The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (34 page)

One- she was crazy about Drake
Lockhart, a vampire who sometimes displayed less personality than a hunk of
driftwood, and someone she had no business being crazy about in the first
place, considering he was immortal, angst-ridden, painfully gorgeous, and
entirely
out of her league.

And two- she wasn’t ready to be
Lady of Toryn.

But there had been no one to pass
the responsibility off to, because she was the Elder Heir. The only heir.

At the time, running away had
seemed like a pretty good option.

Obviously running away three
years ago had set the tone for the rest of her life, because last night, Ashlyn
had run away again- only this time, she was running towards responsibility, not
away from it. She was determined to face her father and challenge him for
leadership of Toryn.

Ashlyn hiccupped, wiping her face
with the back of her hand and trying to blink through the tears as she stared
at her mother’s headstone. Her chin trembled as sobs threatened to overcome her
once more.

Susyn Li’s grave was at the end
of a long, lonely canyon, bordered on all sides by steep dirt walls. There were
no other graves, but Ashlyn had always liked it that way, preferring the
solitude of her mother’s final resting place to the busier location of the
public Toryn cemeteries.

It wasn’t technically in the
desert, but at this time of year it certainly looked that way. Toryns had
always called this place The Barrens, because in the winter it was pretty much
desolate, the heavy winds sweeping away dead vegetation in anticipation of the
coming spring. After the cold had passed, creeping vines with small blue
flowers would cover the cliff walls, turning the empty canyon into a beautiful
secret garden.

But right now, there was no hint
of color, no reprieve from the droll grayness of the canyon. Autumn was turning
its back on the island, and this area was one of the first to lose its foliage
to early freezes, hungry scavengers and the winds. The artificial cherry
blossom branches Ashlyn had brought with her from her home in the city looked
out of place in the bare canyon, and it felt even stranger to leave fake
flowers instead of real ones, but Ashlyn hadn’t had any time to be picky.

The cherry blossoms were pink,
but their centers were much darker, almost a deep red, reminiscent of Drake
Lockhart’s vermilion eyes. Ashlyn could still remember the conflicted look in
those eyes when she’d finally confessed her feelings last night, the mixture of
shame and despair.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she
whispered as she stood, shaking in the moonlight. “You made your feelings
pretty clear,
didn’t you, Drake?”

She didn’t have a right to be
angry, but she was. More than angry. Furious. At herself, at that idiot vampire
Drake Lockhart, at Vargo for stepping in at her most vulnerable moment and
confusing her with that kiss.

Nothing made sense anymore, and
she didn’t want to think about it.

She’d spent more time lingering
at the gravesite than she’d intended. Ashlyn quickly retraced her steps back to
the canyon’s entrance and set off again on her original path, following the
coast towards the southern half of the island. Pulling her mask up to cover the
lower half of her face again, she reached into her knapsack and withdrew a
gleaming orange gem- the
reveal
stane
she’d swiped off Skye when they’d parted ways three years ago.

She lifted the stane, intending
to slide it into a space in her armlet, then paused, realizing that there were
no empty slots. There were two spaces for stanes in her armlet, and she usually
kept a
heal
stane in one slot and
left the other one empty, but she’d completely forgotten about the
shift
stane she had taken from one of
her father’s soldiers during the battle for the pagoda. After some
deliberation, Ashlyn unstrapped her hira shuriken from her back, placing the
stane into one of the weapon’s empty slots instead.

She whispered a few words,
concentrating hard on the tiny orb, and tiny sparks erupted from the stane,
spiraling through the air before gently touching down on the sand. As she
watched, the swirling little fireflies formed a short path in front of her,
extending each time she took a step, and Ashlyn smiled in spite of herself.
Reveal
was one of the strongest and
rarest magics in existence. The sparks from the stane led its user directly
towards whatever it was they were seeking. There were some drawbacks to the magic-
such as the possibility of the sparks alerting your enemy that you were
approaching, or the magic’s tendency to take the most direct route, even if
said route was off a cliff or through a raging river. But it had proved
invaluable during their battle against Lord Angelo.

The moon was pulling itself
slowly to the east, so that Ashlyn’s shadow stretched out to her right, long
and thin, as she picked her way along the beach. She tried to stay on the
hard-packed dirt farthest from the water so that her tracks were less visible.
Here, on the center stretch of the island, there were no trees or dense foliage
to use as cover, so she had to move quickly. Ashlyn picked up her pace,
sprinting after the fireflies as the glittering path unfurled ahead of her.

She didn’t have much time before
FLD discovered that she was missing, but she’d made pretty good time moving
away from the city of Toryn, heading towards the southern half of the island.
Ashlyn wasn’t quite sure how FLD would react to the simple note she’d left
behind. She’d scrawled it hastily, her own thoughts and emotions too
complicated to convey in words.

I
have to face my father alone.

The events of the night had been
a serious blow to whatever stability Ashlyn had been clinging to in her mind-
and her heart. After finally working up the guts to tell Drake how she felt, he
had outright rejected her, and walked away.

For the last three years, Ashlyn
had kept her feelings for Drake a total secret. She’d swallowed her jealousy
over his somewhat confusing relationship with Trace, one of the Spartan
assassins who now worked for the president of FLD, and she’d told herself that
her ridiculous crush on the vampire would pass soon enough.

But last night, she’d tried to
confess her feelings to him.

Ashlyn still wasn’t sure what
she’d expected from Drake. He was a ridiculously old, frustratingly square
vampire who spent more time wallowing in his own angst than developing
meaningful relationships with other people. Not exactly boyfriend material.

Vargo, the red-haired Spartan,
had swept in the moment Drake was gone. He’d heard everything.

Ashlyn pursed her lips beneath
her mask, remembering the feel of Vargo’s mouth on hers. Their first kiss had
been about a week ago, in the village of Industry. That first time, she’d only
kissed him as a distraction so she could get close enough to knock him
unconscious. Last night’s kiss was a different story. What she felt for Vargo
wasn’t the same as the yearning she was experiencing for Drake, but the
electricity in Vargo’s touch was undeniable.

If anyone felt responsible for
her departure from Toryn, Ashlyn hoped that it was not Vargo. She wasn’t
entirely over her initial dislike for him- they had been enemies for so long,
after all- but he didn’t deserve to feel guilty.

Drake, on the other hand…

Ashlyn grimaced, still running,
and followed the glittering orange path as it snaked around a single tree in
the middle of the beach. She was getting closer to the forest now. Trees were
popping up sporadically, a welcome change from the bare terrain she’d been
seeing for the past several miles.

No, in all honesty, she didn’t
want Drake to wonder if she had left because of him, either. This was something
she had to do on her own. She couldn’t stomach the thought of Skye, their
former leader, one of her closest friends and the man who had defeated Lord
Angelo when it seemed all but impossible, challenging her dad in combat. She
absolutely had to face Lord Li alone. If she didn’t, she would never forgive
herself, and in her heart she truly hoped that Skye would understand that.

Skye had been angry before, when
she’d left Cosmea with Kou, intending to confront Lord Devlyn and try to reason
with him. After her plan had completely backfired and she’d discovered that Kou
was, in fact, Lord Devlyn in disguise, Ashlyn had felt more than a little
stupid. But like most of her hair-brained schemes, things had worked themselves
out in the end. She could only hope that what she was doing right now would
achieve the same results, and anyway, she had no doubt that Skye would come
after her once he realized she was gone. Her intention was to somehow locate
her father before Skye found her.

Ashlyn ducked under a low-hanging
branch, noting that she was in the outskirts of the forest now. She slowed to a
walk, her thin-soled boots making no sound on the leaf-strewn forest floor. She
must be close now, close to the
shift
army,
close to…

…Her father.

As if her fear over Skye’s
reaction and the confusing situation with Drake and Vargo weren’t enough, she
still had yet to come to terms with the fact that her father was leading the
shift
army. She wondered if Kou had been
reporting back to Lord Li. Her throat tightened at the thought. She hadn’t seen
her father in more than three years, and although her heartstrings weren’t
exactly wrapped around his memory as tightly as they had once been, he was
still her father, and she loved him. The thought that she might have to fight
him or- or worse,
kill
him- wasn’t
anything she wanted to contemplate right now.

You’d
better start contemplating,
she
told herself harshly, trying to drudge up some good old-fashioned rage,
because you’re going to have to deal with it
sooner or later, and hesitating at the wrong moment could mean a very sad end
for you.

There was a rustling to her
right, and Ashlyn started, thoughts scattering as she crouched low and
whispered a word to dissipate the
reveal
magic’s
trail. In the darkness, she could barely see a faint outline of another person,
moving towards her carefully, not bothering to use any of the trees for cover.
Relying on the darkness, perhaps? Ashlyn frowned. His movements were
calculated. Deliberately slow.

He was trying to distract her.

The hairs on the back of her neck
stood on end, and she launched herself forward, yanking the shuriken off her
back as she rolled and came up on her feet. Behind her, where she had been
crouching only a moment before, there was a
shhhhink
as a katana blade sliced through the air and hit the ground. Ashlyn whirled
and took one step towards the swordsman, lashing out with her shuriken and
landing a cut across the other ninja’s throat. He went down instantly. As she
stepped back, turning, a throwing star caught her in the right shoulder. Ashlyn
grunted with the pain and dropped to all fours as several more throwing stars,
all smaller versions of her oversized hira shuriken, went flying overhead.

Reaching up with her left hand,
Ashlyn yanked the star out, wincing as the jagged edge cut deeply. She rolled
to the side and climbed unsteadily to her feet, using a broad tree trunk for
cover. They’d caught her by surprise- she’d been too absorbed in her own
thoughts to avoid walking into a trap.

Ashlyn clenched her shuriken in
one hand, the throwing star in the other, and took a deep breath, then spun out
from behind the tree, the hand holding her shuriken outstretched as the
ice
stane glowed blue within it. A
translucent wall of ice materialized before her, and as she’d predicted, there
was a flash of several more throwing stars that quickly embedded in the makeshift
shield. Ashlyn sidestepped around the ice and flung the single star with easy
expertise, aiming for the patch of blackness where her adversary had revealed
his location. Sprinting across the dark forest, she reached the ninja moments
after the throwing star reached its target. He was dead before he hit the
ground.

Leaves crunched to her right, and
once again Ashlyn ducked behind a tree. There was another rustling, this time
to her left, and once more in front of her. Her heart sank as she realized that
she was probably surrounded.

For a long moment, she stood
pressed against the trunk of the tree, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Ashlyn raised her uninjured arm, clutching her shuriken tightly, and breathed a
single word.

The
fire
stane in her shuriken sparked to life, casting a bright red
hue on her surroundings and illuminating five ninjas, all of whom were wearing
the sign of Toryn on their masks.

Ashlyn’s eyes narrowed, muscles
tensing.

The first ninja charged, and she
reeled off the tree trunk, reversing in mid-motion to slash backwards with the
shuriken. It sliced cleanly in a diagonal motion across his back. One down. She
ducked under the swing of another katana and spun in a leg sweep, flipping over
his prone body, stabbing downwards with the shuriken as she somersaulted. Two.

The next ninja came at her with
his fists. She ducked the first punch and blocked the second one, but somehow
missed the third one and stumbled backwards as he connected with the right side
of her jaw. Ashlyn shook her head, trying to collect herself, and blocked
another punch from her right. No time to think- she grabbed the arm and moved
aside, twisting hard enough that he had no choice but to fall forward. She
swung downward with her shuriken, aiming the flat side of the weapon for the
base of his skull.