by Andi Van
“Maker,” Kelwin swore. “Yes, your arm is still there. But the fact you can’t feel it is alarming. How does the rest of you feel?”
“I feel fine,” she told him, smiling widely. And then she promptly threw up.
Kelwin pulled her hair back, holding it for her as she retched. “Daro, can you smell whatever it is they put on the bolt?”
Daro stepped gingerly up to Zaree’s left side, making an obvious effort to avoid what was going on in front of her. He sniffed at her shoulder and recoiled. Bloodbane, he said. We need to start stuffing an antidote into her or we’re going to lose her.
Zaree tried to tell them she was going to be fine, except her stomach revolted again, making that impossible. And for some reason, she was starting to see spots. Maybe it was because she was having trouble breathing. Odd, she hadn’t noticed that before. Was she having trouble breathing because her stomach kept purging itself, or had her lungs disappeared like she was afraid her arm had? A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she knew that feeling. That was the same feeling she’d gotten when she’d been told of her father’s death. It meant she was about to faint.
“Stay with me, Zar,” Kelwin demanded as he dropped his pack to the floor, opened it with one hand, and began digging frantically. “We can’t lose you, and not just because of Tasis.”
“Not lost,” Zaree managed to mumble. And then everything went dark.
Chapter 14
“IT HAS to be her,” Gyr bellowed to the assembled, nearly making Triv jump away from the door she’d cracked open to allow her to peek into the room. She’d had a hard time convincing herself to eavesdrop, because if she did, then it would make things true. They really would be confirming a new leader.
Trekelm really would be dead.
Triv choked back the keening noise her body had been set to utter without her permission. That damnable wasting disease that no one had been able to find the source of had taken him from them, despite the widely held belief that mages weren’t prone to illness. Trekelm may not have been her master, but he was her friend. Her leader. Their leader. And they needed him.
No, K’yerin said from where he sat next to her. You don’t need him. You will miss him, and you will wish he was still with us, but you will persevere. Would he have wanted you—any of you—to wail and tear at your hair and gnash your teeth as if you were in some sort of poorly told bard’s tale? Or would he have told you to keep looking forward?
Triv knew the answer to that, but she didn’t want to hear it.
A noise from behind her made her jump, but Corrin put a hand over her mouth before she could yelp. “Shh,” he whispered needlessly. “Have they started?”
Triv nodded. “They’re arguing. I missed who Trekelm named, though. Except that Gyr said ‘she.’”
“She’s too young,” Master Yzril said, her nose turned up with disgust. “Too headstrong, too stubborn, too willing to take risks.”
Triv and Corrin looked at each other. “Falcon?” Triv whispered. That description suited the standoffish girl quite well.
K’yerin snorted.
“She’s stronger than all of us put together,” Gyr said, pointing a thick finger at his opponent. “She needs a little guidance, yes, but she has the heart for it.”
“And Trekelm named her,” Master Navi interjected. “Are you really suggesting he didn’t know what he was doing?”
Yzril glared at the majority of people in the room. They stood with Gyr. Only a handful stood with her. “If you confirm that brat I’m leaving.”
“Don’t let the door hit your extremely large backside on the way out,” Gyr said, his tone overly friendly. Before Yzril could do more than sputter, Gyr looked at the door. Right at Triv.
She flung herself backward, despite knowing it was already too late. He’d seen her.
“Trivintaie,” he said slowly, his deep voice rolling through the room. “Come here.”
She looked at Corrin, and he gestured toward the room with a nod. “I’ll go with you. Gyr wouldn’t punish us too badly for being nosy.” He smiled at her then, leaning down to give her one of the kisses she’d started receiving from him a few years prior. “I will always have your back.”
With a long sigh, Triv nodded, then headed for what felt like her doom.
“Close the door, please,” Gyr told them when they’d entered. “And kindly lock it so no one else can snoop.” There was humor in his eyes when he said it, and Triv nearly wilted with relief. They weren’t in trouble.
“Trekelm made things very clear for us,” he told the newcomers, though his attention was focused on Triv. And then, oddly enough, he bowed to her. “My leader.”
“But….” Triv tried to wrap her brain around what it all meant and said the first thing that came to mind. “But I’m not a master.”
“You are now,” Gyr told her. “Do you accept?”
Triv looked at Corrin, whose eyes were as wide as hers probably were, then looked down at K’yerin. The cat was giving her a look that clearly told her to get on with it.
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat when her voice wobbled. “If that’s what Trekelm wanted, I suppose I’d better.”
ZAREE BLINKED, trying to figure out why the blurry ceiling above her seemed so unfamiliar. Her eyes refused to focus, but she got the distinct impression she was no longer in the dungeon. The last thing she remembered, they were about to step into the furnace room when suddenly…. Her hand flew up to touch her left shoulder, and she felt bandaging there. It would seem she hadn’t dreamed the pain after all.
“You’re awake, then?”
Zaree turned her head toward the voice, blinking furiously. She only succeeded in making her eyes water. They still refused to focus, and while the voice seemed familiar, she couldn’t quite place it. “Who…?”
“I suppose I should not be surprised that you do not recognize me. Perhaps if I held a glaive to your throat again it would jog your memory.”
“Ulminara?” That made no sense. Why would Ulminara be in the castle? “Why are you here?”
“Why?” Ulminara snorted. “Because I live here. I suppose you are still groggy from your ordeal. You are among my people. What do you last recall?”
“Pain,” Zaree said, her tone short. “After that, nothing. Nothing that makes sense, at any rate. How did I get here? And where are the others?”
“Your friends brought you here.” Ulminara said it like it should have been the most obvious choice, and perhaps it was, but that wasn’t precisely what Zaree had meant. She’d ask Kelwin when she saw him. He’d be able to give her a more complete picture anyway. “As for where they are, at least two of them are waiting outside to see you. When your group arrived, they all appeared to be in the middle of a disagreement. They are… tense.”
Well, that didn’t bode well. Zaree wondered what could’ve possibly happened. She hoped they hadn’t started a round of blaming each other for her injury. “Would you mind calling them in, please?”
Zaree heard the other woman stand and move across the room. Once Ulminara had left her side, Zaree pulled herself into a sitting position and scrubbed frantically at her eyes, trying to force them to focus. She discovered they were more than a little crusted over, likely a result of whatever she’d been shot with. No regular projectile would burn so excruciatingly unless it had been dosed with something. That didn’t make the sediment around her eyes any less disgusting, however.
“We scrubbed your face as best we could,” a far more familiar voice told her, and she looked up to see the unmistakable forms of Kelwin and Daro nearing the bed, with who she thought was Reikos following behind. “But bloodbane tends to take odd routes out of the body after someone’s been dosed on an antidote. Most notably, it likes to try to escape via your tear glands. If you’d woken a few hours ago, I’m not certain you would have even been able to open your eyes.”
“So gross,” she mumbled under her breath. “Wait, you said bloodbane?”
“I did,” K
elwin confirmed, sitting cross-legged on the bed so he was facing her. Daro joined them, practically throwing himself into Zaree’s lap and rolling over so she could rub his belly. “How much do you remember?”
“The pain,” Zaree said, giving a shudder. If she never had to endure that much pain again, it would be a blessing, but she had a feeling the memory of it would haunt her for quite some time. “Not much beyond that too.”
“That’s probably a good thing.” Someone who Zaree thought was probably Ulminara approached and handed Kelwin something. “Ah, thanks. Zar, close your eyes.”
She complied, and was relieved when she felt a warm, damp cloth wiping at her face. “Skipping the traumatic details, how did we get here?” Zaree asked.
“Once Emlynn knocked out the guards, we dragged you into the tunnel. We had to talk quick to keep that gryphon of yours from gutting us when she saw you were hurt, incidentally. I tossed you onto her back and climbed on behind you after she agreed to take the two of us back as fast as possible. Good thing she trusts Em with her kids, because they never would have been able to keep up. Daro had to stay back, too, but that ended up being a good thing because he was able to let me know what was going on with the others. I’d dosed you with what I had on me, but that’s not always enough and it’s smarter to have a healer deal with something like that anyway. So Mistral ran for all she was worth and got us here in less than half the time it took us to cross the tunnel the first time we went through. I took us through the gate, nearly got killed for showing up with you in such bad shape, and turned you over to their healer. When the others reached the gate a day and a half later, Daro let me know they were there and the gatekeeper here went to go fetch them.”
Zaree would have nodded if Kelwin weren’t scrubbing her face so vigorously, but she settled for making a noise of understanding. “Okay. Now how about telling me why Ulminara thinks you all are fighting. What happened?”
The cloth on her face stilled, then moved away. Zaree opened her eyes and was glad to find she could almost see clearly again. Certainly her vision was good enough to see the look of irritation on Kelwin’s face as he glared at Reikos, who stared at the floor. “When the door to the furnace room opened, one of the guards who was waiting for us said something. I’m guessing you don’t remember what it was.”
Zaree gave it a serious effort but ended up shaking her head when she only drew a blank. “No,” she admitted. “The pain was more than a little consuming.”
You were very ill, Daro said, looking ridiculous as he continued to lie on his back, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. We were very worried for you. I offered to eat the guard that shot you, but they wouldn’t let me.
“You did not,” Zaree laughed, rubbing him between his ears.
“Actually, he did,” Kelwin said. “Apparently he got bored waiting for Yldost and Falcon to join them in the tunnel and asked if he could go back into the dungeon hallway to gnaw on the guards. I told him junk food was bad for him, but Emlynn tried to argue that the guards had earned it.”
They did, Daro insisted. But we’re getting off track.
“You started it,” Kelwin noted with a sigh. “But yes. So, the door to the furnace room opens, and one of the guards says, “There he is. The king’s bastard heir.”
“What?” Zaree asked, her brows drawing together in confusion. “But the king doesn’t have an heir. Not that’s ever been announced, anyway.”
“He has an heir,” Reikos mumbled. “Several, actually, by the women he forces into being his mistresses. I just happened to have had the bad luck to be the firstborn.”
Zaree stared at him, mouth agape, before her brain grasped the concept of words again. “Excuse me?” she asked.
Reikos sighed heavily, his already-drooping shoulders seeming to sag farther. “Do you remember how once I told you that I couldn’t just leave because the king would come after me, and explained I was a special case? I was forced into my position under the guise of toughening me up, but everyone in the guard knew it was so the monster that fathered me could keep me close, to be used as a tool when he needed me. I loathe the man, and I hate that he had anything to do with my existence. But as I already told everyone else, you can’t choose your parents.”
Zaree simply continued to stare at him, blinking in shock. He dared to glance up at her and winced when he saw her expression. “You’re a prince.”
Reikos shrugged, his expression turning even more depressed than it already had been. “Not on purpose.”
Emlynn was and is still furious, Daro said as he rolled onto his stomach. She made me verify the truth of his words several times as she asked him questions.
“She interrogated him,” Kelwin pressed his lips together and they thinned in anger as he drew a deep breath and let it go slowly. “It was uncalled for. Reikos has helped us more than once. He was certainly not feeding information back to that weeping pustule who insists he’s the king.”
Zaree forced herself to lean back against the headboard and keep calm. It wasn’t easy, if she were going to be honest with herself.
He has never told an untruth, Daro told her quietly.
“I know,” Zaree said. And she did. But that wasn’t her issue. Her issue was that her heart was more than a little bruised. A member of the royal family and a common Gyrn girl who had been assumed to be a boy at birth were not a combination that would ever work. Her crush had just died a swift but painful death, as if it had been stabbed by the blade Ulminara had once held at her throat. “If I were related to the king, I wouldn’t want to tell anyone, either.” She gave a humorless laugh and shrugged. “At least now you know why you look like Falcon’s brother. You share a bloodline.”
“Zaree….”
“And really, who doesn’t have their fair share of secrets?” Zaree continued, speaking over whatever Reikos had been about to say. “Maker knows I have mine.” She reached up, undid the buckle that held her wide leather choker fastened, and pulled it away from her throat. She held out her arm and dropped the strip of leather unceremoniously onto the bed, staring defiantly at Reikos as she did. If there was one positive thing about the current situation, it was that Zaree was no longer afraid to tell Reikos what she’d promised Em she would. Because it didn’t matter anymore how he felt about it.
Reikos stared back at her, looking perplexed. Zaree assumed it was because he wasn’t sure what she was getting at, and that assumption was proved correct when his gaze zeroed in on her throat and his eyes widened. “You have….”
“An Adam’s apple, yes,” Zaree said calmly.
“Why do you have an Adam’s apple? You’re a girl.”
“Yes, I am. But that’s not the only unexpected bit of anatomy I have, and if you so much as hint that it means I’m not a girl, I’ll be borrowing Ulminara’s glaive and finding a new place to house it. That place will involve your flesh.”
Kelwin rubbed at his face. “Zar, that really could have been done with more tact. Give him a moment to let it sink in. Your words, not the glaive. You won’t be stabbing anyone today.”
“That’s yet to be seen,” Zaree said flatly. “And if you won’t let me stab anyone, I can just get Mistral to do it. She has those nice, sharp talons.”
“Clearly you are feeling better,” Ulminara said, breaking the silence she’d maintained through their conversation. “If that is the case, it’s time. These two need to leave so you can bathe and dress properly.”
“Time?” Zaree asked. “Time for what?”
“Have you forgotten your entire reason for coming to our land?” Ulminara asked, raising an eyebrow. “While I am glad we were able to heal you, and am glad we are in the process of healing your other friend, you are here because the Maker has called for you. If you’re well enough to battle, you’re well enough for a short flight.”
“Flight?” Reikos asked.
Zaree, however, smiled. “You mean the gryphons.”
“Of course,” Ulminara said. “Why walk when you can fly? I
t’s much easier, and it makes the gryphons happy.” She looked at Kelwin and Reikos, her face darkening. “Now get out.”
The two moved as though they were afraid Ulminara would stab them at any given moment. Kelwin paused at the door, looking back at Zaree in a silent query of whether she was okay or not. Zaree gave him a nod and made a shooing motion. Ulminara, for her part, frowned at Daro. “You too.”
But….
“Out,” Ulminara growled.
The wolf grumbled as he jumped down from the bed and sauntered out, clearly less afraid of the Gray Forest elf than the other two.
“I can bathe and dress by myself,” Zaree told Ulminara. “You should go too.”
Ulminara snorted. “You spent two days fighting off one of the worst poisons possible. My job is to get you to the Maker safely. I’m not going to ruin that by having you drown in the tub.” She cocked her head to one side, looking Zaree over. “Or are you concerned because of what you just revealed to your friend? There are several like you here. I will not look down on you for that.”
“Several?” Zaree asked, surprised at what Ulminara had just disclosed. It wasn’t so much the shock that she wasn’t the only one there, but more that the elf was speaking of it so openly.
“It is not as unusual as you seem to think it is,” Ulminara said as she opened the wardrobe on the other side of the room. “It happens. We don’t know why, and if the Maker knows, she’s not disclosing. But we don’t need to know the why of it.” She pulled out some clean clothes, frowned at them, and returned them to the wardrobe before digging further. “I imagine the humans of the world have a far different view on it, however. It must have been a difficult childhood for you.”
Zaree thought of Sireti and frowned darkly before she could stop herself. “Yes, you could say that. My brother has been fighting what I know to be true since the moment I broached the topic. Luckily for me, our father was far more understanding.”
“Your brother? The one who sleeps?”
