. You’re doing a good job.”
She nodded again, set back to work. Once she’d tied him up, his arm throbbing and burning, she sat back seemingly unsure of what to do.
“Are you injured?” he asked again.
She frowned, shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Check yourself, just in case. You could be high from the adrenaline.”
She did as he said, checking herself for wounds. It appeared that with the exception of a bruise or two, she was fine.
“There’s a stream just over that copse.” She pointed behind them.
He nodded. Fresh water would help to some degree but only time would heal his wounds. He could try to mend himself but he honestly didn’t think he had the strength to do it—not yet anyway.
She helped him up, shoulder supporting his arm, his weight hard to manage, his body feeling like gravity was more powerful than it should be.
“I don’t understand, Lance.” She grunted as she maneuvered him around the beast’s body. “I killed it. See?” She pointed to an apparent wound to the heart, a thick scar that showed all the aggression of the attack. “We burned its body. I don’t understand.”
Lance’s head swam, his mind whirling. “I don’t understand either. Nothing about this makes any sense.”
She got them situated on the bank of the stream, using the fresh cool water to clean the worst of the blood from him. He must have passed out for a bit because the next thing he knew, Ariana was banging through the trees toward him, weighed down with their weapons and backpacks. She dropped the pile next to him and he snorted when he saw she’d attached the beasts’ heads to each backpack.
“Trophies?”
She looked up from her search through the bag, eyebrow cocked as he nudged one of the heads with his boot.
“I’m not taking any chances. If those fuckers come back again, they’re going to have some trouble attacking with no heads.”
“Good point.” He winced as he shifted his back, sore from his wound and from falling asleep up against the rough tree bark.
“Your bandages have soaked through.” She pulled out one of her own shirts and began to rip it into strips.
“Kiss me.”
She looked up at him, her face screwed up like she’d just eaten a lemon whole. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Lance, this is not the time—”
“You got an energy boost the last time we kissed.”
She started to argue.
“Stop it, Ariana. You did, I know you did. What if you kiss me and your powers come back? Even just a little? If you can mend some of this, stop the bleeding then I could regain the strength to do the rest myself.” He shifted, pushing himself forward as best as he could. “I’m going to bleed to death if you don’t.” He attempted to wink but slipped back against the tree instead.
With a sigh, she dropped the shirt back to the bag and drew closer to him. She moved in, her body heat making him shiver. “That’s one hell of a pick-up line, Hunter,” she whispered as she pressed her lips to his.
He kissed her back, or attempted to anyway, his body too weak to do much. With the first jolt, as their lips touched, she moved in closer, hands slipping into his hair as she opened his mouth with her tongue and kissed him for real. It was magical. Really. Magic surged between them, flowing back and forth as they kissed.
When she pulled her mouth away, she was smiling. “It’s not back one hundred percent but it’s there. I can feel it.”
“Good. Now do what you’re good at.” He shifted his arm with a sigh and nodded.
Her smile widened. “You got it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
What If?
Lance was sleeping. I was thinking. My back against a tree trunk, my mind a whirl of what ifs.
He groaned a little in his sleep, shifted positions, his arm draping over my legs. I ran my fingers through his hair, reluctantly liking the feel of his head on my thighs. He stopped groaning and let out a sigh. He’d healed his own injuries for the most part.
I glanced down at him again. The wounds from the beasts still looking angry and red, were closed at least. I’d managed to stop the bleeding; he’d attempted to close them up. It had taken a shitload of energy for him to do and I wished that I could have helped him more. But his kiss only gave me so much and I’d tapped out of juice pretty quickly. He’d fallen into an exhausted sleep right on my lap and I couldn’t bear to move him.
Something was happening to me. I was feeling things. Like in my heart. For Lance.
Ugh.
And my powers weren’t back completely, not by a long shot, but our kiss had sparked them. Like a flint against stone. No fire had caught yet but there’d been smoke with that kiss. A lot of smoke. Fuck again.
What if Artemis was right about Lance, about my Hunter? What if…no, no, those were dangerous thoughts.
I glanced to the pile of our stuff, the eyes of my beast staring at me. I shivered under its glassy dead stare. My beast. How in the hell had that happened? I’d killed it. I’d burned it. I’d scattered the ashes. Five fucking years ago. It had been complete. No mistakes. And yet, there the bastard was. Glaring at me. I snarled back. Daring it to come for me again.
It didn’t make any sense and yet the truth of it was staring at me from a few feet away.
What if…?
I lifted my hand to my head, a headache blooming all of a sudden. What if someone was bringing the beasts back? Cat supposedly fell to the strike of her beast as well and now mine had ventured back from the dead. Lance had said that the wound he saw on the dead beast wasn’t a direct hit, but what if it had been? What if the beasts were being reincarnated with a deadly purpose? Wouldn’t Artemis have known? Wouldn’t she have told me that?
I shook my head and groaned against the pounding that train of thought caused. Too much to think about when all I had was exhaustion and incomplete information. I closed my eyes. Willed myself to sleep if only for a few minutes.
“Ariana.”
I jolted awake. Looked down at Lance. Still asleep. Scanned the trees, the stream. Nothing. No movement.
“Ariana, concentrate.”
The voice was
faint but urgent. I closed my eyes. “Greer?”
“Yes, Greer, who the fuck…oh never mind.” Her voice became somewhat clearer, words fading in and out as she spoke in a rush. I focused on pulling her through, clearing my mind, concentrating on what she was trying to say.
“We’ve been attacked. Where are you?”
I opened my eyes. Where the hell were we?
Frowning, I looked up. The stars were just starting to peek out, the sun having set not too long ago.
“Ariana? Answer me? Are you still at camp?”
I shook my head, refocusing on Greer. “No, we’re not, we’re in the forest, we were on our way to you. We were attacked as well.”
“Injuries?”
“Lance was slashed. He’s resting.”
“Can he walk? I need you here. Ella…”
Her words were garbled. “Ella what?” Dread pooled in my gut. If we’d lost another Huntress…
“Do you remember the camp we set up the last time we were here? The one with the giant oak?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I’d slept in that oak. I looked west, back toward the trail that I couldn’t see. Probably about a five-hour walk, more with Lance in the condition he was in. If I remembered exactly where it was.
“We need you here, Ariana. Ella is hurt, bad.”
“Is she the only one?”
“Yes, the others only have some superficial wounds. Ella is going to die without your help.”
I shook my head. She was asking the impossible. I had no power to heal, not really. “Greer, you shackled my powers, I can’t help her. You can though; use what you siphoned from me.”
“I can’t, I tried. The power I took from you is fading and I don’t know how to harness it properly. I’ll unshackle you. I’ll give you your powers back.”
Artemis…ugh, there was too much to tell her, too much to explain. “Greer…I…”
A flash of light ignited the darkening sky for a brief moment.
Valiant Heart Page 17