by Elise Kova
“I wondered if you’d taken a nap,” Raylynn jabbed lightly when he came to stop before them. “I know how your weak royal constitution might demand it.”
“Not a half-bad suggestion. My only regret is not thinking of it myself hours ago.” Baldair’s mouth turned up into a lazy smile... and stayed that way. No matter how much he was battered by the sand and sun, he seemed to retain his boyish good looks—looks Raylynn could easily see melting the hearts of many a lass. Though the more time she spent with him, the more she wondered if his subtle seductiveness was an actual effort or a natural gift.
“And who’s your friend?” Baldair turned his attention toward Anya.
“Anya.” The woman obliged him her name, but Anya was a stubborn child of the desert, and nothing in her body language offered the Solaris prince even the slightest bit of respect.
If Baldair took offense, he didn’t show it. “A pleasure, Anya. Am I now in the company of two women who could best me at swords?”
“You and Anya would be an interesting match to watch,” Raylynn mused. “With a bow? She’d shoot you square between the eyes before you had time to blink. But a sword? I’ve not the foggiest who would come out on top.”
Anya shot her a glare, clearly communicating how she felt about Raylynn not immediately assuming she could best the prince with a blade. But Baldair was undeniably good with a sword; green as grass, but she couldn’t deny him his skill.
“Fortunately for me, I’m inclined to let ladies choose their preference—top or bottom.” Baldair sat between them casually.
Between his movements and his comments, he had completely disarmed Anya. The woman was no virgin flower, yet a trace of scarlet darkened her rich, cinnamon-colored cheeks. The blush was so faint that Baldair surely missed it. Raylynn couldn’t overlook it, however—nor could she keep herself from dissolving in laughter. “I think Anya would prefer the top,” she managed between gasps of mirth.
“Raylynn—”
“She likes to be in control.”
“Seems to be a trend among women of the Nameless Company.”
Anya was set to shaking with amusement. When the woman had recovered herself, she turned to the princeling. “So, prince, what do you intend with my friend here?”
“I’d like her sword, if she’ll give it to me.”
Anya smiled a knowing smile, a type of look that betrayed the depth of meaning behind what Baldair had said without him even knowing. There was no greater thing to ask for than a mercenary’s sword.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’ll never be worth our Ray’s sword.”
“Ray?” Out of everything, that was what Baldair picked up on. “You go by Ray?”
“Only to people I really care about,” she mumbled. Anya really could be insufferable.
“I think that makes it clear where you stand, prince,” Anya said smugly, giving Raylynn’s hand a small squeeze.
“I have time,” Baldair said, surprising them both. “When you join the Golden Guard, I’ll have many years to earn that trust.”
“When? He says when, Ray.” Anya was as incredulous as Raylynn felt.
“Give him credit for that much?” Raylynn was laughing again at the notion. The prince was surprising her more than she ever expected.
“If I must,” Anya mumbled.
Baldair turned to Raylynn, his gaze penetrating. “I have something I want to discuss with you.”
Raylnn considered him for a long moment. Anya looked to her with eyebrows raised in what was becoming familiar disbelief at the prince’s boldness. The decision was on her.
“I suppose I have the time.”
“And I suppose I need to take care of dinner.” Anya stood, dusting sand—rather hopelessly—off her leggings. “Ray, I’ll see you later?”
Raylynn nodded. “I’ll stop by and say hello to the family proper.” They were all in the same boat, an odd unit formed by the Nameless Company that underscored their connections. It ran deeper than blood and more true than cursory emotions.
“See you do. I’ve more words to share with you.” Anya waved over her shoulder a temporary farewell.
When the other woman had gone, her eyes drifted to the prince, who was also intently staring in the direction of Anya’s departure. “Really?”
“I’m sorry, what?” The prince was like a boy caught peeping at his presents for the Festival of the Sun.
“Anya is your type?”
“I wouldn’t mind.” He was honest, that much Raylynn could tell. “But I don’t know if I’d outright call her my ‘type’.”
She gasped. Half was sincerity, the other half magnified for the sake of comedy. “He wouldn’t mind? Such high praise.”
“You focused on the wrong thing.” He continued to look at Anya—or rather, where she had disappeared into her abode.
“Did I?”
“You didn’t focus on discovering my type.”
The prince’s stare had a poignant weight that Raylynn chose to ignore. She had already become far too compromised around him. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I learned something interesting from your grandmother…” Baldair began with a forced delicacy that bloomed a certain nervousness in Raylynn’s gut.
“About?”
“Your mother.”
Raylynn stilled alongside the disappearance of the last light. “What did she tell you?”
“That your mother was murdered.” The prince began speaking quickly, almost eagerly, as if determined to get out his words before she could process them. “By the Knights of Jadar? Whatever or whoever they are?”
Raylynn looked out to the horizon with a small huff of amusement. He wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t bother himself to care. The Knights were a unique tumor to the West’s history, and the princeling was not of the West. She couldn’t expect him to understand.
“But I noticed…” he continued, his words drawing an odd anxiety from that same visceral place in her belly. “She referred to the man who killed your mother in the present tense. He’s still alive. She knows the name—which means we can find him.”
She didn’t need to hear the rest. She didn’t need her frustration and rage at the Knights of Jadar to be dragged to the surface in the Nameless City, her only sanctuary in the wide world. She was still licking the wounds their flight from the inn had cut into her pride. She also certainly didn’t need the prince to assume she hadn’t already found the man responsible for dealing the killing blow against her mother.
“Raylynn, is the man who killed your mother still walking this plane?”
Raylynn stared at the fading dusk with all the bitterness and remorse in the world. She watched the sun diminish, submitting to the Father’s realms and giving into the darkness broken only by death and chaos.
“Does he reside in the West?”
He does. She wanted to scream. She knew exactly where this particular Lord slept. She had walked by his estate countless times, watched the coming and goings of his various staff and guard. She’d sat out for hours observing his people—the not-so-secret Knights of Jadar.
“Do you want justice?”
Raylynn bit her cheeks to keep herself from screaming, yes! She wanted justice. Or, at the very least, revenge.
“Have you been killing people associated with the Knights, Western nobles, to try to reach your mother’s killer?” Baldair pressed.
Raylynn remained determinedly silent.
Baldair sighed softly and removed his attention from her. “I have two weeks left before the main army reaches the Crossroads. I need to return before then so that I may march to war with them.” He spoke to nothing in particular.
Two weeks, and her princeling would be gone. She had to decide before then. She had to make her choice quickly. Faster than she wanted to. How could she be expected to figure out what she
wanted with such swiftness when the leisure of years had yielded nothing?
“I’ll give you an Imperial decree for their deaths.” Her head turned quickly to meet his eyes. She studied his face for any trace of falsehood.
The prince stared back, his blue eyes and messy golden hair and broad shoulders weighing on her. But he remained determined in the face of her skepticism, unwavering in his conviction.
“I would do this for justice… and only so long as you realize it will not bring your mother back.”
That. That was what burned her most. Those were the words that set fire beneath her skin in waves of pearling heat and scalding truth. She knew nothing would bring her mother back. And this—this Southerner, in all his well-intended truth—didn’t even understand that Raylynn had no inclination toward bringing her mother back. She had no desire to fill the hole left by her mother. It was that hole that pushed her to do better, that she sought to fill yet knew she never would.
Raylynn rose to her feet against the encroaching night and the reminders it carried, of all the injustices that had been committed against her. She stood in the presence of the prince, ending the conversation long before he was finished.
“Prince, your words may be well-intended, but they miss the mark. This is not a matter for the crown. This is not a debt I can pass on. This is something owed only to me. I don’t want Twintle dead. I want to kill him. And the difference between the two is the world.” She spoke calmly, but with a determination she hadn’t felt before Baldair thought to take for himself—for the crown—what was rightfully hers. “Furthermore, do not presume to know what I want. If you want to know, ask.”
The conversation had ended as far as she was concerned. Raylynn started up the dunes. She needed to give the prince time to think properly about what had been said, let it sink in, before she presumed he truly understood the source of her conviction on the matter.
The sand slid under the prince’s heels as he stood.
“Then tell me what it is you want. Let me help you.” He spoke hastily to her retreating form. “Not for some prophecy, or for royalty, or for my guard. Let me help you because I want to.”
Raylynn paused and turned to study the boy prince, running headlong toward manhood. He was trying, but that didn’t change her earlier conviction. She needed time to think. He needed the same time, whether he realized it or no. Because not only did he have to consider her words, but he likewise needed to think about what he had just offered.
“Very well, I will consider letting you help me. Not as a prince, and not as a part of our determined fates. Merely as another one chosen of the sword,” she whispered softly, trusting the wind to carry her words to him.
The prince gave her a determined, slightly dumbfounded look. He had, no doubt, never encountered someone who didn’t clamor to accept his first offer of aid. Less, someone who might not want his help at all.
Raylynn smiled faintly at his confusion and continued up to the encampment with renewed determination.
17. Raylynn
She paced Anya’s small abode. She lived with her family, but her parents were out at the communal campfire enjoying a dinner Raylynn should be partaking in as well, as her growling stomach reminded her. Anya remained behind in solidarity. Confusion and amusement shifted on her face.
“You’ve never spoken of avenging your mother before.”
The death of Zira Westwind was no secret among the Nameless Company. Even if the mercenaries did not actively seek vengeance for the death of their own—they were in too deadly a business to go hunting after every person who got themselves killed—they did seek out the cause of that death, or tried. With Zira, the secret hadn’t taken long to uncover; the Knights had turned their attentions on Raylynn shortly after her mother’s demise.
“It’s a fool’s ambition,” Raylynn repeated the words she’d spoken a thousand times. It was an instantaneous reply whenever her mother came up—more reaction than response.
“Then why are you so worked up on the idea of it now?”
Raylynn sighed. She let no one beyond her grandmother know the truth, that she still sought her mother’s blade. Killing Twintle along the way would be a fringe benefit. She sat heavily, taking her friend’s hand in hers. Their fingers clasped tightly, Anya affirming the grip without hesitation.
“Because even though it is a fool’s ambition, I have sought it anyway,” Raylynn confessed with a touch of remorse. She didn’t feel bad for concealing a truth that was hers and hers alone, but for lying about it all the years she had.
“I know.”
“Of course you do.” Raylynn laughed softly.
“I pay attention to you, Ray. I also know of the honor the princess bestowed on your mother with the sword—a rank that should fall to you.”
“Not so. I don’t want that honor.” She didn’t. She didn’t want all the things the sword symbolized. She didn’t want to lead or rally. She wanted to continue roaming the world searching for a challenge, living off her skill. “I just want the sword.”
“And that should be yours,” Anya agreed. “Why have you not reclaimed it?”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“Not true.” Anya knew her too well. Lying around her was futile.
“I don’t,” Raylynn insisted. “Not really…”
“Fine, but you have yet to investigate the home of the man who took the blade in the first place.” Raylynn would’ve told Anya if she’d gone for Twintle, and Anya clearly knew it.
“I have gone there, but not inside,” she confessed. “Getting in unnoticed proved difficult.”
“And you didn’t want them to move the blade if it is indeed there by letting them know you were seeking it… so you sought it out everywhere else.”
Raylynn nodded. The other part of the truth remained unsaid: she had one shot at Lord Twintle, and she wanted it to come at a time when nothing could go wrong. Furthermore, the last time she was at the estate, he wasn’t in residence.
“If the prince seeks out his imperial decree for Twintle’s head, they’ll move the blade so far underground it could take years to get a solid lead on it again.”
“And there’s the root of it.” Anya tied a knot in her braids on instinct, as tight as the growing tension that began in Raylynn’s mind and ran down her shoulders. “You don’t want him to claim what is rightfully yours or interfere with your getting it.”
Raylynn’s heart felt like she was entering a ring. “Is that so wrong?”
“Not in the slightest.” Anya shook her head. “But what I find impressive is that you think that delicate flower of a man could help you.”
“I never said—”
“If you didn’t think so, you wouldn’t have brought him here.” Anya gave her a look that clearly demanded, tell me I’m wrong.
Raylynn couldn’t, so she said nothing.
“Ray, talk to him. Tell him what you need. You’ve never hidden so from a man before.” Anya lightened the mood with a seductive little smirk. “You never know, that soft, golden prince could surprise you.”
“He already has.” Raylynn reflected on their singular, genuine duel. He had been good enough to make her think he knew the song of the sword. While she now knew he didn’t, and that furthermore he was as green as they came… movements like his weren’t a mistake.
More than that, his determination to follow her, his willingness to put aside his royalty to help her achieve her ends—it was different than Fiera and her mother, but that made it no less admirable.
Without another word, Anya started for the slatted fabric that served as a simple doorway.
“Where are you going?” Raylynn asked.
“You have your decision.” Anya shrugged. “And I’m positively starving. You’ve out-earned your time on this issue compared to my hunger.”
Alone again, Raylynn set to paci
ng, feeling quite at home in her friend’s abode. Even if Anya or her parents returned, they wouldn’t kick her out until the oil burned low, at the earliest. So she stayed, knowing that it was likely the one place in camp she could find some quiet.
Am I ready to attack Twintle? It was a question she thought she’d long since answered. But now it resurfaced, ugly as ever. She could seek her grandmother’s counsel on the matter, but her grandmother had passed on the responsibility of vengeance to Raylynn years ago—claiming advanced age excluded her from such things. Furthermore, the very nature of the sword made it right for only Raylynn’s hands.
No, she hadn’t been ready to attack Twintle and reclaim her mother’s sword before. But she was now. She had help now… It was just a matter of deciding if she truly trusted that help. Because if she did, there was no going back.
Raylynn set for the door, the sand beneath her heels quietly affirming her decision. Baldair wasn’t difficult to find—no one in the small town was. At night, almost everyone gathered around the communal fire for sustenance and story. It was where news of potential jobs was spread and votes were cast about whether it was time to, once again, move the city.
A head of gold where there usually was none, and laughter that boomed like thunder guided her even in the dark.
“I told you she would come.” Anya nodded at Raylynn, whose presence Baldair had yet to notice.
“There you are!” Baldair turned away from where he’d been making good company—at least as far as Raylynn could tell from her companions’ faces. “You know, this actually isn’t so bad.” He held up a strip of jerky cured from desert hare.
“I actually do know.” As if she hadn’t eaten it all her life.
“We’re moving him up to scorpion tail next.” A mischievous look overcame Anya’s face.