Counting Shadows (Duplicity)

by Olivia Rivers

  “Gryphons?”

  He rolls his eyes and mutters something else under his breath. Then he rubs his temples, like he’s preparing to explain something to a stubborn toddler. “Yes, gryphons. You know what I’m talking about… Don’t you?”

  I shake my head, and he groans.

  “Your people are so uncivilized,” he grumbles.

  “Civilized or not, you’re stuck with us for the moment,” I say. “And these—“ I gesture to the horses around us, “—are what we use for travel. So chose one, and I’ll have Keth saddle him.”

  Lor makes that little hum-growl noise. “At least you know how to use saddles.” He pushes past me and strides down the aisle with a stiff walk, recoiling when one of the horses whinnies.

  I stare after him, shaking my head. He’s going to have to be more careful to hide displays that show he’s a foreigner. If he’s going to survive in Irrador, he’ll have to conceal his Angel side.

  I brush a stray strand of hair from my face, and do my best to also brush away the thought. Now isn’t the time for it; I need to concentrate on keeping Lor from having a full-on panic attack. Besides, word has already spread around that he’s an Angel, and I don’t think his actions could do much more harm. Father already wants him dead, and I’m already disgraced. I don’t see how he could do much more damage.

  “I’ll ride this one,” Lor calls from down the aisle.

  Lifting my skirts a little, I walk toward him. I take a take breath and focus on exhaling to keep myself from cursing the person who came up with the most recent women’s fashion. All the royal women are expected to wear long dresses with poofy skirts and flowing fabrics. They might as well have put a ball and chain around all our ankles.

  As I reach Lor’s side, my stomach churns, and my deep breath turns into a hiccup. No. Lor can’t choose this horse. Any horse but this horse.

  “He’s pretty,” Lor says. He peers closer at the pure-black mare and frowns. “He is… Isn’t he?”

  “She,” I snap. “Em is a girl. She’s gorgeous, and you can’t ride her.”

  Lor reaches his hand out to pet the mare. But he looks more like he’s about to poke her, and I swat his hand away. Lor yelps and recoils. He shakes out his hand, as if I’ve actually hurt him, and then sticks it under his other arm. I pet Em’s neck the correct way, and pretend not to notice as Lor glares at me.

  “What is with you?” Lor demands. “First you tell me to choose a horse, and then you beat me when I just do what I’m told.”

  I roll my eyes. “Don’t be overly-dramatic.”

  “I want to ride this one,” he says, and he makes a hesitant gesture toward Em. “Is there something terribly wrong with that?”

  “Yes,” I snap. “She’s vicious. She’ll buck you off and trample you if you even try to ride her.”

  I wait for Lor to recoil again, but he just shoots me a suspicious look. He glances to Em, and then back to me. “She doesn’t seem all that vicious to me.”

  “She is,” I insist weakly. “She’ll kill you.”

  Lor reaches out presses his broad palm against Em’s forehead. The mare doesn’t react, other than to toss her head a little. “This was Jay’s mare,” he murmurs. “Wasn’t she?”

  I look away. I just can’t… watch. Watch as Lor presses his hand against the mare in the same place Ashe always did. Watch as he smiles a little, hesitantly admiring Em with the same uncertainty as Ashe. Watch as Lor steps in and tries to replace my Guardian. My best friend, the Angel I loved.

  “No,” I lie.

  In the back of my mind, I remember what Ashe once said about this mare when I asked why he liked the horse so much: “She has a spirit like yours, my little sparrowhawk,” he’d explained to me. “She’s strong-willed, but kind at heart. How could I not love her?”

  I blink away tears as Lor continues stroking the mare’s neck. “She was Jay’s,” he says. “I know it.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I know a lot of things, sweetheart. And I know that you’re acting weird, and the only times I’ve seen you act weird are when we discuss Jay.” He pats Em and repeats, “This was his mare.”

  I grit my jaw and take a deep breath. In and out. Then I do it another time, filling my lungs and releasing the air. For once, it does nothing to calm me.

  “You cannot ride her,” I snarl. “She belongs to Ashe.”

  Lor grins, and I clench my hand to keep from slapping him. I don’t care if he’s a prince, or a figure from a prophecy. He’s my Guardian now. And, if he’s so determined to replace Ashe, he may as well at least act a little like his twin.

  Lor makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, motioning to all the horses in the stables. “I thought your royalty could come down and ride any one of these things they wanted? You did say that no one actually owns a particular horse, didn’t you?”

  I grit my teeth until my jaw aches. I had said that, and I’d been telling the truth. All the horses in here are strictly reserved for the royalty living in the castle. But few of us actually owned any one horse, except for Father.

  “So,” Lor continues, taking my silence as confirmation, “unless you spend a lot of time down here telling other people this poor mare is vicious…” He raises an eyebrow and pats Em again, as if needing to prove to me that my own words are a lie. “Then I’d guess that you don’t care about her being ridden. You just care about me being the one to ride her.”

  I wait for some retort to rush out of my mouth, but nothing comes. Lor seems to steal that ability from me. “You can’t ride her,” I whisper. “End of story. Now find another horse.”

  Lor smirks at me and winks. “As you wish, sweetheart.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I’ve heard stories of beaches that are comfortable to walk across with bare feet. I’m not sure if shores like those are real, but if they are, they exist far from Irrador.

  The sand of Irrador is dark and rough and the consistency of fine gravel. Sharp bits of white shells stick out among the black, and it looks like someone scattered salt and pepper all across the beach.

  Tamal’s hooves strike the sand in a leisurely, steady rhythm. Behind me, Lor curses at his horse—a stallion, of course; it’s only suiting for his ego. I turn in my saddle and give him an exasperated look, but Lor doesn’t notice. He’s too busy trying to untangle his reins, which he’s somehow gotten into a knot.

  “Primitive,” he spits. “Your people are primitive.”

  I scoff and face forward again. “In our culture, men are expected to be able to ride by the time they’re four years old.” I wave a hand at him, gesturing to him and his general inadequacy. “That makes you the primitive one.”

  “I know how to ride,” Lor snaps. “Just not in such a ridiculous method and on such fragile beasts. Do you realize how helpless your steeds are? Do you? And yet you base entire units of your army on these things. It makes you utterly primitive.”

  I can’t help but to smile a little at the way Lor’s speech is slowly becoming more formal, and how his accent grows stronger with each word. It seems instinctual for him to revert to princely mannerisms when he’s upset. “You’re awfully worked up about my country’s primitiveness, for a man who doesn’t understand the concept of wearing a shirt.”

  This has led to a bit of tension between us in the past few days. Lor claims that it itches when fabric comes in contact with the scars on his back, and that he shouldn’t have to wear any type of upper-body clothing. Period. End of conversation. He won’t see it any other way.

  And I won’t have my Guardian walking around half-naked. I keep trying to tell myself that it’s just inappropriate, or that it’s the scars on his back that are bothering me. But, in reality, it’s his tattoo that’s so unsettling.

  Every time I look at Lor’s tattoo, I see Ashe. It’s as if he never died, as if he’s right there in front of me. Then Lor makes some rude comment, or smiles needlessly, or does something else Ashe would never have done. And I realize that I’l
l never see Ashe again, and that Lor’s presence is nothing but self-inflicted torture. Necessary torture. But still torture.

  Lor grumbles some excuse for his lack of shirt, which he took off as soon as we were out of sight from the stables. The scars on his back clearly show, and I mentally keep kicking at myself for staring at them. I can’t help but wonder if he lost his ability to feel pain before or after his wings were torn off.

  Lor jerks at his stallion’s reins a couple times. He doesn’t seem to realize that pulling backward is a signal to stop, and he kicks at the horse’s flanks as the stallion tries to slow down.

  “You’re lucky you picked the only stallion in the stables about to drop dead from old age,” I call back to him. He’s rapidly falling behind me, and I have to raise my voice more than before. “Otherwise, he’d have trampled you to death by now. You can’t just kick horses like that.”

  “What is it with you threatening me with trampling deaths?” Lor calls back. He heaves a frustrated sigh and drops the reins, throwing his hands up like he doesn’t even want to touch them anymore. The stallion shakes his head back and forth, feeling the freedom Lor has just given him. Then he lowers his neck and nibbles at something in the sand.

  I guide Tamal in a half-circle and urge him to canter back toward Lor. Lor’s eyes grow wide at our fast approach, and he eyes my hands on the reins.

  “Relax.” I pull Tamal to a halt just a couple feet away from Lor’s stallion. It’s much closer than I need to be, and I’m rewarded when Lor swallows hard and shudders. “I’m not going to trample you,” I say. “Unlike you, I know how to ride a horse.”

  Lor clears his throat, although the sound is weak. “Why do you ride differently from the other women here?” he asks. “They all ride like they’re getting ready to jump off at any moment.” He looks down at his horse and makes a face. “Which is actually pretty smart.”

  I roll my eyes and reach over to snatch Lor’s reins. We’ve made it to the beach, and no one is here to see us. I can guide Lor now, without anyone getting upset about a ‘lady’ doing a man’s duty.

  “It’s called riding side-saddle,” I reply as I tie Lor’s reins to the horn of my saddle. I give them a tug, ensuring they’re secure, and then nudge my horse forward. “It’s custom for women to ride like that. And it’s horribly uncomfortable, ridiculous, and even dangerous.”

  Lor just nods his head, as if this doesn’t surprise him. “That sounds like the kind of custom your people would have.”

  I glare at him, but I can’t bother myself with a retort. Because he’s right; my country’s customs do tend to be uncomfortable, ridiculous, and even dangerous. Our eternal Guardians, and poofy dresses, and Matches make us… different. But somehow I’m convinced it’s a good different. The kind that feels familiar. The kind I wouldn’t like to see end anytime soon.

  I shudder, my thoughts drifting to Shale. And to my choice.

  “Where are we going?” Lor asks when I don’t respond. He’s frowning down at his stallion, and trying to steer him by repeatedly kicking his flanks. The poor animal has figured out that ignoring Lor is the best option, and plods along after Tamal.

  “You wanted to get out.” I make a broad gesture with my hand to our surroundings. The salt-and-pepper sand. The wispy clouds overhead that block out the sun. The pounding surf just yards away. “So we’re out.”

  Lor makes that little grunting noise in the back of his throat. I can hear the displeasure in it, and I know that his version of ‘getting out’ includes something a little more exiting. Or at least something that doesn’t involve horses.

  Our mounts trudge along down the beach, their footsteps creating soft sucking sounds in the damp sand. We both allow silence to overtake our feeble attempt at a conversation. Lor is brooding, I can tell. As cocky as he tries to appear, he’s upset about the whole situation. He doesn’t like being trapped as my Guardian.

  He continues to glare at the vambrace around his forearm. He despises it, and I don’t have to ask to know. It’s what binds him to me, what keeps him from running away.

  “I’m still not convinced the vambrace’s magic is real,” he’d told me the other day.

  “Why?”

  “Human magic doesn’t last that long,” Lor said. He tapped the vambrace. “That spell probably faded from this thing centuries ago. If it ever existed.”

  I’d raised an eyebrow at him. “You want to test that theory?” And that shut him up.

  I sigh and shake away the memory. It’s strange to think that he should be trapped by a simple piece of leather. Him, a prince. Royalty. Part of a prophecy. And yet here he is, trapped as a Guardian to a disgraced princess. It’s not fair.

  But life’s not fair.

  We approach the end of the beach, where a cliff-face interrupts the sand and juts out into the ocean. Our horses slow and then stop. No one moves. At first the only sound is the heavy breaths of my horse, and the slight wheezing of Lor’s aging stallion. But then others begin to filter in. The calls of seagulls, and waves carrying their cries out to sea. Sand skittering along the shoreline, driven by the wind. Those sounds have become so steady and monotonous, I have to focus to hear them. But, when I do, they create something natural and harmonious.

  “It’s pretty out here,” Lor says. I can tell by his hushed tone that he doesn’t want to interrupt the sounds, but he does anyway. Of course he does. He can never seem to resist hearing his own voice.

  I nod and dismount from Tamal. My boots strike the sand with a heavy crunching noise. It’s the same sound as breaking bones, and it’s always bothered me.

  Lor clears his throat and taps his knuckles against the saddle, his rhythm just as bad as before. He stares down at the sand below him, his eyebrows furrowing as he tries to judge the distance between his saddle and the ground.

  “Is there anything you’re not scared of?” I ask.

  He clears his throat again. “Of course. Horses just aren’t one of those things.”

  I sigh and lead Tamal over to the jutting cliff. A rocky alcove has been carved into the base of the cliff over the years; it floods at night when the tide comes in, but during the day it makes a fine little hideout. Although I’m not exactly sure what I’m hiding from. There’s no sun to evade today, and the wind is nothing but a small nuisance. Perhaps it’s the castle I want to escape from. The sights of royalty, the sounds, the smells. None of them can reach me in my familiar little alcove.

  I ground-tie Tamal by the base of the entrance. He’s the best trained horse of the royal stables—a retired cavalry mount—and he’ll stay stock-still for as long as I allow his reins to touch the ground. Sometimes I wonder what kind of training could make a horse act so obedient and unnatural. Nothing pleasant, that’s for sure.

  Lor leaps off the back of his stallion, landing in a crouch. He has Ashe’s grace, the type that should be odd and unnatural, but is instead simply mesmerizing. As he stands, he reaches his arms above his head and leans back. It’s meant to be a simple stretch, but he may as well be screaming for all nearby eyes to gawk at him.

  Unfortunately, I’m the only set of eyes nearby. And I can’t help but to gawk. His tattoo is mesmerizing, the swirls of the flames nearly hypnotic. I stare at his chest, following the tattoo from his shoulder to the place where the inked flames lick at his collarbone.

  I shouldn’t stare. It’s ridiculous. How many times have I seen this tattoo? Hundreds. Perhaps thousands. Ashe was good at hiding it, but I was better at catching glimpses at the amazing ink-work. I should be over it by now.

  But I can’t be over it, because staring at Lor’s tattoo is like staring at a piece of Ashe. It’s beautiful. It’s painful. And I never want to take my eyes from it.

  Lor raises an eyebrow at me. It’s become his customary response when he finds me staring at him. He’s given up with the winks and cocky grins; he’s no longer amused by my continuous stares. No, he’s annoyed now. I can see it in the way he bites his lip to keep from frowning. He doesn’t
like the look I get in my eye when I stare at his tattoo. I’m not sure if I would like it, either.

  “What are we doing here, princess?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  Lor sighs and rolls his eyes. He sticks his hands in his pockets and turns toward the ocean, giving me a view of the full tattoo on his back. He stands stock still for a long moment, but then his foot begins tapping out another one of those uneven rhythms.

  I slowly take my eyes from Lor and join him in staring out to the ocean. The water is rough today, and no ships have dared to venture out to fish. It’s odd seeing the ocean so empty.

  “Your ocean is a strange color,” Lor says. He shakes his head and sighs again. “It’s so… dull. But then I suppose most things in this land are dull.”

  I walk deeper into the alcove, where the rocks form worn-down seats. My back is still turned to Lor as I say, “You made a promise, Lor.”

  “Did I?”

  I sit on one of the rocks. It’ll ruin my dress, which isn’t a shame at all. “Yes, you did. You said you’d tell me more about your family and country if I took you out of my chambers. And I did. So tell me more. To start with, what color is your ocean?”

  Lor stiffens for a moment. I can see his jaw working back and forth, his teeth grinding as he considers my words. Then he lets out a long breath. “Blue,” he says quietly. “And not this type of blue.” He gestures to the waters in front of him. “Your ocean is a murky blue. Ugly. My ocean is gorgeous.”

  “A tropical blue,” I say.

  He startles a little and turns toward me, that grin playing at the corners of his lips. “Yes. Exactly, we’re a tropical land. How did you know?”

  I tap the side of my head. “This isn’t as empty as you’d think. I’m well educated. More so than I should be. My father doesn’t think girls should be taught beyond basic arithmetic, but I enjoy reading books.”

  Lor scoffs a little. “I’ve noticed.” Then he frowns a little and walks toward me. It’s all I can do to focus on his face and not the tattoo snaking over his shoulder. “Why do you keep your books in such plain view if you’re not supposed to read them? I mean, you have a library.”