Counting Shadows (Duplicity)

by Olivia Rivers

  He just keeps tracing the lines of the book. “Because Jay trusted you. So I should, too.”

  “What happened to him?” I whisper. “What happened to Ashe? Was he disgraced, too?”

  Lor’s hand abruptly freezes. “Disgraced? No. No, of course not. Jay could never be disgraced.” His eyes flick up to meet mine, and he grits his jaw. It’s a challenge; he wants me to disagree with him.

  So I don’t. I just nod and say, “You’re right. It was wrong of me to assume that.”

  He grinds his teeth, his jaw working back and forth. Then, after a long moment, he nods. “Yeah. It was. What happened to Jay is completely different than what happened to Asair. Jay was stolen away. Our enemies knew of the legend, and they were afraid it would come true. So they kidnapped Jay when he was twelve to make sure that never happened.”

  I think of the first day I met Ashe, of the day the bounty hunter presented him to my father in court. The bounty hunter had worn a large grin as he’d pushed Ashe forward, and so had my father. I’d always wondered why a bewildered little boy, completely mute and beaten half to death, would make the both of them so happy.

  Now I knew. Ashe was the ultimate prize. He was Prince Jaylor, their future worst enemy—but not anymore.

  “So what about you? Why aren’t you back with your people?” I decide not to voice the dozens of other questions running through my mind: If he was so powerful, why had he let Chagra nearly kill him? Was he really the twin from the prophecy? And, the question that was nagging at the back of my head, slowly working its way forward: Could I trust him?

  “I’m not going to talk about that now,” Lor says. “It’s kind of a touchy subject.”

  The ocean churns at the base of the cliff, dashing against rocks and sending spray high into the air. Fog surrounds me, but it’s not thick enough to hide the figure in front of me. He stands at the edge of the cliff, his gaze rapidly flicking from me to the cliff-face behind him. His red eyes settle back on me, and he stumbles back a step. Rocks crumble off the ledge, tumbling into the ocean below.

  “Going somewhere?” I ask.

  “You’re not going to actually kill me.” He swallows hard. “You can’t.”

  I smile and take another step toward him, forcing him closer to the ledge. “But that’s where you’re wrong, Angel. I was created to kill you.”

  I open my eyes, gasping. My heart thuds in my chest, a frantic rhythm too fast to count. I feel numb, like the vision leeched all the feeling out of me.

  “Are you okay?” Lor asks.

  “Fine,” I gasp.

  “You zoned out again.”

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  I press a hand to my forehead and squeeze my eyes shut. What had the book said about the Unknown? No, no, no. That isn’t possible. I’m not going there.

  “Lor,” I whisper. “Why does the book refer to the Unknown as a female?”

  Okay, so maybe I am going there.

  Lor shrugs. “I don’t know. That’s one of those things that’s been lost over the years. Maybe the Unknown was a war ship? Or an enemy country? There’s a lot of dangerous things that people refer to as being female.”

  “But she’s not an actual person… right?”

  Lor scoffs. “Of course not. One woman couldn’t kill two powerful Angels.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Just… I’m glad that you’re probably safe.”

  He frowns at me, like he isn’t quite sure what I mean. “Yeah, I guess. Actually, I don’t think the Unknown even exists. I think it’s just a made-up part of the legend, you know, to make it sound more exciting.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. I’ve never been threatened by anyone but my own people.”

  It’s my turn to frown. “You were—?”

  He snatches the book and jumps off the bed, cutting me off. “Well, I’ll leave you alone now.”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  He glances to me, and then to the vambrace around his wrist. His gaze changes to a glare. “I want to go.”

  “I’m sorry.” It’s the third time I’ve apologized, and I want to kick myself.

  “Stop looking for Asair,” he says, ignoring me. “You’ll get yourself killed.” He strides out of the room, shoulders stiff.

  I sigh and watch him retreat. Light filters in through the bedroom windows, turning the stone floor a reddish color, and I can’t help but to think of Lor’s eyes.

  And the eyes of the men from my visions.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Lor’s footsteps retreat, and I press my face into my pillow.

  “It’s not possible.”

  I close my eyes and repeat the words to myself, seven, eight, nine times.

  “It’s not possible.”

  Ten.

  “It’s not possible.”

  Eleven.

  There’s a pause as my scrambling mind forgets the next number. I take a shuddering breath, and suddenly remember. Twelve. The next number is twelve. I open my mouth to repeat it again, but something else comes out, so quiet I’m not sure if I really said it.

  “I killed them.”

  PART THREE

  TWENTY-TWO

  Three days pass. Or at least I think it’s three days. Farren never comes to visit, and I walk around in a daze, absently filling my days with reading and people-watching from the balcony. I try to distract myself by sketching, but my drawings all turn out dark and misshaped, and I quickly give up.

  Lor slowly grows furious as he can’t get the vambrace off, and finds me too dazed to help him. He demands answers about the vambrace: Would it really kill him if he took it off? Yes. But how can the magic in the vambraces have lasted for centuries? I don’t know. But you’re sure it can really kill? Yes. After that, I stop answering his questions and retreat into silence.

  By the third day, he glares at me every time I pass him, and I have to make an effort to feel regret. To feel anything. I know I should ask more questions about Asair, but I’m too numb to even try. I wouldn’t be able to hear what he said, anyway. The only words in my head is what Lor told me a few days ago:

  ‘I don’t think the Unknown even exists.’

  He has to be right. I tell myself that over and over again, until the words start to bleed together and sound like gibberish.

  “You’ve been staring at that book for two hours,” Lor says, breaking into my thoughts. He’s resting on the couch across the room, his muscular frame taking up every inch of it. He doesn’t look at me as he speaks.

  “Is that a problem?” I sit in the floral-pattern chair, close to the fireplace. The fire isn’t really necessary, since it’s late morning, but I feel cold all over and can’t seem to get close enough to the flames.

  “Okay, let me rephrase that. You’ve been staring at the same page for two hours.”

  I glance down at my book—it’s about gardening, the farthest subject from mythology I could think of—and examine the page it’s open to. I don’t recognize any of the words, but I also can’t remember turning the page recently.

  He sighs. “What’s going on, princess?”

  “Who says anything is going on?”

  “What? Are you trying to tell me that you regularly spend two hours reading one page?”

  I peer over the book and glare at him. He meets it with his own glare, the one that hasn’t left his expression for the past three days.

  “Why do you care if anything is wrong?” I ask.

  A small smirk pulls at the corner of his lip. “I never said anything was wrong. But you just did.”

  I curse, not even bothering to keep quiet. I should have seen that one coming.

  “You seem disturbed,” he says.

  “That’s not the most flattering adjective you could have used,” I grumble.

  “Why would I want to flatter you?”

  His words break through the numbness and leave a small prick of pain. I shake my head, trying to get rid of it
, knowing there’s no reason I should care what he thinks about me.

  There’s an awkward silence, and then Lor says, “Look, I just want to know what’s going on with you. You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  I laugh a little without meaning to. Ghosts don’t compare to what I see every time I catch my own reflection.

  A monster.

  A killer.

  “It’s nothing,” I mumble. “Really.”

  Lor tilts his head to the side and softens his gaze into a searching stare. “Do you know that you have a tell?”

  “What?”

  “You have a tell. When you’re lying, I mean. You say ‘really’.”

  I shrug and try not to show my surprise. Ashe pointed that out to me a couple years ago, but I’m not sure how Lor picked up on it so quickly.

  “What’s your point?”

  “You’re lying to me. And I don’t like lies, either.”

  “You could’ve fooled me,” I snap.

  “Look, I already apologized for lying to you. And I’ve already more than made up for it by telling you things you probably should never know. So I deserve an answer. What’s wrong?”

  I let my head fall back. My long bangs flop into my face, and I don’t bother to brush them away. I can see my hair in the corner of my eye, so dark it almost gleams blue. ‘Like a raven,’ Ashe once said. I remember swatting him for that, and reminding him that ravens are a symbol of death in Irrador. He’d teasingly called me “raven” after, just trying to irk me. But soon after that, he started calling me “sparrowhawk”. His little sparrowhawk. He’d said I was just like one: small, but fierce and beautiful. The nickname always made me smile.

  I shouldn’t have argued when he called me “raven”. Because Ashe was right the first time.

  I open my mouth to tell Lor everything, to admit to the monster I am. But my throat constricts and my mouth dries out, and I can’t say anything.

  “I’m going to go lay down in my room,” I say instead. My voice is raspy and high instead of the nonchalant tone I was aiming for.

  Lor scoffs and shakes his head. “Fine. Run away, if you have to. That tactic seems to treat you well.”

  “I’m not running.”

  “What do you think you’ve been doing, sweetheart? Chasing after Asair? Taking me as your Guardian?”

  I stand from my seat, fists clenched. “I’m trying to avenge your brother’s death!”

  Lor laughs, the sound derisive and cutting. “No, you’re not. You’re running from his death.”

  “You don’t know me,” I hiss.

  “You’re right, I don’t. But I know running when I see it. You don’t want to admit that my brother is dead, so you’re putting on this little revenge gimmick to distract yourself.”

  “Gimmick?” I repeat, my voice a snarl.

  “You wouldn’t really kill Asair, not even if he was standing right in front of you. You’re the one who’s going to die when you find him. You don’t have it in you to kill.”

  I close my eyes, trying to ignore Lor’s biting words. All it does is make me focus on the simmering rage in my gut. I gasp in a deep breath, taking the anger in, absorbing it. “But that’s where you’re wrong,” I whisper.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Two days after our fight, Lor’s wound is nearly healed, and he’s growing restless. I wish I could say the same. It takes all my effort to just get out of bed in the morning, and my head constantly aches with swirling thoughts.

  Lor spends most of the morning pacing up and down the hallway, a book in one hand, and a half-eaten apple in the other. He keeps tossing the apple high into the air, catching at it, nibbling a little bite off, and then tossing it again. All the time, his eyes stay focused on the book, which he reads as he paces.

  I watch Lor from my chair in the sitting room, unsure how he can be related to Ashe. Lor passes me again in a flurry of footsteps and soft mutterings as he quietly reads the book out-loud. Ashe would never act in such a way; he’d read his book like a civilized person.

  I take a deep breath and try to focus on my own book in front of me. This one is about agriculture, and the words slip away from me just as fast as they did the other day. And Lor isn’t helping. With his pacing, and his apple thunk-thunk-thunk-ing into his palm, it’s nearly impossible to focus.

  My thoughts slip away from the words in front of me and wander back to Ashe and his books. He’d always loved my library. Nearly every morning, I’d wake to find him perched on the edge of the balcony with a book in his hand. His legs would swing back and forth in an unmeasured rhythm, and every once in a while, he’d shift to the right to follow the rays of the rising sun. He’d always looked happiest then.

  “I need to get out of here,” Lor says, breaking into my thoughts.

  I ignore him and flip to the next page.

  “Did you hear me?” Lor strides over to the chair and halts right in front of me. “I need to get out of this place. Now. Before I go insane.”

  I peek over the edge of my book to look at him. He’s a different man than the Lor I first encountered. He no longer looks unkempt, but instead… princely. It’s really the only word suitable for him.

  He’s clean now, and dressed in proper clothes: brown breeches and a sage-green tunic. It’s the attire of a Guardian, and Lor looks the part. He stands tall—even taller than I first thought—and his shoulders are straight and proud. He’s cut his hair so it’s barely an inch long, and even though only lowly foot-soldiers usually wear their hair like that, he manages to pull off the look.

  And Lor is building back the muscle he lost in prison. His wound is almost completely healed—something I can’t explain, and something he doesn’t want to. But he’s healthy enough to spend most of the past few days holed up in one of my spare rooms, doing push-ups and sit-ups. As he works out, he sometimes sings tuneless songs under his breath. His cadence is as terrible as Ashe’s, but the words sound nice. They’re short and eloquently simple, and I guess they’re part of his native tongue.

  I wait a moment longer before replying, trying to straighten out my thoughts. “You can’t leave my chambers. Father says I’m supposed to stay in here until my mind is more rested.” Which basically means he’s grounding me like a toddler, but I keep that part to myself.

  Lor waves his hand, as if flicking away my words. “I’m not going to be kept holed up in some girl’s room just because you’re being stubborn.”

  I flip the page of my book and read the first sentence, hoping it will make me look calm. “I’m a princess,” I say. “Not ‘some girl’. My chambers are quite nice, and you should be grateful that I’m sharing them with you.”

  “I don’t have any choice but to share them,” Lor snaps. “You picked me as your Guardian. Remember? I’m your eternal partner, and all that crap.”

  “I could have left you to be eaten,” I say.

  He scoffs. “Don’t try to sound charitable, sweetheart. The only reason you saved me is because of my tattoo.”

  I peek over the page again and raise my eyebrows. “I still could have left you.”

  Lor grunts and crosses his arms, turning away from me. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there, book in one hand, apple core in the other, and stares out the window. After a moment, he begins tapping his foot in a terribly uneven rhythm.

  “Are you throwing a tantrum?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “I think you are. You’re a sore loser.”

  He taps his foot a little faster.

  “It’s nothing really to be ashamed of,” I say, and turn back to my book. “Some of my cousins were still throwing hissy-fits at your age. It comes along with the territory of being royalty. You always want to win, and you hate to lose.”

  “You sound like you’ve been reading my uncle’s psychology theories,” Lor mutters.

  “Your uncle’s what?”

  He sighs. Then he shakes his head and mutters something under his breath, in that strange, beautiful language of his. “
I keep forgetting I’m in an undeveloped land.” He turns back to me and spreads his arms wide, in a flourishing gesture. “Psychology. It’s the science of the mind. How it thinks, how it works, how it memorizes. On a basic level, how it functions.”

  I slowly shake my head. “You must have a very strange uncle.”

  Lor grins that crooked smile of his. He can’t seem to help from doing it, even when he’s upset. “He is kind of strange. Brilliant, but strange.”

  “Tell me more about your family,” I say. “Are they all involved in the sciences?”

  Lor smirks. “Nice try, but you’re not going to distract me. I still need out of this place. Preferably soon. Like right now.”

  I close my book, letting it snap shut with a thump and a waft of old-paper smell. “Make me a promise. I’ll take you out of here, but you have to tell me more about your family.”

  Lor grins and nods.

  I wave a hand toward the library. “All right, fine. We can sneak out the back way. But…”

  Lor doesn’t hear me trail off. He just punches the air, gives a little whoop, and jogs toward the library door. Apparently, he wasn’t exaggerating when he said ‘right now’.

  I finish my sentence in my head. ‘But I still need you.’ There’s a very good reason I haven’t let Lor leave my chambers. It’d be so easy for him to try to escape and get struck down by the Guardian vambrace. And it’d be very hard for me to try to find Asair if Lor dies.

  If Lor tries to escape, I’ll stop him, no matter what it takes.

  We are eternally bound, after all.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  My panting breaths echo in the passage. I turn and shoot Lor a small glare, and he smirks back, seeming to read my mind: It’s not fair that this walk isn’t winding him at all.

  “You know,” I growl, “when you said you wanted to get ‘out’, I was expecting a visit downstairs to see Farren, or something like that.”