The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (28 page)

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 father is," Ashlyn said, her voice thick with
tears. "I need to find him. I need to stop this. I need…to be…a
leader…" 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.

"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, 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 coat 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 this was
so
unfair.

"I'm
so…so
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
three years and I've been perfectly
fine
, thank you very much, and the
minute I step back into civilization I get this war 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 had 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 adopted sister, 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
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, and 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 where the coat had slipped off, 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 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 three 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.

Three
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. "But
she came to me one night, three 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…? 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 three 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 almost twenty years," he replied. "You dragged me out
of the coffin nonetheless."

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

His
eyebrows quirked, obviously in disagreement.

Ashlyn
frowned, trying hard to focus. "I only asked you to start thinking of
yourself as a man,
                           
Drake, instead of a monster. That's hardly the same thing."

"I'm
asking you to think of yourself as a leader," he said. "You've spent
so long running from responsibility that you think yourself incapable of
fulfilling your birthright."

"We
haven't seen each other in three years. You don't know what I'm capable of-
I
don't even know what I'm capable of."

He
grabbed her hand, abruptly, and brought it up to his chest. Through the cloth
of his shirt, his skin was warm to the touch, and Ashlyn let him press her hand
against the solidness of his shoulder, confused as to what he was doing.

"This,"
he said, his voice low, "is where I was struck by Devlyn's sword."