It was eerily reminiscent of that day she had lain in her bathwater, staring at the shifting shades of crimson and remembering the painting in the Eastern City mansion.
Somehow she willed her leaden limbs to move, and drew her feet up underneath her, pushing off with her hands and standing up in the water. As her head broke the surface, she gasped in a breath that seared through her lungs like fire- her entire being so incredibly cold that it felt like the air itself was burning her up. Ashlyn stumbled towards the nearest staircase, sloshing clumsily through the water, the fog of her breath freezing against her cheeks. Slick with blood and water, her armlet slid down her elbow and dropped into the water, but she was far too cold and numb to try to retrieve it. She reached the bottom step and drew herself up a few steps, out of the water, but heard a splash behind her, and glanced back.
The wolf behind her leaped at that very moment, and Ashlyn sprang into action, only managing to scramble up another handful of stairs before the beast was on her back. Crying out as its claws dug into her skin, Ashlyn rolled on the steps, using her body weight to crush him against the marble stairs. It was enough to momentarily stun him, but no sooner had Ashlyn rolled off him than he was after her again. She found herself dodging teeth and claws, lifting her injured right arm to fend him off and screaming in pain as the full realization of how badly she was wounded began to sink in. The wolf managed to snag the sleeve of her shirt in its mouth and yanked, ripping the fabric. Ashlyn took the opportunity to punch the animal square in the eye, and it fell backwards against the steps, yelping as it rolled down the stairs towards the water.
A shift stane glittered at her from the silver armlet on the wolf’s leg, and Ashlyn realized with a sinking feeling that this was Tag, that he had assumed the third and most deadly shape offered by the shift magic. A wolf.
She turned and reached out with her one good hand, fingers curved into claws, shaking as she dragged herself up another stair, then two, finally mustering the strength to push herself up onto her feet and stagger up the steps. Every movement seemed to be in slow motion. Blood dripped from her arm, and she pulled it up close to her body, trying to ignore the shadows crowding the corners of her vision. It was too dark to get a good look at the wound, but she knew it was bad, knew that she was in danger of bleeding out.
The wolf met her at the top of the stairs, the faint moonlight glittering off its bared teeth. He’d gone around somehow, gotten ahead of her.
Ashlyn tried to straighten up, preparing herself to fight, but her knees buckled, and she fell, her legs slipping out beneath her as she flopped gracelessly onto her back. Get up! She propped herself up with her uninjured arm, and managed to brace herself up against the column at the head of the stairs. Her legs remained twisted uncomfortably in front of her, appearing almost gruesome with their odd, crooked angles, but she was so numb that she couldn’t summon the strength to straighten them.
Her head lolled to the side drowsily, and she blinked for a moment before recognizing the outline of her bo shuriken, less than a foot away, hidden in the shadows of the spire beside her. There was a heal stane in its slots. If she could just get close enough to grab it, use it…but her hand wouldn’t move. She was cold, so cold.
“Do you get it now, Ashlyn?” Kou’s voice, low and dripping with disdain as he stepped into view. He was too far away for her to see his eyes, but close enough that she could throw the shuriken at him, if she could get her hands on it.
“Do you understand?” he said, turning towards her and pausing. He was hunched forward, in obvious pain from her attack with the katana earlier, but not mortally wounded. “This was meant to happen. You were meant to die here. I am meant to assume leadership of Toryn and overthrow the Free Lands Democracy. It was the destiny I saw in my vision.”
She tried to speak, but even her vocal cords refused to budge in the icy cold. Ashlyn swallowed, willing her body to warm itself, and glanced at the shuriken again. It was a good stabbing weapon, but she wasn’t sure how accurate a throw would be, as cold as she was, and given the fact that she’d have to throw with her weaker right arm. But if she threw it, even if it was a death blow, would she be able to get to it so she could use the heal stane?
Tag turned away then, licking a weeping wound on his shoulder, and Ashlyn drowsily wondered if maybe this was her chance.
“I had hoped that you would be more open-minded than your father,” Kou continued.
She was reminded of Lord Angelo, how he’d delivered a pointlessly arrogant speech about his power and immortality right before Skye had kicked his ass.
Skye…
This is your chance to be a leader, Ash. It’s your turn to be a hero and do the right thing. Don’t let it pass you by. Don’t live your life with regret.
Ashlyn gritted her teeth, glancing up at Kou, but he was oblivious, completely absorbed in the sound of his own voice. The Tag-wolf was still occupied with tending to his various wounds. Ashlyn focused hard, willing her hand to move. Her fingers curled slightly.
“He didn’t understand that Toryn could be the mightiest country in Kresmir- that Toryn needs to be the mightiest country in Kresmir. He didn’t understand the power of shift. For a while, I had held out hope that you might be different,” Kou said, glancing back at her. Ashlyn stilled momentarily, but soon he looked away again, and she miraculously found the strength to move her hand towards the shuriken.
Her fingers closed around it, a solid bar of steel in her hand, the warmth of the slotted stanes comforting against her palm.
“I soon realized, however, that you were just like your father. Weak,” Kou continued. “You played right into our hands until that idiot peasant recognized you outside the city gates. You couldn’t disappear after that. And somehow you managed to avoid capture during the attack, as well.” He shook his head. “You always have to make things difficult, but you’re still weak, Ashlyn. The Li bloodline is weak. The Li elders have always been afraid to allow the people of Toryn to reach their full power. And you are no different.” Hunched over, he turned to face her, his face twisting in a sneer. “That means you are of no use to me.”
Tag rose, walking stiff-legged towards her, wet fur dripping, his growl menacing. Ashlyn swallowed hard, and clenched her fingers around the shuriken. The wolf stopped just inches in front of her, hackles rising as he readied himself to leap.
“Nothing to say?” Kou asked. He shifted uncomfortably, hand clasped to his midsection, blood seeping through his fingers. The blade of the katana in his other hand was dragging against the marble, its master too weak even to hold it up.
Ashlyn swallowed again, her eyes meeting the wolf’s, their gazes locked. Her timing had to be perfect.
Tag crouched, gathering his legs beneath him.
In the moment that the wolf jumped towards her, Ashlyn brought up the shuriken, and caught him in mid-leap, driving the pointed bar deep into the neck of the beast, warmth sluicing across her fingers as the steel found its mark and the wolf abruptly collapsed in a heap on top of her.
Summoning what little strength she had left, Ashlyn yanked the shuriken out of the wolf’s neck and flung it, flat-handed, droplets of blood spinning off her fingers with the motion.
Kou brought up his katana, but he was much too slow, and with a wet thunk the shuriken embedded itself in his shoulder.
It wasn’t a killing blow. Ashlyn nearly cried with disappointment. She’d been off by mere inches.
Kou didn’t speak or cry out, didn’t look at her, simply stumbled backwards before retreating down the stairs.
The bo shuriken clattering against the marble after he pulled it from his shoulder was the only sound in that horrible dark stillness, and Ashlyn pushed weakly at Tag’s body, wondering if this was her punishment, if this was truly her fate. She was utterly drained, too exhausted to move the wolf off her legs and get to the heal stane.
Blood spilled from her arm, pooling gruesomely beneath her limp hand. With some effort, Ashlyn lifted her hand, resting
it across Tag’s massive head, trying to elevate the wound as much as possible to slow the bleeding.
Killed by a wolf in the Heavenly City, they had said.
It seemed that at least that much of Kou’s vision had been accurate.
The sound of her labored breathing punctuated the silence. Ashlyn lay still for a long time, watching for the moon to emerge from behind the clouds.
To be concluded…
Read on for an excerpt of the third and final book in the Lady of Toryn trilogy, Redemption, available now on Amazon Kindle.
Skye materialized in front of a smooth marble pillar as the sun peeked over the horizon. Rays of light illuminated his solemn, clean-cut features.
“Ashlyn Li,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve been in this situation before. How many times I have told you that true leaders don’t abandon their followers?”
Ashlyn’s eyes fluttered as she fought to stay conscious. “I had to…kill…Kou,” she rasped. Her lips were dry as paper.
The blond swordsman turned his disapproving gaze on her. “And you didn’t even do that right, did you?” he replied scornfully, and pushed off the pillar, crouching beside her. “You killed Tag, but only managed to injure Kou. He might die. He might not. But his odds are better than yours.”
Ashlyn had struck Kou in the shoulder with her shuriken, but it hadn’t been a killing blow. Fury and despair roiled within her as she considered the events of last night. Kou had murdered her father, and Ashlyn’s first thought had been to avenge Lord Li…but Skye was right. She’d acted recklessly by going alone, and she had failed.
“Don’t give her such a hard time,” Vargo said, suddenly appearing sprawled across the railing just a few feet from where Ashlyn lay. One leg dangled listlessly off the side of the railing, swinging idly. “She tried. She just wasn’t up to the challenge.” He took a long swig from a flask that flashed silver in the early morning light.
“Please,” Ashlyn whispered. She tried to raise her hand to reach for the flask, but her fingers twitched in response, too weak to do anything more. “P-please,” she repeated. Her voice was a dry husk, empty and lifeless.
“What? Oh, this?” Vargo said, holding up the flask. “You wouldn’t want this. Nothing in it.” He turned the flask upside down, proving his point.
“We’re not real anyway,” Skye spoke up. “You know that, right?”
Ashlyn knew. She knew that she was seeing things that weren’t really there. More than that, she knew that she was dying, and no one was coming to save her. But somehow, even as she realized for the hundredth time that she was talking to a figment of her imagination, the epiphany seemed to crumple up and float away, and she looked up at Skye again, wondering woozily why he wasn’t helping her.
She hadn’t looked at her arm since the first rays of light appeared over the horizon, but she didn’t need to. The wolf’s sharp teeth had torn her flesh from just below her elbow up to her shoulder.
She didn’t know how much blood she’d lost…but it was bad.
Ashlyn let her eyes drift shut. Maybe rest would help her heal.
“You’re not falling asleep on us, are you?” Vargo asked sharply. “That’s pretty inconsiderate.”
“I’m…sorry,” she muttered, and opened her eyes again.
Tag, one of the Toryn ninjas who’d pretended to be Ashlyn’s younger brother, had used the shift magic to turn into a wolf and attack her. Ashlyn had stabbed him through the neck with her shuriken, killing him, but he’d fallen on top of her, pinning her down. His heavy, stiff body was still immobilizing her legs, his massive head resting across her chest and stomach. The seeping blood from his neck wound had soaked her clothing and then frozen overnight, but Ashlyn had long ago stopped shivering.
Her father had told her the night before that shift was capable of transforming its user into a wolf, in addition to the bear and panther forms Ashlyn had witnessed previously. Wolves, the only animals in Kresmir capable of intelligent thought and conversation, were lethal opponents, but Ashlyn had never seen a shift wolf until Tag had attacked her.
Vargo dropped his flask on the pearl-tiled floor, but instead of clattering against the tiles, the sound it made sounded like footsteps. “Damn,” he said. “Good thing it was empty.”
“Ashlyn!” someone yelled, and it wasn’t Vargo or Skye.
“You’re hallucinating,” Skye said, seemingly amused by her feverish state.
Aik’s furry face entered her line of vision. Ashlyn was happy to see her friend, but much too cold to react to his sudden appearance. He padded up to her and touched his muzzle to her cheek. Normally the wolf’s nose was cold, but right now Ashlyn was so chilled that she couldn’t feel any change in temperature, only the pressure from the contact.
“Hang on, Ash,” he said, and sat back on his haunches before sending up a long, eerie wolf howl that rang in Ashlyn’s ears like a bell.
Skye and Vargo abruptly disappeared.
Drake vaulted up the stairs and skidded onto his knees beside her, looking decidedly un-Drake-like as he slipped in the sticky, half-frozen pool of blood.
“Ashlyn, look at me,” he said urgently, putting a hand to her cheek and turning her face towards him.
She stared at him dully, lamenting her sad state of mind for conjuring up the vampire in her fantasies. “Go away,” she mumbled. “Bring Vargo back.”
Something flashed across his handsome features- something like the pain she’d felt the day before, when he had coldly backpedaled after finally admitting his feelings for her. Ashlyn felt a brief twinge of satisfaction.
The loud whirring of engines reached her ears, and over Drake’s shoulder she saw the airship circling, looking for a place to land in the water-soaked city.
Drake grabbed Tag’s body and flung it aside, finally freeing Ashlyn to move. She tried to pull one knee up, and couldn’t do it, barely eliciting a tremble from her leaden limbs. Drake gently reached over and touched her injured arm, and the green light of heal illuminated his face as the warming effects of the magic enveloped her.
“No…use,” Ashlyn mumbled, and turned her head to the side, irritated at the loss of her numbness as she began to warm up. “Leave me alone.”
Somewhere in her head she was aware that he was trying to save her, and she was also very much aware that he did not seem to be another one of her hallucinations. But she wanted to be left alone.
Drake turned her face towards him again. “Stay awake,” he said firmly.
“No use,” she repeated.
“I won’t let you die,” he snapped, ruby eyes flashing. “I promise you that. Stay awake.”
She could feel her wounds closing, nerves reconnecting and flesh knitting under Drake’s touch. As the pain of healing intensified, it seemed to penetrate the haze of her delirium. Ashlyn found herself thrown back into reality with surprising abruptness, and her whole body jerked in shock. “That hurts,” she moaned, trying (and failing miserably) to pull her arm away from Drake. “Stop it.”
He responded by sliding his arms underneath her and standing, picking her up so that her head lolled back and her arms dangled awkwardly. Ashlyn’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, but a sharp bark from Aik brought her back. “Crap,” she said ineloquently, realizing that her body was trying to quit even as Drake was trying to save her. I’ve lost too much blood.
“I’m taking you to the airship,” Drake said, and he shifted her in his arms so that her cheek was against his shoulder. “Stay awake.” He began to run, and Ashlyn was totally helpless to do anything but lie in his arms and stupidly hope that he didn’t drop her. She could hear the rhythmic clicking of Aik’s claws on the pearl tiles as he followed, could feel Drake’s hands tightening on her body. Every step served to jolt her out of near-unconsciousness, but the urge to sleep was constant and nearly overwhelming.
“Talk to me,” Drake told her suddenly. He leaped over the last two steps, landing with a splash in thigh-deep water that drenched them both, and waded towards
the next staircase. The urgency of his movements and the shallowness to his breathing was unmistakable. He was worried about her.
If she’d had the strength to do so, Ashlyn would have laughed out loud. She was dying, he’d rejected her, and he wanted to talk now? Her thoughts were too muddled to comprehend that he was trying to keep her awake, but some miniscule, polite corner of her mind (a corner that was clearly repressed during her more lucid moments) reminded her that it would be rude not to comply with his request, so she struggled to respond.
“You don’t…need…to breathe,” she murmured, saying the first thing that came to mind. It seemed a betrayal for Drake to deceive people with unnecessary human habits.
“But I still do it,” Drake answered candidly as he ran up the steps. “As much from habit as an attempt to blend in. Keep talking.”
Ashlyn thought about her dad, lying beside him and holding his hand. She’d been so happy to see him again. But after Kou had broken into the room, her dad had still been lying there, a peaceful and serene expression on his face…except that he hadn’t been breathing at all.
“Kou…had…re…reveal,” she whispered, and she was speaking so softly that only Drake, with his superhuman hearing, could have understood her.
Their eyes met briefly as his step faltered, a slight hitch in his stride, and she saw the sorrow in his eyes. He knew about her father.
Ashlyn had lost her hira shuriken to Kou in the basement of her home in Toryn, and she was so desperate to save a dying Vargo that she allowed Kou to escape with the weapon, along with the stanes inside it. Reveal led its user to whatever they were seeking, and Kou had found Ashlyn’s father by using the stane’s powerful tracking magic. Kou had murdered Lord Li as Ashlyn slept beside him, by injecting some kind of poison into her father’s IV line.
There was a small, desperate part of her that had secretly hoped Sara or Aik were wielding some kind of rare magic that would bring her father back to life. There were so many stanes in Kresmir, so many magics. One of them had to bear the power of resurrection.
Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) Page 15
