Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  Drake's words sank in slowly, as emotionless as the snapping of dry wood, and Ashlyn nodded. "Thank you," she said, and pushed past him, making her way towards Lord Li's house.

  The house was dark, darker even than outside, but it didn't take long for her to find her way to her father's room. She could have walked the path with her eyes closed.

  A single candle was lit on the floor beside the mat where Soryl lay. Ashlyn took a step towards him, breathing his name, wondering if he could hear her.

  His face was turned away from her, but she could still see the burns that nearly obscured his youthful features, changing the boy she'd once called friend to a scarred stranger, silent and pitiful in his faceless anonymity.

  Ashlyn took another step and knelt beside him, gathering the cloak around her shoulders and noting that he'd thrown off the thin sheet that they had covered him with, perhaps aggravated by the feel of it against his damaged skin.

  "Soryl," she said again.

  Slowly he turned his head to face her, and Ashlyn swallowed. The whites of his eyes were the color of thorn-sours, bright yellow against the charred red and black of his damaged skin. His dry, cracked lips twitched once, then again, and the strangled sound that came out could have been her name.

  "You'll be all right," Ashlyn said awkwardly. She reached for his fingers, then thought better of it and clasped her hands tightly in front of her. What to say? This was a boy she'd known since infancy, the son of her mother’s sister, and she’d never felt tongue-tied in front of him. But at the moment she couldn't think of a single thing that sounded right. It had been eight years, and it might have been a hundred for as well as she knew Soryl now.

  She swallowed hard. "I…I know that the shift magic can't be used by anyone except for, um, Li heirs. I don't- I don't need an explanation, I understand how difficult it must be for you, too." Ashlyn tapped her foot on the floor nervously, thinking of the sign of Li that she'd scrubbed off in her fit of rage. How strange to think that Soryl should have been tattooed with one at birth, and yet his identity had been kept a complete secret.

  "So I guess that makes us siblings, and not just cousins," she said absently, staring at her hands. "I don't know if you knew…before, you know, before I left, but if you did, I'm…sorry…"

  I'm sorry I didn't know, she wanted to tell him, but it seemed like such a ridiculous thing to say that she couldn't bring herself to. They hadn’t spent much time together when they were younger, with Soryl living with a clan on the southern part of the island, but she had always felt comfortable with him when he did come to visit. It wasn't a stretch to think that perhaps he could, in actuality, be her brother.

  "I don't know why you're fighting against Devlyn," Ashlyn continued shakily. "I don't even know if I believe everything he's told me, I mean, he hasn't exactly been forthcoming about…all the details. But I do know that this war is senseless. Toryn is only as strong as its inner circle- world domination has absolutely nothing to do with power, and it certainly has nothing to do with peace, which is what our elders sought for so long. It's what our entire culture was based on- the premise of harmony with nature and amongst ourselves."

  She paused, knowing that she was lecturing but still wanting to say more. Her gaze drifted from Soryl's face to his neck, continuing down his chest, which was so horridly burnt that she had to blink, unable to believe he was still alive after being so badly injured.

  The inside of his right arm, around the crook of his elbow, was almost normal, if only slightly blackened by the lightning spell. Ashlyn frowned and leaned over him, noting the presence of several tiny…scars?…scabs?…surrounded by spider veins and bruising. The veins traced their way ominously up his arm, fading into the charred blackness of his skin. Had she hit him that hard? She tried to remember if, during their short battle, she'd dealt any blows to his arm. Probably- it was difficult to recall- but those veins didn't look like any bruise she'd ever seen before. It looked more like poison, or an infection.

  She bumped his side as she pulled back, and looked quickly at his face to see if she'd hurt him. Soryl's eyes were glassy, staring up at the ceiling rafters as though he were memorizing every detail of their thin, uncomplicated design. Ashlyn smiled, remembering when they had explored the attics as children, and how she'd pushed him down the stairs when he'd called her a chicken-wuss for being scared of a spider.

  "There's so much I want to tell you," she said softly, leaning forward and reaching out a hand. She did not touch him, letting her palm hover an inch away from his forehead, wanting so badly to feel the comfort of contact but knowing that it would only bring him pain.

  She cleared her throat, smiling through her tears. "I missed you, you know," she murmured. "As much as anyone, if not more. I would see things that reminded me of you and think, gods I wish Soryl were here, and then I'd have to kick myself because you were so gosh-darn annoying all the time, thinking you were some big hoity-toity god of martial arts or something just because Dad liked you better." She sniffled. "I could have done it too, you know. If I'd studied harder or tried even the littlest bit to get into Dad's good graces. But I was just so…so…" Her voice trailed off as she realized that Soryl hadn't blinked since she'd been staring at him.

  In fact, she couldn't remember any kind of movement since he'd spoken her name.

  No.

  NO!

  "When you get better," she continued doggedly, "we'll have to have a rematch, see if my kicking your ass back when Skye first showed up really was dumb luck. Or maybe you just suck as bad as I said you did. Who knows, right. Could be anything, could be any day of the week, a slight shift in wind patterns, and bam, it throws my game off. You always said that my incessant jabbering was what distracted you enough for me to beat you."

  There were footsteps behind her. A hand slid onto her injured shoulder, gently, but Ashlyn ignored it, knowing why they were there.

  "And when you get better you can start fighting in the pagoda again," she said. "Of course if my dad really does decide to turn Toryn over to me, I'll be on the top floor. Haha! It would serve you right, working all these years and then I got to be the last Lord just because I was…born into it…legitimately." She finished the last sentence slowly, stammering, because what had at first seemed like a decent joke was a cruel reminder of the magic, and Soryl's ability to use it.

  She reached up and clamped her fingers down over the hand on her shoulder, wanting some sort of solidity for the explosion she knew was coming. It was building up inside her, stoking, churning, festering like an open wound.

  Soryl was dead.

  "You need to tell me where my dad is," Ashlyn said, her voice thick with tears. "I need to find him. I need to stop this. I need…to be…a leader…oh gods…" She choked in a breath, shuddering. There was no solitude here, no reprieve from the reality of her transgressions. It weighed on her, dragged her down, and she hated it and welcomed it at the same time, knowing that she deserved everything received.

  "I need to find my father," she repeated.

  "You will," Vargo answered, his grip tightening on her fingers.

  "And…I need to find a surgeon…Soryl has these marks on his arm," she plowed on, praying and hoping that he would not hear the hitch in her voice. "I need to know what they're from."

  "What you need is rest," Restlyn said from behind her, further away than Vargo but close enough that Ashlyn could hear the scuff of her boots on the floor when the brunette shifted her weight.

  Ashlyn moved so that she was kneeling, relinquishing her grip on Vargo's fingers, and adjusted Drake's cloak around her shoulders, staring down at Soryl's body. A sob forced its way from her chest to her lips, escaping despite her efforts to disguise it, and suddenly Ashlyn wanted to scream, to hit something, to make it all stop because damn it, why the hell was everything so unfair?

  "I'm so…freaking sick of all of this!" she burst out, stupidly shaking her fist in the air- as though that would prove her point- "I've been all alone for eight y
ears and I've been perfectly fine, thank you very frigging much, and the minute I step back into civilization I get this crap just- just dumped on me, and I've had to fight with Skye and Kou and everyone every step of the way, and now I have to fight against my friends, my family!"

  She stopped, dragged in a breath that rattled in her lungs, tainted air, contaminated with death and oh Soryl Dad everyone-

  "Go away," she said, burying her face in her hands. "You- everyone- I can't handle this right now. Just leave me alone." She couldn't break down in front of them. She needed to be strong.

  "Ash," Vargo said, touching her shoulder again.

  "Don't!" She shrank away from him, shaking with the intensity of her emotions. "Just go, Vargo. Just…leave." Please don't do this, please don't try to help. Let me be strong in front of you. Let me be weak on my own.

  She could feel his hesitation and reluctance almost as if they were her own. It was obvious, the dark shadow of him lingering at her back, that he didn't want to leave her to her own devices. Ashlyn swallowed hard and clenched her jaw, restraining the sobs that heaved deep in her chest.

  Finally she heard the scrape of his shoes on the floor, and he turned and walked away, his steps slow and easy, so much like Vargo and everything that she liked/hated about him that Ashlyn almost stopped him, because familiarity was something to treasure in times like these.

  He hesitated at the door. "Are you leaving?" he asked, and there was something different about his voice. It wasn't the same tone that he used with her- that patronizing and yet strangely gentle lilt that drove her crazy. It was dangerous, harsher, more guarded.

  She wondered at the change, but didn't turn around to meet his eyes. "I'll be here for a while," she muttered.

  Vargo said nothing, and after a few moments more, his footsteps resumed. Ashlyn didn't stop him. She let him go, and Restlyn followed him. When Ashlyn heard the door close behind her she took another deep breath, but it wasn't enough to calm her.

  "DAMN YOU!" she shrieked, tears squeezing from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks before she even finished the meager two-word sentence. "Damn you, Soryl, why? What the hell could possibly have been so wrong that you'd fight me? You…you moron!"

  She drew back her fist to hit him, and balked, horrified at the idea of beating her cousin's corpse, before making the ridiculously impulsive decision that hitting something was better than hitting nothing, and smashing her fist into the floor. Once, twice- she kept pummeling until the hardwood splintered beneath her assault. Fragments of the stuff embedded themselves in her knuckles, and it occurred to her that this was something new for her, the self-injury, but that it was fast becoming a habit. First her ankle and now this, and even though it didn't make her feel better she still felt something. Anything was preferable to this awful emptiness inside her.

  Suddenly someone was behind her, strong arms coming round her shoulders to still her frantic movements, locking her in an iron grip that was more comforting than she wanted to admit. Ashlyn struggled- "Let go of me," she raged, fighting uselessly- but her heart wasn't in it. She broke down into sobs…great, gasping sobs that ravaged her lungs like wildfire, burning and hurting until she felt raw, inside and out. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that the nothingness would end soon, knowing that it wouldn't.

  The person behind her shifted position, kneeling but still maintaining the awkward contact. He reached out and drew the sheet up over Soryl's face. Cool metal brushed against her wounded shoulder, and Ashlyn's eyes flew open as she realized who it was.

  "Drake," she whispered; that must have been who Vargo had been talking to. Relief fell over her like a shroud because Drake wouldn't judge, Drake wouldn't run to FLD and say that she was weak. Drake didn't care if she was strong all the time because he knew something about fighting demons himself.

  She tried to turn around, but his grip tightened on her, and in the end she settled for slumping back against him, taking comfort in the solidness of his chest against her shoulder blades, the security of his arms around her. The tears came in earnest then, although there were no sobs this time to wrack her body, and Ashlyn lay crumpled in the embrace as tears slid down her face and dripped onto Drake's torn sleeve. She tried inhaling, then exhaling, almost experimentally because she honestly wasn't sure if she could still breathe after so much pain and anguish.

  Drake said nothing, and for once Ashlyn was grateful for his silence. There were no words to make this go away. There was nothing he could say to ease her pain. He was comforting her in the only way he could, in a way that only he could because he was Drake, and Drake embodied death and chaos, so much so that it no longer frightened her when he was around.

  Minutes ticked by, and neither of them moved. At length, Ashlyn's breathing came a little easier, and all she could do was stare at Soryl's covered body, but mostly at the marks on his arm, which was sticking out from beneath the sheet. What were those scars? What were they from? It was just something else, another defilement of all the memories she'd held dear for the past eight years. Toryn had changed, her friends had changed, and Ashlyn felt like if there was a moment that she wanted it all to end, this was it.

  "I can't take this anymore," she said raggedly. A month before, a week before, she would have thought this situation impossible, but everything had changed now.

  "It's nearly dark," Drake said, stoic and frustratingly enigmatic to the end. "Do you want me to leave?"

  She breathed, inhaling his scent, and it was something like blood and dust, but it was comforting nonetheless. "Please don't," she whispered, and swallowed as another tear slipped down her cheek. "I can't be strong anymore, Drake. I don't know if I can keep doing this. I'm no leader. I'm not even a really good ninja. I'm just so…so tired…"

  He was silent for a moment, and then he shifted, adjusting his hold on her. When he stood, she was securely in his arms, and Ashlyn reflexively put her hands on his shoulders, a little surprised that he would initiate such an intimate embrace. He carried her from the room, away from Soryl, using an elbow to slide the door shut behind them before he took a seat on the bench in the corner of the foyer, showing no signs of releasing her.

  "Drake?" Ashlyn said tentatively, unsure of what exactly was the most appropriate thing to say, given the situation.

  He reached across and slid his ungloved hand down her left arm, bringing his fingers underneath the heel of her hand and raising it to eye level. Her knuckles were torn and bloody, slivers of wood clinging tenaciously to her flesh.

  "I once knew a girl," he said, his voice a perfect monotone, "who was like a dying rainbow. Her colors were incomparable, her countenance a whirlwind of brilliance."

  Ashlyn resisted the urge to pull away from his touch. If this was another story about his dear long lost Loritta or the perpetually bratty Trace, she really wasn't in the mood to hear it.

  Eight years ago, she would have immediately yanked away and jumped up, jabbering something about Drake's selfishness and his inability to let things go or think about anyone but himself.

  Today, Ashlyn sighed inwardly and resigned herself to a drab sob-fest about one of two women she hated for the pure fact that they were both incredible and mature and…well, not her.

  Drake went on, oblivious to Ashlyn's inner turmoil, "As much as she shone, however, she faded into nothingness, at times so quickly that I was unsure whether she had existed at all."

  He paused, their breathing and the rain on the roof the only sounds in the room as he gently extracted a splinter from between her fingers. "Years passed, and she became a memory to me. It was a long while before I realized how difficult it must have been for her, attempting to find a balance- somewhere from oblivion to her own unmatched radiance."

  His hand covered hers, emerald light gleaming from between their interlinked fingers as her flesh knitted beneath his touch.

  "I never thought I would see her again," Drake continued. His lips were close to her ear, stirring the damp strands of her hair with his breath. "B
ut she came to me one night, eight years later, out of the rain, as much a walking contradiction as she'd ever been."

  Ashlyn's throat tightened.

  He was talking about her, sweet Drago, he was saying all that stuff about her. She'd spent a month with Drake before, in close proximity, and he'd never said this much during those entire four weeks, much less in a single conversation.

  And what he was saying now…? Gods. If she hadn't already been pretty much collapsed into his arms, it would have happened, and probably with a bunch of drama and swoony fluttering, too.

  "What seems impossible," Drake said, his fingers brushing across her palm with obvious reluctance as he let go of her hand, "becomes possible in the smallest, most trivial moments. The girl that I remember has become a woman I cannot forget. Her strength has united a kingdom once thought lost. Her passion has awakened the hearts of heroes unsure of their purpose."

  "Her stupidity caused the war in the first place," Ashlyn said uncomfortably, folding her arms across her chest. Instead of utter elation at his words, she felt like a child receiving a precious gift that was completely undeserved, and as much as she wanted to let him console her, there was no way to deny the truth of the situation.

  When she met Drake's gaze, his blood-red eyes were solemn, and he raised a hand to cup her face, brushing his thumb across her cheek to remove the last traces of her tears. "You can run from your destiny, Ashlyn, but it will find you regardless," he said.

  "I was alone for eight years," she told him. I am not leaning into his hand. I AM NOT leaning into his hand. "I'm not the same person anymore. Toryn isn't my destiny anymore. I'll just screw it up, like I have everything else."

  "I was alone for twenty years," he replied. "You dragged me out of the coffin nonetheless."

  "That's different." Oh gods, don't do this to me, Drake. Don't make me fall for you all over again.

  His eyebrows quirked, obviously in disagreement.