Scarlet Tempest, #1

by Juniper King

  “Did you know I was a daemon?” I croaked.

  My heritage was something I’d wanted to know, ached to know, for my entire childhood. It was a missing piece of who I was. And it was revealed to me by someone who’d wanted nothing more than to use the information to hurt me, someone who wouldn’t have batted an eye at killing me. Raen had known so readily that I was a daemon, as soon as I’d used my magic. Was he more knowledgeable about magic and supernatural species, or was this just another thing Aksel and Ayre had kept hidden from me?

  “We…” Aksel looked at me and seemed to rethink what he’d been about to say. “Yes. At least, we had a suspicion. Telekinesis is a marked magical ability among daemons. There are a few other creatures who have moderate to weak telekinetic abilities, but the chances of you being related to them is even lower than the chances of you being a daemon.”

  So, it was just one more thing they didn’t want me to know.

  I suppose the bounty made a lot more sense now, though. Perhaps Raen had been right. Maybe my father had never intended a one-night stand with a human to produce a child. Daemons were important people in the supernatural world, maybe he’d hired bounty hunters to get rid of the loose end of his secret tryst. But if they were sent to get rid of me, then why go through the effort of saving me on every occasion? Why take me with them?

  “I must really be worth a lot if you went through all that trouble to come after me.” Even to my own ears, my voice had a strange indifference.

  I had moved past anger. The rage I had felt the night of our fight was nothing but a distant memory. Something that happened in a different lifetime. I felt disconnected to my current situation, as if it were happening in a dream or I was listening to someone else’s story.

  After everything I’d been through at the hands of a sadistic finman, everything that had happened prior seemed trivial now.

  “Selynna…” A sadness lurked behind Aksel’s eyes. He moved to touch my face but pulled back, replacing his hand on the pillow between our faces. “You’re worth so much more than any amount of gold. More than anything anyone could ever offer.”

  That gave me pause. The emotion that rang through his words, the sincerity reflected in his expression… How could anyone lie so expertly? Perhaps he truly meant what he was saying.

  Smarten up, Sel. It’s that kind of thinking that got you into this mess in the first place.

  “I’m so sorry, Selynna,” he breathed, “I’m sorry you found out the way you did. I wanted to tell you everything, I really did, I just didn’t know how. And the longer we spent around you, the longer the lies went on… we didn’t want to lose you. What happened in Korinth, you running away and getting taken, that was exactly what we worried would happen. If people were to find out what you were…” He closed his eyes as if it weren’t something he wanted to speculate about.

  “This was all my fault. The fire was my idea. I thought… Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong.”

  Did he actually think he was wrong or was he just saying what he thought I wanted to hear?

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  “I didn’t think, that was the problem,” he huffed out a sigh. “As bad as it sounds, my reasoning at the time, while the walls were burning down around us, was that if you had nothing to go back to you would be more willing to stay with us, where we could protect you. You were treated badly by so many humans in town, aside from a select few people, I thought you wouldn’t really care if the whole place burned to the ground.

  “But you’re so much more sympathetic than I first realized. I didn’t think it would hurt you as much as it had. If I had known I never would have acted so rashly.” A humourless smile played on his lips. “I guess you were right about me, I am a monster. A heartless monster.”

  I didn’t necessarily agree, but I didn’t say anything to correct him either.

  “In Korinth,” he continued, “we weren’t ready for you to find out about the truth, or for you to find out the way you did. The things I said… I was angry with myself and I took it out on you. It’s all my fault. I’m the one who drove you away. In that moment… I wanted to hurt you.” His eyes shimmered with emotion and held back tears, features crumpling under the weight of his own thoughts.

  “When I saw you in that finman’s lair,” his voice cracked, a tear he had been trying to hold back finally fell and rolled across the bridge of his nose. “You were bleeding and broken… I was terrified. The sweet, innocent person I wanted to protect… I was terrified she’d died under that ocean. Terrified I was too late.”

  With Aksel’s thoughts and emotions laid bare in front of me, something stirred inside of me.

  Even through the emotional disconnect, through all the negativity and confusing emotions I was feeling for Aksel, my throat clenched. I truly wanted to believe he was being sincere, that even after everything he had chosen to do, he’d never meant to hurt me.

  But for all I knew this was still part of an act. He had yet to retrieve the bounty, how far was he willing to go to keep me complacent? I already knew he was adept at lying, what could I believe?

  I rolled over to my side to fully face him. Weeks ago—it seemed like another lifetime ago now—I had made a choice. I had chosen to trust him with my life against Ilane, now was the time to choose if I believed that everything he had done—the lies, the betrayal—had truly been for my benefit and safety.

  I reached up with a heavy hand and brushed the escaped tear from the bridge of his nose. “How did you find me?”

  Aksel smiled slightly before exhaling heavily, preparing himself for another explanation. “After you ran off, Ayre reamed me out before chasing after you. We wanted to give you some time to calm down, but we didn’t want you to get too far away from us, either. Ayre reached the edge of the beach just as the finman was about to pull you under.”

  That voice I’d heard, I hadn’t been imagining it after all. But… if he’d seen me get taken, why did it take so long to get to me? My throat clenched before I could ask.

  Aksel continued. “Terrestrial creatures like us can’t get to Finfolkaheem, we can’t breathe underwater and only finfolk know the exact location, so I had to get someone to take me.”

  “You didn’t mist there?”

  He shook his head, a movement that was almost imperceptive against the pillow. “Not knowing exactly where it was located, I wouldn’t know where to target with my teleportation. I would have gotten lost and drowned, and that wouldn’t have helped anyone. We waited in Korinth for a finwoman to show up. On the third night, one finally came. I approached her as a human and let her think she was the one seducing me, let her think her magic was working on me.

  “I couldn’t take the risk of letting her know my true intentions. She could have been a good one, one that wanted to help, but I couldn’t take that chance. Who knows how long I would have had to wait for another one to show up, or if she would have warned others about the deydre trying to infiltrate their home. Once I woke up in her room in Finfolkaheem, I subdued her, then came to find you.”

  Silence descended on the tent as I digested his story.

  I didn’t know what to say. Aksel had gone to all that trouble just to find me? After I called him a heartless monster? If I had any emotion in me, I probably would have cried.

  Instead, I changed the topic to something less emotional. “You work for my father?”

  He made a strange face. “Let’s wait for Ayre.”

  “Where is he?” I felt a little guilty that this was the first time since waking up that I had thought about him.

  Aksel chuckled, “It’s not a large tent, he’s sleeping right behind you.”

  I rolled my head over and sure enough, he was there in my periphery, buried under the same blankets as me and sleeping soundly.

  “He expended a lot of energy healing you, mending broken bones and trying to keep you from scarring. Healing takes a toll on the healer too, he makes it look easy, but it’s a lot o
f magic and finesse. He’s been up and down, but he still sleeps about eighteen hours a day.”

  My eyelids grew heavy again at the mentioning of sleep.

  “Why don’t you go back to sleep? I’ll wake you when Ayre gets up.”

  I nodded, too tired for words. Closing my eyes, I was ready to fade back into a dreamless sleep.

  “I was so afraid,” he said softly, “I thought I’d lost you.”

  You almost did.

  I woke up for the third time that day to muted light, and the cry of ravens breaking through the quiet of the evening. This time Aksel was sound asleep, his face just visible in the late afternoon light. His features were softer, less intense while he was sleeping, his mouth open just slightly, giving him an air of innocence.

  I noticed smudges of purple underneath his eyes and wondered just how long he had forgone sleep while I was unconscious. And possibly even while I was missing.

  As if he’d read my mind, he murmured in his sleep, his fingers searching for mine even in unconsciousness.

  Something stirred inside me, but I was having trouble identifying the emotion.

  When I was locked away in the darkness, I had wanted nothing more than to be with my two Supers like this again. But now that I was, I felt strange. Was I happy that I was back with them? Was I still angry at them? I felt disconcertingly empty.

  I shifted my free arm under the blankets, finding it was more usable than earlier. I went to brush away a few stray hairs that had fallen onto Aksel’s face and my hand froze in midair. Except for a slight raggedness, my nails and fingertips were undamaged. Even the nail that had been fully broken off had regrown. My forearm that had been bitten to shreds by Raen now had only the faintest trace of a scar and a slight dimpling of the skin. The thought of Raen’s teeth shredding my skin, tearing through muscle, and scraping against bone…

  A hand snaked around my waist and pulled me backwards into a firm chest, interrupting my thoughts. “You’re finally awake,” Ayre whispered against my hair.

  “Ayre,” I exhaled. I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded weary. “How are you feeling?”

  He cuddled me even closer. “I feel better now that you’re conscious. Are you in any pain?”

  “No,” I felt more tired than anything. My body didn’t even show response to being this close to him. I felt nothing.

  “Good,” he sounded relieved.

  “I feel… strange. Disconnected.” It was a similar feeling to the night in the hunter’s cabin, the aching numbness and the strange disconnect from reality, but this was different. I wasn’t feeling as dragged down by sorrow as I had been then, I was just… empty. Emotionless.

  “I’m afraid that’s not part of the healing process. Numbness or feeling disconnected… those are common responses to trauma.”

  “Oh.”

  “If… you want to talk about it…”

  I didn’t answer. I did want to talk about it, if only so I wouldn’t have to carry the burden alone, but talking about it made it more tangible—more real. I don’t even think I would be able to verbalize the things I’d experienced, the things Raen had done to me.

  How broken and alone I had felt.

  Now that I was back on the surface, it almost felt like everything that had happened had happened somewhere in a dream.

  Maybe I could pretend it had never happened.

  I weaved my fingers with his, giving him a little squeeze, and he pulled me into a tighter hug.

  My legs shifted under the blankets and a thought came to me. “It feels like I’m not wearing any pants.”

  “I’m sorry. You were soaking wet and it was very possible you could have had hypothermia, we had to take your wet clothes off—just your jeans and over shirt—we left your under clothes on.”

  I could hear the seriousness in his voice, but what really struck home was the fact that Ayre, of all people, was not joking around about how he’d finally gotten to undress me.

  “Thank you, Ayre.”

  We lay in amicable silence for a few minutes. I closed my eyes and sank back into his warm embrace.

  “I’ve never seen Aksel so frantic,” Ayre said suddenly. As soft as his voice was it still startled me out of my near sleep.

  “What do you mean?” My gaze fell on Aksel’s sleeping face.

  “When I told Aksel that a finman had taken you, he misted us to the beach and charged into the water. I was lucky to have caught him before he tried misting after you two.”

  Why would he have done that? “He said that if he misted under the ocean, he would have gotten lost.” If he’d just appeared somewhere under the surface in the middle of the ocean he could have drowned.

  “It’s not just that, he can’t swim.” I rolled over to look at Ayre and he winked at me, “Don’t tell him I told you.”

  He came to an undersea cavern—completely at the mercy of a finwoman who could have just as easily drowned him—to save me, even though he couldn’t swim?

  Even after we’d said such hurtful things to each other.

  I rolled back over to look at the sleeping deydre. Had our positions been reversed, would I have done the same for him?

  20

  “I want you to tell me everything.”

  By the time Aksel had woken up, the forest was dark. A chorus of crickets droned on through the night air with the occasional owl breaking through the monotonous hum of sound. A small oil lantern sat in the middle of our little circle, painting each of our faces in flickering shadows.

  Aksel had helped me into a seated position, I’d refused to be lying weak and prone when such an important conversation was to be had, but I was still exhausted. It took all of my strength to sit up straight and project some vague semblance of authority.

  While we’d been waiting for Aksel to wake up, Ayre had eventually drifted back to sleep, leaving me alone and allowing me some time to ruminate on my thoughts. The outrage I’d felt on the night of our fight had clouded my reality entirely. As far as I was concerned the anger had been justified, they had lied to me for weeks and completely betrayed my trust. But… there was more to it than that.

  I had always thought being blinded with rage was just an overused, figurative phrase that people liked to use, but I had literally been blinded by my anger. Nothing else seemed to exist in those moments.

  Now that my mind was clearer, I remembered the days we had spent together and everything they had done for me; the tiny gestures, the kind words, the genuine concern for my well-being. Even if the support they’d shown had been for something that never truly happened, it had come from a real place. That’s what I believed. It couldn’t have all been lies. They had hidden things from me, but I believed that they really did care about me in their own way.

  I gripped the blanket in my hands, twisting it between my fingers. “I want to trust you, but… I need to know you’re not hiding anything else from me.” I was nervous to broach the subject. What if what they told me was somehow worse than the lies I’d already been told?

  But I had to know. I had to get answers. I deserved answers.

  “I want to know why you lied to me for so long. You said my father hired you to find me, but after you met me you had a ‘change of heart’ about the job. Why? Who is my father? What does he want from me?” I had so many more questions I knew they wouldn’t be able to answer. How long had my father known about me? Why did he hire hunters instead of coming to Woodburne himself? If the job was just to bring me to him, what would have caused them to have a ‘change of heart’? All of which begged the question: what kind of father would send dangerous thugs after his daughter?

  Raen had suggested my ‘daemon father’ would want me dead, but I refused to believe that.

  There must be some valid reason for his actions. Questions and theories kept skittering through my head like cockroaches; abundant and unpleasant, and always running just out of reach when the lights are flicked on.

  Aksel breathed out a hard sigh, running a hand through
his hair. “Those are… hard questions to answer.” Before I could even finish forming a scowl, he continued, “Not because I don’t want to answer them, but because… we don’t know all the answers.”

  My brows drew together, “How can you not know? It was your job.”

  “It’s so nice to see you getting some of your usual attitude back,” Ayre teased.

  I glared at him, too.

  “This may come as a surprise to you,” Aksel interrupted, “But hired hands don’t often get the full story. In fact, we generally get the bare minimum to get the job done. In this case, the bare minimum was just a poorly thought out lie.”

  “That’s actually the reason we went to see Kue—to get more information. We don’t exactly know what’s going on either,” Ayre added helpfully.

  Aksel rolled his eyes, “You make us sound like incompetent louts.”

  A smile tugged at my lips. At least their friendship hadn’t been a lie. Somehow that was the biggest relief so far.

  “Well, then can you start from the beginning? With what you do know.”

  Aksel crossed his arms and nodded, more to himself than me, perhaps thinking of the best place to begin his narrative. “From the beginning? Well, we’re basically mercenaries, though you already knew that. Hired swords, bounty hunters, call us whatever you want, people pay us, we get the job done. Ayre and I have been a team for years.” I guess what Ayre had said about them occasionally working together was an understatement. “We were in Road’s End one night—the tavern in Korinth we took you to—and a man came in. Human. It could have just been Korinth’s reputation, or the fact that he’d never seen so many mercs and Kimyrians gathered in one place, but he was definitely nervous. He was lucky I got to him before someone else did.”

  “Was he…” I interjected.

  “No.” I deflated a bit before Aksel continued. “He was there on behalf of someone else. The story he fed us was simple; he was sent by his benefactor—your father—to find someone to bring his daughter home. He’d said the girl had been stolen away by her mother—”