The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (68 page)

“I’m keeping an eye on you,” he said. “Where do you
think you’re going?”

When she realized he was casing the house to see if
she would run again, Ashlyn felt a brief spurt of anger- which died just as
quickly when she remembered that he had good reason to be worried that she
might run.

“I’m going to the gong library,” she said. “See?
Just across the way there.”

“At this hour?”

“It’s not that late. And I’m not tired.”

“Ashlyn.” His voice held a warning.

She took a deep breath, trying to keep a handle on
her temper. “Skye, I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. I really do need to get
to the library and look something up. You can come with me if you want, or you
can go back to lurking in the shadows. I don’t care. Either way, I’m not going
back inside that house until I get what I want. And what I want is in the
library.” She purposefully started walking, leaving Skye to either physically
stop her or follow.

Thankfully, he chose to follow. “One of these days,”
he grumbled, falling into step beside her, and Ashlyn smiled.

“I’ve done enough running for a lifetime,” she told
him. “I have no plans to do it again, now or ever.”

“I think you might have said that last time,” he
replied humorlessly.

Ashlyn paused at the top of the stairs to the gong
library. Skye stopped beside her.

“Are you seriously going to follow me in there?” she
asked.

He nodded.

“Is that the plan for the rest of my life? You
follow me around making sure I don’t screw up?”

“No,” he said. “Just until your coronation.”

“So…” She scuffed at the top stair with her boot.
“You’re leaving tomorrow, then?”

“Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. I’ve got to get back
to Cosmea and see if Jackson needs any help with that Spirit.”

“Oh yeah.” She’d already almost forgotten about the
Spirit of the Caverns, and felt a stab of guilt. Poor Aik had helped her out by
researching her issue when he could have been researching his. She still had no
idea how they were going to activate the Stane of Nine Thousand, if they could
even find one. After the coronation tomorrow, she’d probably be stuck in Toryn
for months, trying to figure out how to run a kingdom.

She walked down the stairs. “I feel so bad for Aik.
He must be stressing out something fierce right now. Do you think-” She was cut
off in mid-sentence as something latched onto her arm at the bottom of the
steps, and with a hard yank suddenly she was airborne, flying across the
library and smashing into a bookcase against the opposite wall.

She heard Skye call out to her, but the slamming of
a door and a ground-shaking thud drowned him out.

In a flash, Ashlyn was on her feet, a little dizzy
from the impact but uninjured. She was completely unsurprised to see Kou
standing in the corner of the room. Beside him was a massive bookcase lying on
its side, with books scattered everywhere. The huge piece of furniture was
blocking the door, wedging it shut, and Skye was pounding on it from the other
side.

“I wondered when you’d show your face,” Ashlyn said,
unsnapping the buttoned flap that held the machete in its sheath. A deathly
calm settled over her, stilling her shaking hands, slowing her frantically
beating heart. She would win this time. She would avenge her father.

Kou stepped out into the light. He was shirtless,
with a bandage on one shoulder and a long, fresh scar slashing across his
abdomen. He brandished a katana languidly, completely unhurried despite the
growing commotion on the other side of the library door.

“Guess I heal a bit faster than you,” Ashlyn said
smugly. “Why are you here, Kou? There’s no way you’re getting out of here
alive.”

“I could say the same for you, Scorned Elder,” he
responded in a low voice. “There’s only one reason why I’m here. To end your
miserable life, and avenge Tag.”

“I killed him in self-defense!” she snapped,
refusing to feel an ounce of guilt about it. “You spent months keeping my
father at death’s door before you murdered him in cold blood. Who’s the one who
should be seeking revenge here?” She drew the machete and dropped into a
fighting stance, one foot braced in front of her, one hand outstretched, the machete
poised above her head.

A deep breath. A heartbeat.

Kou smiled grimly- and leapt at her, giving no
warning. Ashlyn was a step ahead of him, and spun out of the way, slashing the
machete towards his stomach. He flipped the katana and blocked her blow, then
jabbed with his off hand, catching the corner of her ribs as she was moving
back.

Ashlyn let herself fall backwards onto her hands,
the machete clanging against the stone floor. She lashed out with one foot,
kicking Kou in the thigh, halfway between his hip and his knee. Kou yelped as
his leg gave out beneath him, but he managed to collect himself enough to roll
backwards and sideways.

She didn’t let him rest, rushing forward as he came
up from his backwards somersault and parried her jab. Ashlyn pushed him towards
the wall, attacking furiously. He ducked under one swing and sidestepped
another, and on her third jab, he grabbed her wrist and spun, driving the
machete into the wall. Ashlyn’s shoulder rammed painfully into the wall, but
she yanked her other hand free and chopped his forearm, forcing him to drop the
katana. With her foot she kicked it across the room.

Kou backhanded her across the face, and she went
flying onto the table, landing heavily on her back. He came at her and swung
hard, aiming for her neck, but she rolled onto the floor and his fist smashed
into the wood, splintering the surface of the table. He moved to go around the
table and attack her again. Ashlyn grabbed the edge of the table and spun it
with her as she moved sideways. When Kou was up against the wall, she flipped
the table up, pushing him back, and did a half-spin, executing a solid kick
that sent both Kou and the table crashing into the wall.

The already-splintered wood broke into pieces on
impact, sending shards and splinters flying everywhere. Kou came charging out
from behind it, and Ashlyn dropped to her knees, throwing a furious flurry of
punches into his unprotected stomach. He grabbed her shoulders and flipped over
her, using his momentum to escape. Ashlyn rolled sideways just as the katana
sliced through the air where she had been kneeling.

The entire room shook with the force of Skye
smashing into the door from the outside, and Ashlyn heard the door cracking
under his weight. She took a step back, a little closer to the door.

Kou advanced with the sword, and she snatched up a
table leg to block his first blow. When the force of his second blow impacted
solidly enough with the table leg to drive Ashlyn to her knees, she took the
opportunity to snatch up a second table leg. Now the odds were a little more
even.

She blocked his downward swing with the table leg in
her right hand and slammed the other table leg into his hip. He stumbled back
and she took the opportunity to rap the table leg across his knuckles, forcing
him to drop the katana again.

He lunged forward and tackled her, hitting her in
the gut and knocking the breath out of her- and the table legs from her hands.
She gasped for air as she hit the floor, and suddenly Kou’s hands were closing
around her throat, squeezing.

He was straddling her hips, pinning her legs down.
Ashlyn bucked furiously, trying to knock him off, but he was too heavy. She
lifted her left arm and rotated her torso as much as she could, bringing her
arm down to break the hold. The attempt was too weak, and he slapped her hand
away, squeezing harder.

Ashlyn kicked out weakly, tears streaking her
temples as her lungs screamed for air. She brought her hand down, beating the
floor with her fists, and a chunk of wood scraped her left wrist. She grasped
for it with her fingers, knowing that this was her last, desperate chance.

The wood felt solid in her hand, but it was shorter
than the length of her finger, and about the same thickness. Ashlyn looked up
at Kou, looked at his black hair escaping from its ponytail, at his angry,
flushed face, and his soulless black eyes.

I’m
so sorry I didn’t do this sooner, Dad,
Ashlyn screamed in her
mind, and brought her right hand up, scrabbling at Kou’s face uselessly. He
turned his head impatiently to the side, evading her poking fingers.

Ashlyn raised the sliver of wood with her opposite
hand, and stabbed it into his eye as hard as she could.

Kou shrieked and reeled backwards, hands prying
loose of her throat and covering his bloody face. His body still pinned her
legs, leaving Ashlyn helpless to escape.

At that moment the door finally gave beneath Skye’s
onslaught, and the top half of the door came flying into the room, narrowly
missing Ashlyn as it landed and skidded across the stone floor. There was a
flash of silver, and the hilt of Skye’s sword was suddenly protruding from
Kou’s chest.

The Toryn warrior gasped, and the air gurgled in his
throat. Ashlyn recoiled from the horrible sight, trying desperately to pull
herself out from under Kou. She needn’t have worried. In the next heartbeat a
huge web of fire smashed into Kou and catapulted him into the opposite wall so
hard that the shelves he crashed into buckled under the impact. Both Kou and
the bookshelf fell to the floor, and soon both were consumed in flames.

Skye leaped over the bookshelf and crouched beside
her. “Are you okay?” he shouted over the crackling of the fire.

Ashlyn nodded, unable to speak, and pointed to the
flames, pleading with her eyes. Skye got the hint, and cast an
ice
spell, freezing the flames and
preventing any further destruction of the library.

He helped her sit up, rubbing her back as she
coughed weakly.

“I get…in trouble…even when I’m not looking for it,”
she rasped out, and Skye chuckled.

“I have a feeling that this is the last of your
worries for a while,” he answered, squeezing her shoulder.

“Hello?” Restlyn’s voice came from the top of the
stairwell. Ashlyn wasn’t surprised- honestly, with all the noise that Skye had
been making, she expected that others should have been here sooner.

“It’s okay. It’s just us,” Skye called. He looked
down at Ashlyn. “You okay for just a second?”

She nodded, and he stood up, vaulting back over the
bookshelf.

Ashlyn massaged her bruised neck, wincing a little,
and looked around at the damage. Thank goodness Skye had stopped the fire. Most
of the books were safe, even though every book from the shelf behind her was
scattered across the floor, some with pages spilling out.

The one closest to her lay open, and something about
the yellowed pages and the uniform, list-like style of writing caught Ashlyn’s
eye. She leaned closer, and her breath caught when she realized what it was.

At the bottom of the page was her name- her
full
name, complete with her six middle
names.

This was the book of naming. The very book that
she’d come here to retrieve.

Did
you do that, Dad?
she thought wryly, casting a glance
towards the ceiling. It couldn’t be coincidence.

Kou’s name was nowhere to be found, which made sense
since he’d never officially been made Lord of Toryn- he’d only managed to start
the rumor in the hopes that Ashlyn would show up sooner or later.

To the right of her name was the space where her
official name would be written after her coronation.
Lady Li,
it would say tomorrow morning. She wouldn’t be Ashlyn any
more, after that.

Her eyes flicked further up the page, to her
father’s name, and her heart sank.

Restyn
Asheron Hiroyuki Li.

And just to the right of that was written,
Lord Li,
in the space showing that he
had given up his name to become Lord of Toryn.

Restlyn was her sister.

For a long moment, Ashlyn held her breath, two
desires warring within her breast.

She was going to be Lady of Toryn. It was her
birthright.

Nobody
has to know.

I
would know.

And then her father’s words.
I would hate to see your spirit broken by the burden of deception.

A year ago, even a month ago, if she’d been faced
with the prospect of giving up something she truly wanted in order to benefit
someone else, there would have been no question about it. She would have
grabbed the prize and run.

But she wasn’t that girl anymore.

Skye came back over the bookcase and crouched beside
her. “Restlyn’s getting some people up to help with the clean-up,” he said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get this back to…what’s wrong?”

Ashlyn shook her head, tears spilling over her
cheeks. She felt so stupid and immature for crying, because she’d cried so much
since that first night in Storim, but this time she simply couldn’t help
herself.

“Hey,” Skye said gently. “It’s okay. I bet none of
the books are that badly damaged.”