Raider

by Justine Davis

  Brander saw his gaze narrow sharply. “What exactly is that intended to mean?”

  “Only a wish that you, of all people, take something for yourself amid all this. Especially,” he added, “when it would also mean joy for someone else important to me.”

  He saw the flicker in the Raider’s eyes. In a lesser man, he would have labeled it yearning, but the Raider was not a lesser man, and he quashed it quickly.

  “There is no—”

  “—place for that in war. Yes, so you’ve said. And yet . . .”

  The Raider let out a sigh Brander knew he never would in front of anyone else. Except perhaps the very person they were discussing without acknowledging it.

  The Raider was staring down at the pieces of the weapon when he said grimly, “A joy likely to be so brief and come to a painful end is not something to wish on anyone.”

  “She long ago decided it would be worth any cost.”

  The Raider’s head snapped around and he found himself under icy scrutiny.

  “She is my cousin,” Brander said with a shrug, unintimidated by the stare that cowed many. “She tells me things.” A brief smile flitted across his face. “Often without meaning to.”

  The Raider still said nothing. Brander watched him for a moment before going on. “She suspects, you know.”

  To his surprise, the Raider winced. And Brander belatedly realized he’d never seen the man betray so much as in these few minutes. And that worried him. No one man could be expected to carry what he carried, on both fronts, forever.

  Even this warrior who had never wanted to be one had limits, and Brander was afraid he might have finally reached them.

  HE KNEW BRANDER was worried. If he was honest, he also knew it was not without reason.

  “You cannot go on endlessly, my friend,” Brander said. “Even the Raider needs respite.”

  Brander didn’t know the half of how weary he was, but there was still only one answer. “There is no time for that.”

  “You must take time,” his friend warned, “or your body will see to it. Strong as you are, you can only push so hard.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Of course. And it won’t be a problem if your body decides it’s had enough in the middle of whatever this big operation you’re planning is?”

  “I am fine,” he repeated with emphasis.

  But his second would not be dissuaded. “Look, the way Kye’s been working, you’ll have your map within the next day or two. Surely you can rest until then.”

  He let out a compressed breath. “You want me to rest while she works into the dawn hours?”

  And who ordered her to?

  “She’s tougher than either of us would like to admit,” Brander said.

  “She is tough enough,” he agreed, knowing it was true even as it warred with the urge to keep her safe, protected.

  “Yes,” Brander said, his tone suddenly very pointed. “She is tough enough for just about anything.”

  The Raider’s jaw tightened instinctively, but he knew the words were nothing less than the truth. He looked at the man who had stood by him through it all, from childhood through the devastation of his father’s assassination, his mother’s suicide, and all the wearying years since. And when he turned to go, he stopped him. “Brander.”

  His second turned back. He owed him this honesty, he thought. This, and much more.

  “She doesn’t suspect.”

  “But she—”

  “She knows.”

  Brander stared at him. Then he let out a long, low whistle. “You told her?”

  He stopped the words with a shake of his head. “Not yet. But she . . . guessed. I’ve stalled her. For the moment.”

  “It won’t last,” Brander warned him.

  “I know.”

  “You can trust her with this. She can keep a secret.” His mouth quirked upward. “I know this firsthand.”

  “I do not want her to have to. It is bad enough that Eirlys knows.”

  “I wish you luck then. You will need it, my friend.”

  “I know.”

  He headed for the door, then turned back again. “She is tough enough.”

  The Raider let out a compressed breath.

  And said for a third time, “I know.”

  Chapter 32

  SHE WOKE UP IN the Raider’s bed.

  Kye froze in place, afraid to move. Afraid to even open her eyes, although she sensed she was alone there.

  She risked just a peek. She had her back to the room, her gaze registering only the rough unevenness of the cave wall. She closed her eyes again, trying to think. Whatever sleep she’d gotten hadn’t been enough, and the dull ache behind her forehead declared the fact.

  The last thing she remembered was finishing the map. She’d been pushing hard after he’d told her to merely sketch the southwest quadrant and focus on the rest. When he had told her he needed it by week’s end, she’d blinked, swallowed, and dove in. She’d lived in the ruin for that week, leaving only for an occasional break to give muscles weary of bending over the table something else to do. She’d eaten with the Sentinels who made their home here, those who had been recognized and posted as wanted by the Coalition, and to their credit, they did not pester her with questions she couldn’t answer.

  She’d also slept in the main quarters. Apparently, until now.

  She did a silent, swift inventory of her body, feeling nothing other than a lessening of exhaustion. But she couldn’t remember anything besides working on that blessed map.

  Yet here she was.

  If he took me to his bed and I cannot remember it . . .

  If he took me and I cannot remember it . . .

  She had no words for the feeling that flooded her then.

  “Welcome back.”

  She jerked upright. Some of the weary fog cleared and she realized then she was still fully dressed. Felt a fool for even thinking that, of all men, the Raider might have weakened.

  The Raider.

  Drake.

  “I was becoming concerned. You pushed yourself too hard.”

  She turned at last to face him. He was sitting in one of the rough-hewn chairs from the table, but he had moved it next to the bed. It looked for all the world as if he’d been there, watching her sleep. And he wore the oddest expression, one she couldn’t quite pin down.

  “How did I get here?”

  His mouth quirked. “I put you there, after I came in and found you face down on your own map.”

  “You mean your map.” The words were merely a defense against the sensations rippling through her at the thought that he had picked her up and carried her to his bed, and she had slept through it.

  And she could tell she was still groggy, because her brain was having to remind her this was Drake. So completely did he become the Raider that even without the helmet, her first instinct was to think of him as such.

  Without the helmet.

  Finally, she was jolted completely awake. And realized belatedly that sometime, while she’d slept, he’d given in. And all the anger she’d felt when he’d denied what to her was now obvious drained away. He was letting her see him without half of his disguise. He even sat now with the unmarred half of his face visible to her, making her wonder how she had gone so long without realizing. And his voice. His voice was no longer that rough, damaged-sounding thing. It was Drake’s.

  He had, without saying a word, admitted she was right, given her the truth.

  Drake Davorin was the Raider.

  Drake Davorin could not more thoroughly appear a coward if he tried.

  Her own thought came back to her in a rush, making her wonder if on some level she had realized the truth, that indeed he was trying.

  But n
o longer with her.

  She would give much to know why he’d changed his mind. What thought process had he gone through, while she lay here sleeping, in his bed? What had brought him to the point of admitting she was right, of letting her see behind the masquerade to what she already knew was true?

  She wanted badly to ask, but was afraid to disrupt what suddenly seemed to be a very intimate moment. And wary of that expression. Seeing that one side of his face made it so much easier, although she still couldn’t categorize this one.

  She supposed it was too much of a risk when he was here to remove whatever kind of mask the scars were. And even now, without the helmet to further distract, they looked utterly real. The artist in her was fascinated.

  “The scars. How?”

  He blinked, as if of all the questions she could have asked, he hadn’t expected that one. But then he smiled. Her breath nearly stopped.

  “You, actually. Indirectly, anyway.”

  It was her turn to blink. “Me?”

  “The toy blazers you made for the twins.”

  She frowned. That had been over three years ago, for their ninth birthday.

  Her breath caught anew. Three years ago. Shortly before the rise of the Raider. But what did her admittedly fantastical renderings of the mythical, fire-breathing and scaled creatures have to do with anything?

  And then the memory blasted into her mind, Drake, asking how she’d made them, and about the materials, in a detail that had surprised her.

  “Flexion,” she breathed. “They’re made of flexion.”

  He nodded. “You said the amount of fluid determined the consistency. Too much and they were too soft to stand on their own, too little and they were brittle. It took some experimenting to get the texture and flexibility right, and then the design, but . . .”

  She stared at the twisted mass, marveling now that she knew, at how perfectly they resembled what they were supposed to be.

  “A mold?” she guessed.

  “Yes.” His mouth quirked again. “I didn’t know how long they would last, so I wanted more than one. And I didn’t want them to be changing, not that anybody ever looks that closely. They’re usually repelled at the sight.”

  “Which is exactly what you counted on,” she said.

  He shrugged. “It’s the nature of people.”

  “Whatever made you think of it?”

  He grinned then. And even with the mask in place it was potent, powerful thing. “Nyx. What he said when you gave his to him, and he was so excited.”

  She remembered the boy squealing with delight and thanking her profusely, enough that it had been worth all the effort to get them just right, but that was all. “What?”

  “He said, ‘A blazer could melt your face off.’”

  Her gaze shot back to the side of his face, to the mask. And despite herself, she laughed. Laughed at the ingenuity, the sheer brilliance of it.

  As if her laughter had been some sort of signal, he said in an entirely different, solemn tone, “I’m sorry, Kye.” It took her a second to make the jump, to realize what he was apologizing for. “It was the only way.”

  She’d worked through all this in the hours she’d sat in the unrelieved darkness of her haven, contemplating in her mind the drawings that had led her to the truth. She’d knew why he’d done it, had even seen the sense of it. It stung that he hadn’t trusted her, but she understood. So she brushed away his words with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head.

  “You’re not angry?” He looked puzzled.

  “Only at myself. For taking so long to realize.”

  His mouth twisted ruefully. “You took less time than I’d hoped.” Her gaze narrowed. “You have an artist’s eye,” he said. “I knew it would happen.”

  She considered that. And jumped right to the core of it, for her. “Then why didn’t you just tell me?”

  He sighed. “For your own good.”

  “What I don’t know, I can’t be forced to tell?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t trust me to be able to hold your secret?”

  His feet hit the floor then, and he left the chair in a barely controlled surge of motion. “I wouldn’t trust anyone to hold out under Coalition torture. Including myself.”

  He turned on his heel, strode halfway across the room, then stopped, with his back to her.

  “Besides,” he said harshly, “they have methods, drugs, the collars . . . they would learn what you knew, and leave only an empty shell behind. I could not bear that.”

  The emotion that had crept into his voice at the end sent a shiver through her. “Then why admit it now? Why not keep denying it?”

  He turned back then. He seemed to be fighting his own words. And she saw in his face that same expression she hadn’t been able to pin down.

  “Relief,” he finally said, putting the name to it. “The relief of no longer lying to the one person I least wanted to lie to.”

  Her lips parted for air that was suddenly harder to get as she stood up herself. For relief was what she herself was filling up with. Not just that she knew the truth, but that the reason behind her tangled feelings, her inability to let go of Drake while at the same time admitting she loved the Raider was finally clear. She had not been able to separate the two because they were one and the same.

  “You—”

  “And selfishness,” he added.

  She scoffed. “You? You are more selfless than any man I’ve ever known.”

  “Not selfless enough—or strong enough—to be able to swallow the way you looked at me when you . . . didn’t know. I could live with it from Eirlys, but not you.”

  Remorse flooded her. Her hand shot to her mouth, for fear she would cry out. It left her voice a strangled whisper. “Eos, I was so awful to you.”

  He shook his head. “No more than I deserved, given what you knew.”

  She had to blink away the sudden moisture in her eyes, as if her regret had taken a physical form. “How do you stand it?” she asked, still in that choked whisper.

  “I knew how it would be before I ever started. I worked hard to make it that way. Eirlys’s anger told me it was effective. And I counted every slur, every disgusted look, as a sign of success.” He let out a long, compressed breath. “Except with you. When you would look at me with such disappointment and despair, I . . .”

  His voice trailed away, and he gave a weary shake of his head. She tried not to think of all the times she’d done exactly as he described, all the times she’d railed at him for being a coward or worse, and all the time he was the Raider, risking his life, his very soul, to do exactly what she’d berated him for not doing. In that moment, she hated herself, and struggled to think of something else, anything else. And it struck her that his odd hunting habits had clearly been as much excuse for his coming and going as they were for actual food supply.

  It was then that another thought hit her.

  “Eirlys. She knows now.”

  He let out a breath. “Just a few days ago.”

  “That’s why she—” She broke off when she realized she’d been about to say his sister had quit disparaging him, and had no longer wanted her agreement in that. He looked away, as if he somehow knew what she hadn’t said. “How did she figure it out?” she asked hastily.

  He grimaced. “She sent away the twins on her night with them and followed me. And then she found the set of these—” he gestured at the scars “—that I keep at home, just in case. I should have realized she’d know my hiding place.”

  “Your sister is very smart.”

  “Too smart, on occasion.”

  “Who else knows?” she asked.

  He met her gaze then. “Brander. He’s always known. The Raider was practically his idea.”

  “I
guessed that.”

  “And he helped with the mask, came up with the adhesive that holds it in place.” He grimaced. “My skin did not appreciate his early efforts, but now it leaves no sign if I remove it properly.”

  She remembered suddenly that time when he claimed to have run afoul of a fire plant, causing the fierce reddening of his face.

  “He is ever clever that way. Who else?”

  “No one.”

  She blinked. “No one? Not even Pryl, or the Harkins? Mahko?”

  He shook his head. “They may suspect, but know, from me? Only Brander, and my sister. And you.”

  And that suddenly what had seemed a slight became instead an honor. But she needed one more thing from him. The admission she had thought never, ever to receive.

  “Why did you say telling me was selfish?”

  He didn’t even pretend to misunderstand. And it was the Raider who answered her. “Because it was. In the midst of chaos and destruction, with the evil of the Coalition surrounding us, when my mind and heart should be on nothing except the fight, I was taking something for myself. Taking the one thing that would make it all easier, but only for me.”

  “Not just for you,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Don’t you see the burden I’ve put on you? For this can only work if no one knows. And it must work. Eirlys, and the twins, if the Coalition ever found out, they would—”

  He stopped words that were clearly too painful to even speak. And she couldn’t help herself. Despite how un-warrior like it was, despite that they were in the heart of the rebellion, she ran to him. She threw her arms around him, as she had once done with Drake without thought. She felt his split-second of hesitation, but then his arms came around her and pulled her even closer. She felt as much as heard his shuddering breath and knew without doubt that he had missed this, longed for it, as much as she had.

  “They will not find out,” she promised fervently.

  “You can act no differently,” he warned. “You must treat . . . the taproom keeper as you always have.”

  “Horribly, you mean,” she said, remorse surging again.

  “And publicly,” he said. “Although not so much that they suspect you’re one of us.”