Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  She almost hesitated, having seen some of his moodier moments back when Lord Angelo was still alive. But she’d never before caved to his darkness, and she wasn’t about to now. Instead, she flopped down gracelessly on the ground in front of him, pulling one boot over her foot. “What’s the matter, Lockhart? Did you give me the vampire kiss of life or something? You don’t have to feel embarrassed about it. Vargo and I have already had some hot and heavy make-out sessions that were epic, I am telling you, epic. It takes more than a single smooch from a vampire to freak me out. Just consider me all grown up now.” And totally over you and your meaningful angsty silences, she thought but did not say. She pulled on her second boot and stood, brushing leaves off her pants.

  He didn’t meet her eyes this time, but held out one hand, the hand without his glove. Ashlyn looked down at it, not comprehending. His hand was heavily bandaged, old blood seeped through to stain the gauze covering his palm.

  “Vampires heal fast, right?” she said.

  “Vampire blood has healing properties,” he answered quietly.

  “Vampire…blood,” she repeated.

  Oh.

  “Oh,” she said, and frowned. “You gave me your blood? Like a transfusion?”

  “Like a…drink,” he corrected her.

  His obvious reluctance was aggravating. “Oh, Drake, is that what you’re beating yourself up over?” she said incredulously. “You used vampire blood to help heal my bones? I thought it was something serious, like a new magic or whatever. Geez. Freak me out, why don’t you.”

  “Vampire blood can be used to overcome its drinker’s free will,” he said, and his words were clipped, like she’d somehow managed to offend him.

  “Do I look like I’m in any danger of losing my free will?” Ashlyn replied, perhaps a little too snidely, spreading her arms out and turning for inspection. “Seriously, Drake. Thank you for your concern, but believe me, losing my free will is the last thing I’m worried about right now. I’d probably be more concerned about becoming a vampire, but that takes a lot more than just one drink, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The conversion to vampirism takes weeks, even months, and requires several instances of blood-drinking.”

  To cover up the way her stomach twisted at his response, Ashlyn stomped around and pulled herself up onto the horse, fuming silently for several long moments before she looked down at him again. “Are you coming? We need to find Skye.”

  He paused for a moment, looking as though there was something more he wanted to say, but eventually he shook his head and swung up onto his own horse.

  They rode in silence for quite some time, with Ashlyn seething quietly. Drinking blood was gross enough in itself, but it had been a necessary thing, given the situation. Yet somehow he’d made her feel dirty with his reluctance to admit to the act- almost like she wasn’t worth the effort. Knowing Drake and his ever-changing moods, she wasn’t sure whether to be offended or just chalk it up to his usual lack of manners.

  “Where do you think we’ll find Skye?” she asked finally.

  “He was leading them west,” Drake said. “If his plan succeeded, then he should have been able to drive them back again and escape into the forest.”

  “Using the earth stane,” Ashlyn said, nodding as she remembered Skye’s uncanny skill with combat magic. During their battle with the general of the DEMON Army, Skye had save her from falling to her death by using earth. If anyone were able to escape the shift army using magic, it would have been Skye.

  “He planned to circle back and head east to meet us, once he was certain he’d not been followed,” Drake continued.

  Ashlyn remembered the reveal stane then, and turned to untie her shuriken from the back of the saddle. “Hang on just a sec,” she said, and flipped the shuriken over, taking a moment to admire the familiar gleam of reveal within its slots. With everything that was new and frightening, it was comforting to see that some things were still the same. After a moment, she pulled the heal stane out of her armlet and swapped it with the fire stane from the weapon. She’d had too many close calls, and she didn’t want to keep relying on shift to save her every time she lost her shuriken.

  Focusing on reveal, she silently willed it to lead her to Skye. The glittering trail of orange fireflies materialized in front of her, causing her horse to toss its head in surprise at its sudden appearance.

  “Reveal,” Ashlyn said when Drake gave her a questioning glance. “I…um…borrowed it?”

  “Borrowed,” he said, and there was a hint of a smile around his lips.

  “Yeah. Well…” She urged her horse on, following the glittering path, which was significantly less sparkly in the late afternoon sun that streamed through the branches overhead than it had been in the darkness of night.

  Drake’s horse matched pace with hers as they wove their way through the trees, each watching vigilantly for any sign of Toryn ninjas.

  “It was just you and Skye?” Ashlyn asked suddenly, remembering the note she’d left behind the night before.

  Drake glanced over at her, clearly understanding what she was asking and seeming to consider his response. “Vargo stayed in the city,” he said at length. “The Spartans are assisting Restlyn in assuming temporary leadership of Toryn.”

  Leave it to Drake to know exactly what she was thinking. Ashlyn knew she shouldn’t say anything more about it, but her curiosity got the best of her. “Was Vargo…mad?” she asked, dreading the response, but taking a perverse kind of pleasure in asking Drake for details.

  Drake made a noise in his throat, almost like a growl. “No one in FLD approved of your actions, Ashlyn.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t want to hear lectures from him. “I knew you and Skye would come after me. Well…Skye, anyway.”

  He was silent for a moment, and then said, “Only you would question my allegiance in circumstances such as this.”

  “Only you would tell me you don’t feel anything after spouting off about rainbows and destiny,” she retorted, glad for a lead-in to the inevitable argument. “Do you make a habit of seducing people with pretty words and then rejecting them, or is it just me?”

  He looked affronted. “I healed your wounds.”

  “Oh yes, that makes it all better. Ease my suffering by letting me drink your blood. Newsflash, Lockhart, that only works on fixing broken bones, not broken hearts.”

  “Did it mean nothing to you?” he snapped, wheeling his horse about and facing her. “A bond exists between us now that cannot be severed. This is not something to be taken lightly.”

  “No, and nothing involving you ever is, is it?” she burst out. “That’s why we’re so horribly different, and that’s why it was dumb of me to even wonder if you could feel something for an immature brat like me! It’s never that simple with you, you can’t just let go and let things be. I’ll tell you what, Drake, I wish I’d lost my free will, because at least then I wouldn’t have to feel responsible for my stupid decisions and my stupid emotions!”

  They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably just a few moments, her dark eyes boring into his red ones, the tension between them a tangible thing. Eventually Ashlyn turned away, and began to follow the path again. She urged her horse into a slow lope, letting the wind sting her eyes and whip any semblance of tears away.

  As they rode and the minutes ticked by, Ashlyn’s anger began to ebb, and very soon she was feeling quite foolish over her outburst. She had left Toryn in the middle of the night, and rather than chastising her for her stupidity, Drake had come after her. He’d not only rescued her, he had also healed her, an act of magic that took far more skill and concentration than she herself possessed. It seemed awfully petty to beat him up over his lack of romantic interest in her.

  Besides, you’ve already got a man interested in you, a little voice in her head whispered to her, and Ashlyn stifled a smile, her cheeks warming as she once again recalled the passionate kiss that she and Vargo had share
d before she’d sneaked out of Toryn yesterday. It was hard to believe that her feelings had done such a turnaround regarding the red-haired Spartan- a man who had, three years ago, been her sworn enemy. But things had changed since Lord Angelo’s defeat. The Spartans were working for Jackson now, in support of the Free Lands Democracy. And Vargo had made no secret of his interest in her.

  No, if Ashlyn was being honest with herself, in the grand scheme of things, if one had to suffer rejection at the hands of Drake Lockhart, then getting kissed senseless by Vargo immediately afterward was probably the best consolation prize anyone could ask for. She still wasn’t quite sure how to label her feelings for the assassin, having only just moved on from ambivalence to genuine affection, but she supposed there was plenty of time to figure that out after the war was over.

  A flash of movement caught Ashlyn’s eye, and she quickly halted her horse and murmured a command to the reveal stane, extinguishing the trail of fireflies. Drake drew up beside her, staring intently in the direction that she’d seen the disturbance. The only significant hiding place was a large cluster of bushes, big enough to hide several men, but a little too obvious for Ashlyn’s taste.

  “It would be very easy for Toryn ninjas to spring an attack on you right now,” a familiar voice came from behind them, and Ashlyn relaxed, recognizing Skye’s even tone.

  “Not all of them are as stealthy as you are,” she said, turning to meet the swordsman’s obsidian eyes. He smirked up at her as he stepped out from behind a tree, but the jerkiness of his movements as he walked towards her belied the gesture. She could tell he was angry.

  His clothes were torn. The fabric was too dark to see any stains, but there was dried blood smeared on his arms and the exposed bits of his torso. Ashlyn swallowed, a lump in her throat. She knew she had to apologize, but she wasn’t exactly eager to do so.

  Skye led his horse out from behind the bushes they’d been looking at earlier, and mounted up quickly. “Your father’s army is sure to be regrouping,” he said to Ashlyn. “They’ve lost at least a quarter of their forces- perhaps more. It’s very likely that they will relocate, and even more likely that we will lose them if we don’t start tracking them now. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine…thanks to Drake,” Ashlyn said quietly, and sighed. “Skye, I’m sorry. I thought if I could get in and challenge my dad, I might stop the war without any further bloodshed…” She trailed off, uncomfortably aware that this was the same speech she had given Skye when she’d run away from Cosmea. That hadn’t gone according to plan.

  Frustrated, she shrugged and smiled awkwardly. “I’m not going to apologize any more. I wasn’t thinking, and…circumstances being what they were last night, I felt I had a better chance of sneaking in and challenging my dad to a Leadership Duel myself.”

  “What circumstances?” Skye demanded. “You came up with the plan to leave this morning. What changed between the time I left your house and the moment you decided to sneak out of Toryn?”

  “Nothing.” Everything. Blame it on hormones and misguided thoughts of romance. She’d tried to confess her feelings to Drake and he had summarily refused her, and even after Vargo had swooped in to save the day, Ashlyn’s heart was smarting enough that she wanted to avoid traveling with Drake.

  Although looking at her current situation, that plan hadn’t worked out so well either.

  “I knew you would come after me,” she said for Skye’s benefit, “so if something went wrong you would be there to help. Leaving without you showed poor judgment on my part, but...at the time I was feeling a little overwhelmed. Emotionally.” She glanced up at Skye again. “Kou is still alive. The bear that was attacking me- that was him. Did you kill him?”

  Skye, still looking unsatisfied with her excuses, shook his head. “There’s no way to be sure. I was moving pretty quickly. Are you sure it was Kou? Getting shot and falling off Na Michico- surviving that seems unlikely.”

  “I don’t know how he survived,” Ashlyn admitted, “but he did. It was him.” She fidgeted with her reins, shifting her weight in the saddle. “He’s lying to the soldiers he is leading, though. They didn’t seem too keen on attacking me once I claimed to be the Elder Heir. I’m sure they all still think I’m dead.” The only reason that Lord Li had adopted Kou as his heir- according to Kou, anyway- was because the young man had claimed to have a “vision” of Ashlyn being killed by a wolf in the Heavenly City. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the soldiers had all been told the same story.

  “Did you see your father?” Drake asked, speaking for the first time since Skye had joined them.

  Ashlyn shook her head. “Nope. I was inside the cave, trying to find him, but Kou recognized me.” She paused. “I did challenge him to a Leadership Duel, but he denied my heritage. I’m not sure he’s going to follow any of our customs. I mean, this whole time I’ve been trying to avoid getting anyone else involved, but it’s looking like I’m going to have to.”

  “You’re certainly going to have to let us help you,” Skye said in a clipped tone. “No more running off. If we’d gone with you, we might have been able to help you before you were injured. You’ve got to start thinking like a leader, Ashlyn, and leaders don’t abandon their followers.”

  Ashlyn nodded, lowering her chin and sneaking a peek at Drake through her eyelashes. Skye was right, of course, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to blame this entire incident on a certain vampire and his unpredictable behavior.

  “I guess I need to work on my impulsiveness,” she said, genuinely apologetic and hoping she sounded like it. “But I’m here now. I think…I think we should track my father’s army and try again. They’ll be on higher alert now, but it’s still our best chance at getting to my father and Kou and…well…cutting the head off the snake.” She didn’t like the thought of killing either one of them, particularly her father, but her options were becoming limited.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Skye said. “Would you like to use reveal to show us the way?”

  Oops. “Of course,” Ashlyn answered, offering a weak smile. Well, now he was definitely aware that she had stolen it three years ago. At least the stane was coming in handy now. Grabbing her shuriken, she activated the magic and urged her horse towards the glowing path that sprang up before them.

  “Are we planning to capture Devlyn and Lord Li?” Drake spoke up as his horse fell in behind Ashlyn’s.

  “Capture if possible,” Ashlyn said, and hesitated for just a moment. “If it’s not possible, then we’re…just going to have to do what we can. The soldiers can’t fight for long without a leader, so if it comes to that, I am…um, aware that my father might not be taken alive.” Her heart chilled as she said the words, but she ignored the feeling. Now was definitely not the time for emotions. The situation with Drake had already made that exceedingly clear.

  As she rode, with Skye flanking her and Drake lingering further back, she wondered again how Kou had managed to survive his fall off Na Michico. Ashlyn had no idea where Drake’s bullet had struck the younger Toryn, but it had clearly been well-aimed enough to have knocked Kou off the steep cliff and into the roiling ocean below. Kou must have some experience with healing magic. Unless he’d been desperate enough to fake a gunshot wound and take his chances in the water, of course. That seemed a little extreme, even for a man who had falsely professed to be Ashlyn’s younger brother without a trace of shame or conscience.

  She set her jaw at the memory. Kou’s claim that Lord Li was his father had rocked her world to the core. In a fit of rage, she had used a sanding stone to remove the tattoo over her left ankle that signified the Li bloodline and its purity. But after the recent revelations involving Kou and the man he claimed was his- and her- younger brother, Tag, Ashlyn realized that she might have been too hasty.

  And what about her father? What if he hadn’t been unfaithful to her mother? Had he truly been driven mad by shift? Ashlyn felt no particular ill effects after having used the magic twice. If she wa
s unaffected, then why was Lord Li leading an army against his own kingdom? She supposed that the presence of FLD had discouraged him from coming back to reclaim the city of Toryn, but there were so many frustratingly unanswered questions lingering in her thoughts- and that was on top of the total mess of her love life, which up until two weeks ago had been virtually non-existent. See, this was why I steered clear of social circles for the last three years, she told herself bitterly. I seem to attract drama wherever I go.

  Chapter 4

  Twist

  Ashlyn’s eyelids were drooping, but she was reciting the ninety-one Drago proverbs in her head repeatedly, doing her best to stay awake in the lulling twilight. Her horse seemed content to follow Skye’s, plodding along without prompting.

  It seemed anti-climactic, really. All that running and fighting and death-defying earlier, and now here she was, tagging along after Skye and trying not to nod off. Her father’s army was on the move, and once they had found the trampled path telltale of marching soldiers, Ashlyn had put away the reveal stane and allowed Skye to take over. Her tracking skills were good, but Skye’s were exceptional.

  Skye turned then, twisting in the saddle to look back at her, and Ashlyn bolted upright, trying really hard to look alert and vigilant. I wasn’t sleeping, she almost said, but thought better of it. “What?” she asked instead, keeping her voice low.

  “I think we’re close,” Skye said. He halted his horse, turning the animal so that he could face Ashlyn more easily. “I think it might be best if Drake takes the horses and keeps some distance away, while you and I see what we can find.” At her dubious look, he added, “The horses will be too easy to spot. You and I can get much closer without them.”

  In no way did Ashlyn feel comfortable with giving up her horse, especially after the narrow escape she and Drake had managed back at the cave, but…she supposed that Skye was right. “Fine,” she said grudgingly. Skye dismounted, and she followed suit, meekly following the blond man as he led his horse towards Drake.