Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  "You had the baton," he said, taking a drag off the cigarette.

  "Not when we were in the cave."

  "I wanted to see what Kou was going to do with us."

  "So you could report back to Skye?"

  Exasperated, he flicked ash in her direction. "No, Ashlyn."

  She sat back against the bed, arms folded over her chest. "Then what? I'm completely in the dark here."

  He covered his face with one hand, strands of garnet-red falling over his fingers. "For a ninja, you're not too observant, kid."

  It took her a moment to understand what he was talking about, another moment to realize exactly what he was saying. Her face grew hot. "You stayed with us to make sure I would be all right?"

  He dropped his hand, met her gaze steadily. "Always knew you were smarter than you look."

  Why, she wanted to ask, but it would have been a stupid question. "You believe me, then? That I'm honestly trying to stop Devlyn?"

  "I don't know."

  Her heart sank. "Oh," she said flatly.

  "I don't know what to believe," he continued, "and if you're trying to help, I think you're going about it in completely the wrong way."

  This was getting kind of turned around, Ashlyn thought. "But you stayed," she said. "You stayed with me and didn't betray me to FLD, even though you could have. That's gotta count for something, right?"

  He smiled, but it was a sad smile. "I hope so."

  Ashlyn's heart twisted. "I think it counts for a lot," she said softly.

  Vargo shifted, glanced at her as he exhaled smoke through his nose, reminding her of one of the Dark Dragons from the Eastern Canyon. "That's all that matters, then," he replied, sounding nonchalant.

  There was a knock at the door. They both jumped.

  "It's me," Kou's voice came through the door, slightly muffled. "Time to leave."

  Their dilemma hit Ashlyn shortly after Kou's words registered. She looked at Vargo, trying to think of a way to solve it. Obviously it wouldn't do them any good to tie him up again- and he certainly couldn't go with them to Toryn.

  There was another knock. "Are you there?" Kou asked, sounding suspicious.

  "Yes," Ashlyn said, finding her voice. She stood, acutely aware that Vargo had gotten to his feet as well and was stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bureau. "Give me five minutes, I'll be right out. Keep watch at the stairwell."

  Silence. Then, "Five minutes. No longer."

  Turning to Vargo, she lowered her voice. "I don't know what to do with you."

  He merely stared at her, allowing her to decide for herself.

  Ashlyn shook her head as she considered the options, idly twirling the baton in her hand. "I can't stop you from going to Skye," she said.

  "Not without killing me," he said. His words were softened by a devilish smile, confident and charismatic.

  Heart in her throat, Ashlyn took a step forward, dropping her gaze to the floor. If she wanted to, she could have reached out and touch him. This close, she could feel his warmth, imagine his heartbeat speeding to keep time with hers.

  "I can't take you with me either," she said, her voice low. "I want to, but…"

  "I couldn't go with you if you asked," he replied.

  "I'm sorry, Vargo."

  He reached out a hand and tipped her chin up. "Sorry for what?" he said, and his voice was husky, sending flutters up and down her spine. His hand drifted from her chin to her hair, sliding through the thick strands easily.

  "I can't…" Less than half a step, and she was there, against him so closely that she could feel every breath as if it were her own. Ashlyn's right hand came up of its own accord, fisting itself in his suit jacket. "I can't find the words," she muttered.

  Her frustration must have shown on her face, because Vargo frowned comically before his lips curved in a smile. "I know what you mean," he said, just before he kissed her.

  Ashlyn closed her eyes, savoring his mouth moving over hers, better than she'd anticipated and more than she'd expected. She considered losing herself in his arms, forgetting all about Kou, FLD and Toryn and trying to convince him to run away with her. It wasn't an outrageous idea; Vargo had some feelings for her and probably wouldn't say no to a road trip with a princess. He could kiss her every night and she could (somehow) figure out how to cook and they could live happily ever after.

  But…no. This wasn't a fairy tale, and Vargo definitely wasn't a prince.

  She raised her hand and struck him once, at the base of his skull, the blow landing precisely where she'd intended it to despite the awkward angle of attack. Vargo gasped into her mouth, then slumped, his hands loosening on her shoulders as he fell against her. Ashlyn backpedaled desperately, trying to support his weight and keep herself upright as well. He finally ended up on the floor half on top of her, and as she extracted herself from beneath him and rolled him over onto his back, his head lolled to the side, his perfect features slack. His wild hair spilled onto the hardwood floor like blood-colored silk.

  She checked his pulse. Strong.

  "I'm sorry," she said again, brushing her fingertips across his jaw as she stood and walked to the door, heaving the satchel over her shoulder as she did. Road trips and fairy tale endings would have to wait.

  Ah, heck. She and Vargo probably would have killed each other in the first week anyway.

  The hallway was dark. She had left the lantern in the room.

  "I'm ready," she said to Kou. "Let's get out of here."

  Chapter 10

  Name Game

  Indecisiveness was one of Ashlyn Li's lesser-known traits.

  (It's true. Lesser-known…and yet entirely prevalent in her personality. Ever since the day that nine-year old Ashlyn had sliced her arm open on her mother's shuriken and her father had totally blown his top and run around in frantic, lopsided circles while she bled all over her kimono, she'd had her suspicions that indecisiveness ran thick in the Li bloodline.)

  Indecisiveness came with a few fringe benefits, too. Tendencies towards annoying habits like procrastination, ambivalence and an inherent clueless air were all qualities that Ashlyn possessed. This, of course, was pure speculation. But Ashlyn saw it as her excuse for being so damn confused all the time.

  Kissing Vargo was no exception. It was a trick. A ruse. She had concocted a plan, and carried it out with perfect precision.

  It was a lie, she told herself firmly. It was a freaking lie!

  Ashlyn raised her hand, touching her fingers to her lips, noting the way her breath fanned out around her fingers in the cold air.

  This wasn't the first time her play-acting had backfired on her. Ashlyn was a good actress, but there'd always been drawbacks to her pretensions. Before her eight-year isolation, when she'd been scouring the earth for stanes and had joined up with Skye and his friends, it had been an intentional deception. The only reason she had decided to travel with them was so she could steal their stanes at the first opportunity.

  But after a while, it hadn't seemed like a deception, you know? She'd started to like everyone, from Restlyn to Aik to Jackson to Skye, and of course Aaron, who had become almost like a father to her in those weeks. It was hard to travel with people and pretend to care about them without letting the ruse become real.

  Still, it creeped Ashlyn out that her lame-o seduction had started to crumble even her own defenses. Vargo had obviously bought it, hadn't given a second thought as to why she would make a sudden turnaround in her feelings towards him. She'd expected that. What she hadn't expected was the jolt of electricity that had run through her at the first touch of his lips, not to mention the sudden and totally ridiculous urge to completely give up her mission to gallivant across Kresmir! With him!

  Ew. Just…ew. She scowled. The original plan had been to lure him in close to her with her pitiful little I'm-so-torn-between-you-and-my-destiny ploy, then hit him with the baton. No making out whatsoever. No lips, no hands, no physical contact of any kind.

  But when he'd bee
n there, staring at her with those gorgeous green eyes like he was starving and she was a seven-course meal…which, to be honest, hadn't happened all that often in her twenty-three years so its impact was magnified by a freaking bajillion times…suddenly kissing Vargo hadn't seemed like such a bad idea. And it had been pretty darn enjoyable- while it lasted.

  The knowledge that she'd kissed Vargo, two minutes later, standing in the rain and feeling like she was about to spew the contents of her stomach all over the grass, made Ashlyn want to scrub her mouth out with steel wool and gargle with bleach.

  In the past few days, she'd maybe (subconsciously, of course, because no way would it be a conscious thought, or even, like, an idea that surfaced in her mind as a plausible happening even once) pondered a brief interlude with the red-haired Spartan. Maybe she hadn't even considered it. Maybe she'd…just…imagined the possibility of having an affair with him. In an alternate universe. Or something.

  All right, all right, so she hadn't ruled out the idea of messing around with Vargo. She was twenty-three, for crying out loud, and he was obviously interested in her and not completely revolting, despite her aforementioned urge to heave, so what normal red-blooded woman wouldn't have a fantasy or two?

  Heh. Riiight.

  She seriously did feel like she was going to puke. And that was just after kissing him. If this was what happened every time he touched her, then a relationship was definitely not in the cards. Ashlyn wasn't about to spend the rest of her life barfing her guts out after every smooch session.

  "Lady Li," Kou said from beside her, and Ashlyn started out of her reverie.

  "What?" she said, staring blankly at him and trying to remember what she was supposed to be doing.

  He gave her a strange look. "Are you ill?"

  Totally. "No. I…no. Are you ready?" He was leading Suki by the reins, and had apparently managed to get his hands on an old saddle. Ashlyn twisted her hair into an untidy knot at the nape of her neck, wondering where the other horse had disappeared to.

  Kou, always astute, followed her gaze to the worn saddle, his eyes skipping down to the girth cinched tightly around Suki’s belly, and said, "An exchange."

  For the livery owner's silence, Ashlyn thought but did not say, because a horse, even a crappy one, was worth three times as much as any saddle. But it was unlikely that anybody would hide information from FLD without a darn good incentive.

  Suki nickered sweetly and nuzzled Ashlyn's shoulder, glad to be out of the stable. Ashlyn immediately felt guilty. Until just a few days ago, Suki had been free to roam just about anywhere, and now she was being transported from cramped stall to cramped stall and forced to run all day in between. Yet here she was, nuzzling Ashlyn and nickering like she was the happiest horse on the planet.

  Ashlyn felt like a jerk as she stroked the little mare’s nose. "I hold the reins this time," she told Kou, for no particular reason at all except that she wanted to reassure herself that she was in control of what was happening.

  Kou didn't seem perturbed in the least. "Of course, Lady."

  Oh joy, a point of conflict for her to pounce on. "Stop calling me Lady," she said. "My name is Ashlyn. Or you can call me Tomiko, because it really is one of my names. But I'm not the Lady of Toryn just yet, and I probably never will be, so you can just-" She saw the incredulous expression on his face and her indignation deflated like a popped balloon- "Not…call me...Lady."

  She stopped, feeling very stupid. "Let's go," she mumbled, taking Suki's reins from Kou. She hiked up her skirt, put her left foot in the stirrup and swung up on the horse's back, then took her foot out of the stirrup again so Kou could do the same. He mounted easily behind her, his hands settling around her waist for balance and still keeping enough distance between them to avoid contact with her shuriken.

  Ashlyn took a moment to realize that she felt absolutely no zing from his touch, no electricity at all. Which meant that her raging hormones probably weren't to blame for all the lousy angst she'd been feeling.

  Which meant that there really was something between her and Vargo.

  And Skye.

  And Drake.

  I'm completely out of control, she thought bleakly. A dead man, a wise-ass and an amnesiac with a hero complex, and I'm infatuated with all three of them.

  She felt positively murderous as Suki carried them out of Industry, and she was pretty sure that Kou could sense her grouchy attitude, because he didn't say a word.

  Until, "We are being followed," he told her softly, hands tightening almost imperceptibly on her waist. "Stalked. Perhaps he is hoping to overtake us."

  "What?" She turned her head slightly to her left, searching out of the corner of her eye. There was another horse not far behind them. It would have been invisible in the darkness but for the horse’s gleaming white coat and the rider's almost-matching hair. "Skye," Ashlyn grumbled, clutching a hand to her abdomen and stupidly wondering if she might be turning green- or maybe some sickly blue-green combination from both the cold and her churning stomach. "I thought he was in his room at the inn?"

  "Apparently not," Kou replied. "I would assume that it was a diversionary tactic to cause us both to come out of hiding."

  "Great." Gods, she felt awful, and this wasn't helping. She might as well have socked Vargo and forgone the kiss completely, for all the good it had done her. "What are we going to do?"

  Kou shrugged; she could feel the movement against her shoulder blades. "Run?" he suggested, sounding as if he really had no clue whatsoever.

  Run. Fantastic. The fate of the world was in their hands, and their brilliant plan was to run like hell.

  Well…whatever.

  "Hold on," Ashlyn said, and urged Suki on. The mare leaped forward, digging in with her hooves and dashing across the wet grass exuberantly.

  Ashlyn had never had a chance to race Suki at the Silverbell Theme Park, being that she'd bought the mare during her whole I-walk-alone-I-need-no-one phase. But she had always imagined that if she did, her little horse would trounce the opposition so soundly that the rest of the field would never think of racing again.

  She looked back once to see the other horse struggling to keep pace behind them. The distance between them had increased only slightly. He wasn't going to stop. She hadn't really expected him to, not really; asking Skye to give up a mission was like telling the sun to retreat behind a mountain until further notice. It just wasn't gonna happen.

  Ashlyn had always admired that about him, before. Now she had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering with fear and cold. Rain, wind, nausea and being stalked by one seriously pissed-off swordsman who thought you were a traitor to his faction did not make for a secure, comfortable journey.

  She wasn't sure how long they ran. Suki's gait lengthened and smoothed as she began to sprint; when they reached the shore and turned north, Ashlyn could hear the slapping of water beneath the horse’s hooves, Kou's breath on her neck, the cold shock of each raindrop as it hit her face and slid down her skin like icy pinpricks.

  The dock came into sight through the gray mist, and she could feel Kou fumbling for the keys behind her. Ashlyn urged Suki onto the wooden dock. “Which one?” she shouted.

  Kou jumped down, staring at the keys in his hand, and pointed. How he’d figured it out, she had no idea, but Ashlyn didn’t stop to consider it. It was a tiny speedboat- just large enough for two people. She dismounted from the horse and yanked at the latigo, loosening the leather strap and dropping the cinch to dangle beneath Suki’s belly.

  “Get in!” she shouted to Kou, yanking the saddle off Suki’s back. Quickly she unbuckled the throat latch and slid the bridle over the mare’s head. Tossing the saddlebags into the boat, Ashlyn turned back, a lump in her throat as she looked at the little horse standing before her.

  Years ago, she’d trained Suki to return to the stable in the tiny, ramshackle town of Rode if they were ever separated. Ashlyn had tested it numerous times, but recently she’d gotten lazy, hadn’t bothered to
follow up and make sure Suki remembered. Ashlyn touched a hand to her horse’s velvety nose, praying that this wasn’t the last time she would see her dear friend.

  “Go,” she said, pushing Suki’s head away and giving her a slap on the neck. The horse remained where she was, the whites of her eyes showing as she bobbed her head.

  Ashlyn turned and climbed into the boat. “Go,” she said again, this time to Kou. The ninja had the keys in the ignition already and was starting the engine. On the second try, it roared to life. They pulled away from the dock and into the ocean. Ashlyn didn’t look over her shoulder. She didn’t want to see if Suki was still waiting for her.

  The steady thrum of the engine reverberated through the boat, rattling deep into her bones. Tears squeezed out the corners of her eyes and streaked back to her temples, and Ashlyn's breathing became shallow, the stitch in her side letting her know that although it may have felt like a short while, the chase had gone on for a considerable length of time. Minutes, hours- they melted into each other as the moon alternately revealed itself and hid its face behind the ominous thunderclouds overhead.

  Ashlyn looked back, noting without surprise that Skye had managed to access one of the other boats and was following them, much further behind than he’d been originally. He’d probably had to hotwire the damn thing.

  She began to feel light-headed. She blinked several times and shook her head, then immediately regretted it as her stomach lurched. Oh Gods. Kissing Vargo was like developing a permanent sense of motion sickness. The discomfort in her stomach intensified, and she slumped forward, grimacing. Don't pass out don't pass out don't pass out.