Traitor (27 page)

“I’ve only heard stories about them,” Araxie finally explained once we had set up camp for the night on the forest floor. Her expression was still dazed and dreamy, as though she were still looking at one of those ethereal beings. “My mother used to tell me that long ago, when Paligno first seeded the earth with life, he brought with him many great spirits to guard his precious creations and nurture them. Mistherders tended to the green places, the flowers and the fragile things. They were beings of peace, pure spirits of clean energy and gentleness that left the ground kissed with dew every morning.”

Jace had an equally entranced expression on his face as he listened to her. He was sitting hunched by the fireside with his chin resting on his hand. I had to admit, listening to her talk about them made me feel sort of pleasantly drowsy, too. It was like hearing a bedtime story.

We’d picked a relatively safe, hidden place amidst some large rock formations to set up our little camp. Here, the canopy was thinner. There was moonlight spilling through the tree limbs, casting long shadows over the boulders around us. You could even see a few stars peeking through.

Blue was curled up close by, warming himself by the light of our fire and purring loudly. Kiran was still nibbling at his dinner rations. And I’d unbundled my sleeping pallet and stretched out to rest my aching feet. All in all, we were as comfortable as we could be.

We’d been especially lucky. There’d been no trouble, no injuries, and no near-death experiences—which was a first for me when it came to carrying out one of my plans. Typically, any journey I went on was bound to be riddled with misfortune. But tomorrow, we would reach the boundary of our kingdoms, and I knew things would change after that. There, we would part ways. Araxie and Kiran would return to the temple and make preparations to receive the stone. Jace and I would return to Maldobar, making a straight path for Mithangol.

I still had some preparations to do on my end. I intended to get them done once everyone was asleep, though. I didn’t want an audience breathing down my neck while I was trying out some of my new abilities. Besides, the prospect of sending out messages to my friends, asking them to meet me at my old family home was daunting for me. I’d been gone a long time. By now, everyone I knew in Maldobar was probably assuming I had been killed in combat along with Jace. I wasn’t sure how they would respond to an invitation like this … or if they’d even get it to begin with.

“I’m going to refill our water skins. There’s a fresh spring only a short hike from here,” Araxie announced suddenly. She got up and started collecting them from all of our travel bags.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Kiran protested. He still had a cheek full of food.

She gave him a scolding glare. “Actually, I’m the only one qualified to go alone.”

I wasn’t about to try to argue that with her and I guess Jace knew better, too, because he just shrugged and began poking at the fire with a long stick.

“I’ll keep first watch, then,” he volunteered. He sounded tired, like he didn’t exactly want to take the first shift. I was about to offer to take it for him when he shot me a dangerous glare out of the corner of his eye, like he was daring me to mess this up for him.

I didn’t get it. Not at first. Why would he care so much about taking first watch? What was the big deal? Whoever did it was going to have to keep an extra eye to make sure Araxie …

Then it hit me.

He wanted some alone time with her. I tried scrunching up my mouth and biting my tongue to keep from smirking. It didn’t work too well.

My message sending would just have to wait until later. I’d let Jace have his moment, if that’s what he wanted. But that didn’t mean I was going to sleep, either. I’d never thought there could possibly be anyone else in the world that was worse with girls than I was. Jace, however, was giving me a run for my money in that department. I wasn’t about to miss this.

After Araxie left with the water skins, I lay on my side with my arms folded. It was hard to be perfectly still for so long. I pretended to sleep for a good hour until at last I started to wonder the same thing that was apparently going through Jace’s mind, too.

“What the hell is keeping her?” he grumbled. I heard him as he got up and picked up his bow and quiver.

When he started to leave the campsite, I immediately got to my feet to follow him. I had to be sneaky about it, of course. So keeping a distance, I watched as Jace tracked her footprints through the boulders and ferns. It was easy enough. The soil here was soft and moist, and I could smell fresh water in the air. As we got closer, I could hear it burbling somewhere nearby.

When I peeked around a large rock face to make sure I was all clear, I almost got caught. Jace was only standing a few feet away from me, although he had his back turned. I scrambled back behind the boulder and waited a few seconds before I dared to peer around it again.

Jace was still standing there. He hadn’t moved an inch and he was staring straight ahead as though he were frozen in place.

Then all of a sudden, I saw why.

Araxie wasn’t naked. Not completely, anyway. She was wearing simple undergarments to cover all her private areas as she stood, thigh-deep in the moonlight water of a small lagoon. But that was as close to a naked woman as I’d ever seen—not that
I
enjoyed it. She was my first cousin, which made seeing her like that sort of … awkward and weird. Recoiling to my hiding spot behind the rock, I wondered if I should go back to the campsite right now or wait and see how this played out.

A female scream and a few curses in the elven language answered that question for me. No way was I going to miss this.

I dared to glance back around just in time to watch her hurl a rock at Jace. It missed him and went sailing right past my head. I practically felt the wind off it as it buzzed past me.

“Pervert!” Araxie was snarling like an angry shrike. She stomped out of the water and right up to Jace, who still looked like he was having a hard time remembering how to breathe and blink at the same time.

She slapped him,
hard
.

That woke him up from his trance. “What’s wrong with you?” he yelled back at her. “It’s your fault! I only came because you’d been gone too long! You never said anything about taking a bath!”

“My fault? Why you insolent pig! What else would I be doing?” She’d gone wild with anger. I cringed as she reared back to hit him again.

Her hand never made contact, though. He caught her by the wrist just in time and scowled at her dangerously. “Stop that,” he warned. “Obviously you’re fine. So I’m going.”

Araxie snatched her hand away from him with her cheeks glowing bright red. I wasn’t sure if it was from fury or embarrassment. “Am I to believe you came out here because you were concerned about me? Hah! I don’t understand you, dragonrider. You’ve brought my family nothing but grief and yet you can’t wait to throw yourself between me and anything you perceive to be a threat. Whose side are you on, anyway? Have you no loyalty to your own kind?”

Jace had begun to walk away. Her little rant put a stop to that, though. He paused mid-stride and turned around slowly. His dark eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them before.

“No. I don’t.” His voice was disturbingly calm.

Araxie was obviously stunned. She stood with her mouth open for a few seconds before she finally spoke again. “Then … then why? Why fight for them? Why kill for them? Was it for money?”

“Something like that.”

“You killed my brothers for money?” Her voice wavered, as though she could barely contain her emotion. I saw her wince as though the idea made her physically sick.

He rolled his eyes. “All dragonriders are paid, princess. Even Jaevid has received payment for his service to our so-called king.”

There was a look of quiet horror on her face that actually made me nervous. This wasn’t going well. In fact, we were well on track to this being a complete disaster. I had almost convinced myself that maybe I should intervene when Jace spoke up again.

“What? Your warriors aren’t paid?” he asked challengingly.

“No! No, of course not! To fight for our people is an honor, not some menial job. To accept payment is to be no better than a common mercenary!” She snatched her skirt off the ground and made a halfhearted attempt to cover herself. Before she did, though, I spotted something on her torso that made my stomach turn. It was a scar—a new one by the look of it—that appeared to have been made by some sort of puncture. My thoughts immediately snapped back to that bizarre dream I’d had about a wounded gray elf riding a shrike.

Jace grinned, interrupting my epiphany. It was a disturbing, satirical expression. “Oh trust me, mercenary work pays much better.”

“So that’s it, then? I have wondered since the first time I saw the scars on your body where you’d gotten them. I had my suspicions you earned them killing for sport.” Araxie glanced him up and down before curling her lip. “You disgust me.”

His confident smirk vanished instantly, and I prepared myself to break up what had the potential to be a very ugly fistfight—one that I doubted Jace could actually win.

“You think you know me, woman?” Jace growled as he took a threatening step toward her.

Of course, Araxie didn’t back down an inch. Instead, she stood up straight and met him eye-to-eye. Well, maybe not exactly eye-to-eye. She was almost a foot shorter than he was.

“I’ve dealt with enough monsters in my lifetime to know one when I see it,” she snapped fearlessly.

For whatever reason, Jace seemed almost pleased by that answer. “And what about slaves? How many of those have you seen, princess?”

Her expression faltered, skewing for an instant into what appeared to be confusion.

“In a palace like that, sitting on silk cushions, eating off gold and silver platters—I’m willing bet you’ve known a lot more slaves than monsters,” he went on. “But their lives don’t matter, right? They’re property, not people. You can crush them under your heel and get them to do just about anything for their next meal. Just tools. Cheap. Disposable. Replaceable. I know your breed just as well as you think you know mine. Royals and nobles, every one of you is exactly the same. You’re all too eager to prop your feet up on the living footstool of slavery, so don’t talk like you have any moral ground to stand on.”

Araxie narrowed her color-changing eyes, canting her head to the side as though she were trying to understand. “We never had … ” Her voice trailed away little by little.

I watched her look back to the thick, gnarled scars on his wrists and neck. I knew there were a great many more scars on his skin than what could be seen under the dim light of the moon. Most of them appeared to be old, although time hadn’t done much to fade them. His body was absolutely riddled with marks like that, although I didn’t know where he’d gotten them. Jace had outright refused to talk about his past with me.

When Araxie met his gaze again, all the rage in her expression had been replaced by something else—something that looked a great deal like sympathy. “You were a slave?”

He stiffened. His jaw clenched. “For a while. Then I became something worse.”

The mood was changing. It was subtle, but I could feel the boiling heat of resentment and anger between them beginning to calm.

I could only imagine that Jace didn’t want to look weak, so he didn’t move an inch when she reached out a hand to lightly touch the ring of scars around one of his wrists. He was awkwardly still, tensed up as though it took all his self-control not to tear away from her.

“From shackles?” she asked quietly.

Jace gave a single nod. He seemed to be having trouble just looking at her now. His eyes darted this way and that when she moved in closer. It was like watching someone pet a feral dog that cringed away, distrusting of even the slightest touch.

She held his arm up to the moonlight, observing all the marks there that the fabric of his elven-styled tunic didn’t hide. “How long did you live that way?”

“Ten years.”

“Ten years in chains?”

His frown deepened. “In one way or another. Not all chains are made of iron.”

Immediately, I thought of the vision I’d seen when I’d last healed him. It had been of a little boy in chains standing in the ashes of a ravaged village. I hadn’t thought much of it until now. I knew Jace wasn’t the sharing sort, so it would have been pointless for me to even ask. Now, however, I was beginning to understand what that image had actually been. That vision was of him. It was a glimpse into his past.

“And how does one go from being a slave to a dragonrider?”

“Not easily,” he admitted in a reluctant tone. “And not without losing any semblance of a soul. I suppose in that respect, I am some breed of monster.”

Araxie was gazing up at him with that look of sympathy still shining in her eyes. She didn’t speak for a while, and soon the silence became uncomfortable. Either something was going to happen, or they’d just have to stand that way forever.

Okay, I’ll admit I was rooting for Jace. I’d never seen him so open and willing to talk about himself. And more than that, I wanted to see that twenty years of hatred and war could be healed between our kingdoms.

“Do you hate me?” Jace suddenly broke the silence with a question that made Araxie frown.

She took a step back. “Sometimes. Yes.”

“Good.” Jace appeared to be satisfied with that answer. He bent to pick up the refilled water skins off the bank and slung them on his shoulder before he started walking away.

That made absolutely no sense to me. Apparently, Araxie felt the same way because she narrowed her eyes at his back. “Why is that good?”

“Because if you didn’t, then I’d want to stay here—regardless of whether or not Jaevid needs my help.”

He didn’t stop to look back. He was coming right toward me, making his way back to our campsite. I had to scramble to hide behind some ferns when he passed.

Once I was sure he was gone, I was beginning to feel pretty good about getting away with spying on them, that is right up until Araxie turned directly toward where I was hiding and let out an exaggerated sigh. “Come out of there, please. It’s disgraceful.”