Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  “You remind me so much of myself, at your age,” he whispered. “You are very much a natural leader, Ashlyn, but that does not mean it is your calling.”

  “It’s my destiny,” she said. “My birthright.”

  His lips curved slightly. “That is what my father told me when I declined to ascend.”

  “But you did it anyway, because it was your responsibility.”

  “I did it because I felt I had no other choice, no obligation but to the people of Toryn.” He paused, seeming to consider his words. “I was wrong. I had an obligation to myself.”

  What? Ashlyn let her dad’s hand lower to her lap, still clutching his fingers tightly.

  “Toryn broke my spirit,” he said, and his eyes were misty with memories. “I wanted to save my kingdom, but I could not fully dedicate myself to a cause I did not want, and Toryn and I both suffered for my half-hearted attempt at ruling.”

  “Dad,” Ashlyn said unsteadily, “I’m not trying to get out of being Lady of Toryn. I’m not running again.”

  He smiled gently at her. “If you want to lead, Ashlyn, I will help you. If you do not wish to become Lady of Toryn, however, that is your decision. I would not force you to accept your birthright. Perhaps…” He trailed off, visibly exhausted, before continuing, “Perhaps I would have, three years ago. But not now. Besides…” His eyes fluttered shut, his whisper barely audible when he said, “There are other…options.”

  Ashlyn waited for a moment, dying to know more. But her dad was fast asleep, his fingers lax against hers. Sighing, she placed his hands on his chest and glanced up at the IV bag. It was still more than half full.

  She lied down beside Lord Li and put her hand over his. She’d be here when he woke up. They’d already spent far too much time apart.

  Eventually she drifted off to sleep, but her dreams were violent and fitful- reenactments of the battles she’d fought over the last week, with different endings each time. The worst memory was from when she had rescued Lord Li from Kou’s army, and Drake had lost resist. Each time she relived the incident, something different happened. Once she had to kill Drake to save her father. Once she watched helplessly as Drake bit Lord Li and drained what was left of his blood. Once Skye entered and engaged in a bloody battle with Drake, with Ashlyn at a loss as to how she could help.

  It was a relief for Ashlyn when she finally woke up, and when her eyes opened, the first thing she saw was her dad’s peaceful profile, a slight smile on his lips. The light was still on, and Ashlyn shifted on the bed, thinking she should probably turn it off.

  As she rolled onto her back, she started at the sight of a man standing beside the bed.

  It was Kou.

  He smirked down at her. “Hello, Ashlyn.”

  In the next instant she saw the flash of her bo shuriken in his hand, and he brought it down, intending to impale her with it. Ashlyn rolled off the bed, crashing into his legs as the shuriken ripped into the mattress where she had been lying moments before.

  Her mind was still fuzzy with sleep, but Ashlyn had the presence of mind to grab onto Kou’s leg as it moved right by her head. She bared her teeth and bit fiercely into his calf, eliciting a squawk from the Toryn man. He fell backwards, colliding with the wardrobe against the wall. His momentum knocked the huge piece of furniture sideways, and it scraped along the wall as it fell, landing with a crash on the floor in front of the door.

  Ashlyn leaped up and danced backwards as Kou swiped at her legs with her hira shuriken. He scrambled to his feet, edging around the bed as Ashlyn advanced on him. She glanced over, noticed that the window was open and immediately cursed her stupidity for not considering it as an entrance point sooner.

  “Did you forget about reveal?” Kou taunted her, waving the hira shuriken in front of his face. Her stanes glittered at her from the weapon. Ashlyn hadn’t known that anybody outside of FLD even knew how to use reveal, but she was so livid that she didn’t stop to wonder how Kou had figured it out.

  “You are dead,” she hissed, advancing another step.

  “I don’t think so. Correction: your father is dead,” Kou snarled.

  Ashlyn’s heart skipped a beat.

  Things seemed to be moving in slow motion as she turned her head, looking at her father, who was still lying in bed, sleeping peacefully. Ashlyn’s eyes moved to his IV tube, and she saw with immense horror that there was a depleted syringe poking out from the tube, its needle embedded into the IV line.

  The terror in her heart nearly caused her to miss Kou flinging the shuriken at her, but Ashlyn saw the glimmer of the weapon from the corner of her eye and spun aside just in time. The shuriken grazed her neck, and she simultaneously felt the sting of the cut and heard the shuriken embed itself in the wall behind her.

  There was a rattling at the door. “Ashlyn!” Aik bellowed, and the door shook as he flung himself against it from outside.

  When Ashlyn turned back, Kou was gone. She rushed to her father’s side. “Dad!” she cried, shaking his shoulders. “Dad, are you okay?”

  Lord Li did not respond.

  “Dad!” she screamed in his face, shaking harder. “Wake up!”

  “Ashlyn, let us in!” Sara’s voice, high and fearful, permeated the haze of Ashlyn’s consciousness. She stumbled to the door and grabbed the edge of the wardrobe. She couldn’t move it. Grunting, Ashlyn threw herself down on the floor and braced her feet against the heavy wood bed, pushing her back up against the wardrobe and shoving it out of the way of the door.

  The door banged open, hitting her in the arm, but Ashlyn was too numb to care. “Help my dad!” she yelled at Sara, pointing at the bed. White-faced, the older woman ran to Lord Li’s side and began searching for a pulse.

  “Help me move him to the floor,” she called after a moment, and Ashlyn scrambled to grab her dad’s legs, helping Sara to haul him out of the bed and onto the rug.

  Sara crossed her hands over Lord Li’s heart and began to pump. “One, two, three-”

  Ashlyn drew a breath, hardly realizing she hadn’t been breathing at all this whole time, and turned her horror-stricken gaze to Aik, who was standing in the doorway. His wolfish expression, normally so serene, was grave.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Sara chanted as she pressed on Lord Li’s chest. She stopped and crouched down, fixing her mouth over his and breathing life-giving air into his lungs.

  Ashlyn sat silently as Sara worked, her blood roaring in her ears. This was not possible. This was not happening. Any moment now she would wake up next to her dad, and he would be fine and they would be safe, and Aaron would be coming to get them tomorrow.

  She stood, and wandered to the hira shuriken in the wall. It stuck fast when she tried to pull it out, embedded too deeply into the thick wood to be removed easily. Ashlyn slid reveal out from its slot. Better to keep the magic safe with her, where no one could get hold of it.

  The bo shuriken caught her eye next, poking comically out of the mattress. Ashlyn walked to it and pulled it free from its feathered resting place. She finally had her bo shuriken back. That was better, too.

  She turned back to Sara just in time to see the older woman sit back on her heels, tears streaming down her face.

  “I’m sorry, Ashlyn,” Sara said, and her voice was muffled, like it was coming from inside a bubble. “He’s gone.”

  This is not happening.

  Ashlyn tried to draw a breath, but it caught in her throat, and she backed away from Sara. “I don’t understand,” she said, and her voice was muffled, too.

  She bumped into the open window, feeling the cold draft from outside, and shivered. Kou had escaped through this window.

  Kou had killed her father.

  Ashlyn turned and climbed out the window, sinking up to her ankles in the snow outside. She vaguely heard Aik and Sara calling her name, but she ignored them, running into the night in search of her father’s murderer.

  Chapter 10

  The Vision

  Her breath came i
n quick, painful gasps, more like a habitual spasm of her lungs than the act of breathing. The reveal stane was clenched in her fist, bright orange rays emanating from between her fingers and tracing the path before her as she ran. The bo shuriken was in her other hand.

  Ashlyn’s heart was pouring from her, sucked from her with every agonizing exhalation. The pain was indescribable. There was a gaping hole inside her, as though she’d been stabbed through, but with no physical evidence to show for it.

  Her intent was single-minded.

  Find Kou, and kill him.

  It was bitterly cold, and she’d been running for what seemed like hours. The tears on her face had long ago turned to ice, melting and re-freezing as she pushed her body beyond its intended limits. Still the orange path stretched on before her.

  It was dark outside of North Camp, with the only light coming from a sliver of moon above that disappeared behind the clouds intermittently. The only sound besides her breathing was the crunch of her sneakers in the snow. The shifting light from the stane cast everything in an eerie light, the shadows stretching beyond the illumination proving almost more ominous than the darkness itself.

  She had some idea of where the magic was leading her, but nonetheless felt a surge of uncertainty when the first spire of the Heavenly City rose up out of the darkness before her. The City was dead, a graveyard filled with whispering spirits and lingering magic. She hadn’t ventured inside since Jenn’s death three years prior- few people did.

  Ashlyn paused at the edge of the cliff, allowing for only a split second of indecision before she turned, shoving the reveal stane into her pocket and the bo shuriken into her waistband as she pushed sideways, her sneakers sliding on the slick incline as she skidded down the canyon wall. The blackness came up and swallowed her as the magic of the stane dwindled, and Ashlyn scrabbled for a hold on the cliff face, slowing her descent as much as she could.

  She landed waist-deep in water at the bottom, and momentarily forgot how to breathe as the freezing cold enveloped her. Ashlyn drew in a shaky breath, feeling it rattle in her lungs, and whispered a few words through her chattering teeth. The reveal stane lit up from her pocket, a flickering trail of orange fireflies tracing a path through the water. She eased forward, pushing chunks of ice out of the way, shivering violently and trying to make as little noise as possible.

  Jenn had once told her that without the power of the Angels, the Heavenly City would someday begin to sink into the icy depths of the lake on which it rested. It appeared that the other girl had been right. From what little Ashlyn could see, the water covered everything. The stunning pearl-tiled street glinted at her from beneath the water, ominous and un-alive in the eerie stillness. Ashlyn paused, fresh tears springing to her eyes as she remembered the last time she had walked these streets, three years ago, wondering if her father would ever believe her when she told him of the grandeur she had witnessed.

  The fireflies took a sharp left, leading up a short staircase to higher ground, and Ashlyn followed, blinking furiously to stay her tears. If she had been cold in the water, stepping out of it was another shock to her body, as the breeze she hadn’t even noticed before somehow managed to turn her clothes to ice against her skin. Even at the top of the steps, her ankles were still submerged, making it even more difficult to move quietly through the water.

  She paused next to a building with a long, curving spire, watching with knitted brows as the fireflies sparked and swirled around each other, leading through the open doorway. If Kou was inside, it would probably be best to still the magic and try to track him herself. She murmured a word to end the spell, and was plunged into darkness, barely able to see even an inch in front of her face.

  Ashlyn stepped through the doorway, keeping close to the wall, partially for support because the cold was sapping her strength, and partly so she wouldn’t lose her way. As her eyes adjusted in the faint moonlight streaming through the door, she saw a winding staircase, with what appeared to be polished marble steps, spiraling up into darkness.

  It was so cold that she couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet, and after the first few steps, Ashlyn paused to remove her water-logged sneakers, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to fight with them on. She ascended the staircase slowly, struggling in vain to control her quaking body. There was no way to find her center, but she was trying to quell the rage that seethed through every part of her being and the horrible emptiness that challenged it. It was all she could do.

  At the top of the staircase was another open door. Drawing her bo shuriken from her waistband, Ashlyn crept forward, crouching next to the doorway. The door opened onto a balcony with white pillars as a railing. She tried to peer around the edge of the door, checking to see if there was anyone behind it. A flutter of movement caught her eye on the other side, and Ashlyn heard the distinctive scrape of a boot on the marble floor. She held her breath for a moment. This was it. This was her chance to avenge her father’s death and finally put an end to it all.

  Suddenly she felt something press against the back of her neck. “Move. Now,” a voice said in Toryn.

  Tag!

  Ashlyn shifted ever so slightly, and the katana at her neck followed her, glinting in the faint light. She hadn’t counted on Tag being here, too.

  Kou emerged from behind the door, his expression completely void. “You have caused enough trouble for me, Ashlyn Li,” he said in a low voice.

  Their eyes met, and Ashlyn’s heartbeat thudded in her ears as she stared at the man who had killed her father.

  He spoke again. “It’s time to die.”

  Reluctantly, Ashlyn dropped the shuriken, and as Kou picked it up and flung it over the railing of the balcony, she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders once more.

  She had failed.

  The blade of the katana was only discernible through the light pressure it was exerting on her skin. Ashlyn was so cold that she could barely feel the bite of the steel. In a wave of sudden nostalgia, she recalled the battle with the wolves outside Landi. There weren’t many hostile creatures in the canyons of Landi, and Ashlyn had been pathetically ill-equipped for battle. She’d been carrying a hira shuriken with no stanes, but had still fought back, ready to kill the wolves or die trying.

  In an instant, that feeling came rushing back to her- the same survival instinct Ashlyn had honed over the last three years, the do-or-die mentality that was essential to a true ninja.

  A true ninja like her dad.

  Ashlyn dropped to the floor and spun onto her back, her feet scissoring out and striking Tag in the kneecaps. He yelped in pain, swung the katana, but Ashlyn was already moving, flipping up as the sword sliced the air beneath her. She touched the floor and spun in a roundhouse kick that smashed Tag against the wall with its force. Ashlyn flipped backwards, end over end to the edge of the balcony, avoiding Kou’s rush as much as giving herself room to move. On the last flip she landed on her feet and grabbed the balcony railing, letting her momentum carry her legs around in a half-circle as she held on for dear life. It was a breathless split second as she glanced back, seeing the vast, beautiful emptiness of the city beneath her, before she completed the arc and drove her feet into Kou’s chest. He flew backwards, and Ashlyn dropped to the floor, one hand splayed on the slick marble.

  Tag came at her as she found her footing, and Ashlyn rose and sidestepped in one motion, striking out with the heel of her hand. He blocked the hit, swung his right fist around, but Ashlyn sidestepped again. They parried jabs and punches, and Ashlyn, as much out of desperation as anything, called down a fire spell to singe him just as Kou jumped back into the fray with his own sword. Tag staggered backwards, screaming as he tried to pound out the flames that had suddenly erupted on his shoulder.

  Ashlyn ducked a slice from Kou’s sword, and spun, bringing her fist around to backhand him. He took the hit but managed to land a kick to her thigh, knocking her leg out from underneath her. She caught herself on the ground with one hand and quickly rolled
out of the way as he brought the sword down again. Up and running, she dashed for the door and snatched up the katana Tag had been holding, falling to her knees and bending backwards as she blocked yet another strike from Kou’s sword. She spun on her knees, but he had guessed her move and easily jumped over her swinging blade.

  She sprang to her feet and advanced furiously, driving him back. Somewhere in her mind, it registered that Tag was still screaming, but she didn’t want to give up the advantage she had over Kou even to look and see where the other man was. She dodged a stab from Kou and swung the katana in a downward arc. Kou leaped back, but her aim was true, superficially slicing him from chest to abdomen. He gasped and stumbled backwards. Ashlyn didn’t stop to offer mercy, leaping forward to finish him off.

  She raised her arm, drawing back to slash at Kou’s exposed neck, but then a snarling bundle of fur smashed into her from the side, strong jaws latching onto her left arm and knocking her into the railing. Ashlyn screamed as the momentum flipped them both over the marble pillars, sending her careening towards the water below. The tearing pressure let up on her arm as the wolf released its hold on her, the howling animal spiraling away from her as they fell, and for one eternal instant Ashlyn was staring up at the sliver of the moon, a silent moment of perfection in darkness.

  It was in that moment that she realized this had been Kou’s vision, the vision her father had described to her in North Camp. The vision where she was killed by a wolf.

  She landed hard, on her back, and even with the water breaking her fall, she still hit the ground beneath with a bone-jarring thud. The breath was forced from her lungs in one huge whoosh of bubbles. Ashlyn felt the cold seeping into her bones, and forced herself to keep her eyes open, a voice screaming in her head to get moving, to get out of the cold before she froze to death. She looked up, saw the moon above, and briefly noted that she was bleeding, thick tendrils of bloody water snaking through the light above her.