The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (30 page)

Running
had always been a release for her when she had too much pent-up energy. Over
the last few weeks it had become her lifeline. When she pushed herself almost
to the breaking point, all the awful thoughts and realizations, all the guilt
and festering anger vanished for just a moment.

For a
second or two, the invisible, crushing weight of shame and responsibility was
lifted from her shoulders, and Ashlyn was free.

Her
breath came out in short puffs of steam, the cold air turning her sweat frosty
as Ashlyn plowed forward, legs pumping, fingers curved in a claw-like fashion,
as though she could pull herself along using the cold air as leverage.

Her
sneakers pounded on the rocky ground leading up Na Michico. The smooth soles
slipped a little on the stones and loose dirt, but an entire childhood of scrambling
haphazardly up the mountain had left Ashlyn too confident to think about
slowing down now. Her lungs were clenching, begging for air, and finally she
skidded to a halt, teetering unsteadily for just a second before she started
walking, gulping in deep, deliberate breaths as she tried to slow her pounding
heart.

Ashlyn
wasn't stupid. She knew exactly what she was doing- trying to run away from the
issues unfurling back in Toryn, pretty much literally. Every day, she stood at
the edge of Na Michico, looking longingly down at the ocean below and wanting
so badly to jump. Would she survive? No one ever had, at least as far as she
knew, but the possibility of getting away from everything would almost be worth
the risk of death.

If she
were a stronger person, or maybe just a more mature person, Ashlyn knew she'd
be handling this a lot better. Three years had blurred her memories a bit, but
she seemed to recall Skye taking on the role of leader with considerably more
ease than she was.

She
looked down at the steep drop-off beside her, following the edge of the path up
to the pile of boulders teetering at the end of another sharp turn.
If those boulders weren't there,
she
thought,
I might actually be able to jump
across that dry waterfall, to the end
of
the path, rather than walking twice as long to take the long way around.

Frowning,
she turned back towards the longer way around, scuffing her sneakers in the
dirt. No use trying to distract herself with idle thoughts.
I'm just not a natural leader,
she mused
silently,
no matter what Drake Lockhart
thinks.

Of
course, the fact that Drake hadn't spoken more than two words to her since
their emotional encounter that day might have had something to do with her sour
attitude. Ashlyn wasn't exactly an expert on these sorts of things, but the
first time she'd seen Drake after that, she'd smiled the biggest, goofiest,
most embarrassed smile she could muster, and he hadn't even acknowledged her
presence, instead walking past her to lean over and mutter something in Trace's
ear.

Maybe
Drake regretted what had happened between them.

She
raised her left hand, sliding the fingers of her opposite hand over the grooves
between her knuckles, remembering how gentle his touch had been. Not that
pulling slivers of wood out of someone's flesh was particularly romantic, but
then, most situations had at least a touch of morbidity when you threw Drake
Lockhart into the mix.

Ashlyn's
footsteps crunched as she crossed the last ten feet to the edge of the Na
Michico cliff, and the mountain wind ripped at her clothes. She took a deep
breath, closing her eyes to inhale the scent of her homeland.

How
many times had she stood in this very spot in the last eighteen years,
searching her soul for what to do next? She'd lost count so long ago. She had
come here when her mother died, Ashlyn remembered that, when the DEMON army had
invaded and held Toryn under martial law for what seemed like an eternity.

So many
times before, she had come here in moments of utter emotional turmoil, but for
whatever reason, it was a place of peace for her. It was the only place of
peace that she could find on this island. Even her house was tainted now, as
much a part of the twisted, miserable web as anything else that made up this
tarnished reality.

She was
shivering, chilled with sweat and the cold, rain-heavy wind. The smell of the
ocean made her think of her father, teaching her to swim when she was just a
little kid, forcing her to paddle even when she was scared and crying.

Everything
about Toryn made her think of him, and that hurt. Ashlyn sank to her knees,
twisting and untwisting the hem of her shirt. It was tough to think about her
father, and to come to terms with the new mental image she had of him. He'd
always been a real jerk, turning Toryn into a tourist trap to make money and of
course treating Ashlyn like some bratty little kid who needed to grow up and
start acting like the princess she was supposed to be.

Over
the past three years, Ashlyn had been glad to be rid of him, for the most part,
glad to have the freedom to do what she wanted without having him glowering
over her shoulder like some really old-man-ish extension of her conscience.

But
first and foremost, he was still her father, and at the edge of sanity Ashlyn
was still a little girl who was madly in love with her daddy. She could
remember every little smidgen of affection that she'd ever felt for him, from
the time he'd taught her how to fly a kite to the time he'd grounded her for
two months for swiping stanes from the local shop. Secretly she was pretty sure
he'd been proud of her for the theft, but the old shop-keeper hadn't been too
pleased, and Lord Li was all about keeping up appearances.

Loving
her dad, and hating him too, was pretty easy either way. Ashlyn wasn't particularly
concerned about which emotion it was- she was always one or the other with him.
But this…this ambivalence…this horrible, aching sadness yawning inside her like
a giant void where her self-assurance used to be…this was not so simple to deal
with.

Lord Li
may have been many things, a liar, a cheat, an emotionless jerk, but he was
never the villain. That was always reserved for people like Lord Angelo. Evil
people. People that Ashlyn could actually justify killing, if she thought about
it long enough.

She had
kept her distance from her friends, for the most part, since Drake's
unexpectedly sweet speech in her father's home. She still felt like FLD was
pitying her, and who wouldn't? It was her selfish stupidity that had caused
this war in the first place. Maybe if she'd been here, Lord Li wouldn't have
gone off the deep end, maybe the
shift
magic
would still be safe in the mountains of Na Michico where no one would find it.

Maybe
she would have made peace with her father, stopped him from growing so close to
Kou. Kou…who seemed eager, almost desperate to get close to her. Making up for
lost time, maybe. He'd followed her up this mountain path the first couple
times, but he didn't seem to understand that she wanted to be alone.

Was it
really so hard to figure out how she was feeling? Even Kou should understand
why Ashlyn wasn’t so keen on socializing. In a matter of days, her entire world
had crumbled around her. Everything she'd thought would be safe and secure
whenever she came back to it was now turned completely upside-down.

Frowning,
Ashlyn stood, brushing grit from her pants. Most emotions seemed to ease with
time, but this confusion and frustration over her dad had only gotten worse.
Could she challenge him? Could she kill him, if necessary? That scared her more
than anything. Ashlyn had never battled a foe that she wouldn't have been able
to kill, if she had to. But she wasn't sure if she could actually kill her
father.

Skye
was waiting for her when she got to the bottom of the mountain path, leaning up
against a tree, ankles crossed, arms folded across his chest.

"Couldn't
wait to see me all hot and sweaty, huh," Ashlyn said, without feeling.

He
ignored her half-hearted flirtation. "Sara has something," he said.
"With the samples she took from Soryl."

"Oh,
lovely. That's exactly how I want to spend my morning."

The
corner of his mouth turned up, and he put his hand on her back briefly as he
moved to walk beside her, guiding her in the right direction.

Little
things like that- comforting her without using any words or any significant
gestures- probably would have made Ashlyn's crush flare up all over again a
week ago. But right now she was just grateful that Skye understood, on some
level.

"Did
Sara say anything about what she found?" she asked him.

He shook
his head. "She just said to get you."

"Fun."
Ashlyn lengthened her stride to match Skye's, but came up a little short- her
legs just weren't long enough. She furrowed her brow, exasperated.

He
noticed, and glanced at her. "Something on your mind?"

"Lots
of somethings," she said, and shortened her stride again so that she took
two steps to his one. "I was just thinking about- about you and me. I
mean, our relationship. I mean-" That sounded horrifying- "whoa, not
a relationship, but this mentorship thing we’ve got going. You were the leader
before, and now you're trying so hard to help me be the leader, but I'm just no
good at it. Square peg, round hole. You must be frustrated out of your
mind."

"No,"
he said immediately. "I was there too. It hasn't been that long."

"I
feel so heavy all the time," Ashlyn said. "It's like I can't breathe
sometimes. Like I can't even move."

"Weight
of the world," Skye replied. "It's a burden all leaders have to deal
with."

"I'm
not a natural-born leader."

"Leaders
aren't born, Ash. They're made." He shook his head when she spoke again,
stopping her mid-sentence with the gesture. "I wasn't a leader. I was just
following Jax around, trying to help out where I could. And after he was…gone…I
knew I had to step up because there was no one else.”

He
stopped halfway across the bridge to the lab, and leaned against the railing,
his expression grave. Ashlyn turned to face him and mimicked his relaxed pose,
trying to look nonchalant.

Skye
turned his face towards the rising sun, the first rays lighting his handsome
features with a strange, tormented beauty. The illumination lasted for only a
moment before clouds obscured the sunrise, and they were plunged into grayness
again.

"The
burden of saving the sun was bad enough," Skye said slowly, "but then
to be pretending to be something I wasn't, constantly worried that people would
find out I had no idea what I was doing…I almost snapped a couple of times.
Stuck inside my mind and trapped by my own lies and insecurities. Tortured by
my own failure."

Ashlyn
stayed silent as it began to rain. Skye pushed away from the railing and
started walking, and she followed quietly. In the back of her mind a little
voice was asking why, what with Drake's speech and Restlyn's epiphany and
Skye's current revelation, she wasn't having any clarifying moments of her own.
Life just wasn't fair sometimes.

Aik
raised his head and nodded once to them as they walked up to the lab entrance.
He was curled up in a fuzzy gray ball underneath the tile awning that spanned
the length of the laboratory, his hair standing nearly on end from the
humidity. Clearly not his favorite type of weather.

Ashlyn
smiled apologetically at the wolf as she pulled open the door and stepped
inside. She was greeted by a rush of cool air, and shivered again, shutting the
door behind her. Skye remained outside, taking his role as sidekick way too
seriously.

"Ash,"
Sara greeted her informally from behind a pair of bottle-thick lenses. She was
beautiful in a nerdy kind of way, but blinder than a bat without her glasses-
which Ashlyn found slightly amusing. Sara wasn't known for being particularly
social, either. Ashlyn bowed low, grateful for once that she didn't need to
make small talk.

"What
did you figure out?" she asked, straightening up.

Sara
picked up a folder and flipped it open, scattering photos across the metal
counter top as she did so. They were pictures of Soryl's arm, the strange,
snaking lines that Ashlyn had noticed days earlier.

"These
are what we call
urme de injectare,
" Sara said. "Simply
translated- track marks, from intravenous drug use. A result of the use of
blunt injecting equipment, like a re-usable syringe with a dulled needle. After
a while, the veins start to darken from the scarring, and occasionally the
build-up of toxins contributes to the tracks."

"Soryl
was a junkie?" Ashlyn said, frowning. She'd heard of drug use, but
certainly not in Toryn- it was far more prevalent in coastal cities such as
January Harbor, where the trade industry was thriving and dealers had easy
access to their product. "I've seen pictures of track marks before though,
and they didn't really look like what was on Soryl's arm."

"Well,
the appearance of track marks depends on what is being injected into the vein.
If the expients found in an illicit substance are water soluble, track marks
usually won't show at all. Expients that aren't water soluble- paregoric, for
example- cause intense sclerotic reaction."