Rangers of Linwood (The Five Kingdoms Book 1) (14 page)

“And the two of you wasted over a hundred years playing games,” Tesni said. “Put your worries to rest,
atar
. I am prepared. If Aeron ends up breaking my heart, I will break him.” With that, she turned and headed over to one of the food stalls selling fresh apple tarts.

Arya and Ryder simply laughed.



“You’re leaving yourself open in the most vital areas,” Ryder told Rowan the next day, after a sparring match between the two of them. Rowan had become a fairly capable swordsman, but the day after the harvest festival, the boy seemed off.

“I apologize,” Rowan said. “I have been…distracted, and I shouldn’t be.”

“What has you distracted?” Ryder asked. He didn’t need to ask. He already knew the answer. However, he felt that the boy needed to admit it.

“I… I am in love,” Rowan admitted, “and she doesn’t even notice me.”

“I know,” Ryder admitted. “I lost count long ago of the number of times I have seen your eyes stray in Tesni’s direction.”

Rowan shrank back a little. Was it that obvious? If so, how much trouble was he in with Ryder? “You know?”

“Aye, I know. I have for some time now,” Ryder said.

The two of them sat together, polishing their blades. “He isn’t right for her,” Rowan finally said.

“No, he’s not” Ryder agreed. Just that morning he had caught them behind the kitchen building. Tesni’s hands were on Aeron’s chest. He had her backed up against the wall and was kissing her with a passion that no teenager should possess. The worst part was that she wasn’t just letting him, she was actively participating.

“I’m not either, clearly,” Rowan said. “She has no interest in me.”

Ryder looked thoughtful. “Rowan, might I give you a little advice?”

“Of course.”

“When Tesni was eight, she witnessed the head of the Thieves Guild proposing marriage to Arya. She got upset and ran to me. She told me that Arya was in love with me, but that she thought that I didn’t care for her as anything more than a friend. I made the mistake of shrugging her off. I guess she went to Arya, then, and told Arya how I felt about
her
, because the two of them got into an argument.”

“What happened?”

Ryder sighed. “Tesni ran off. She ran into the woods, with only the most basic of survival training. Arya and I searched for her for two days. The evening of the second day, Arya started to hyperventilate, in a panic because she was blaming herself for Tesni running off. So you know what I did?”

Rowan shook his head. “What did you do?”

“I kissed her in order to shock her back into a normal breathing pattern. She surprised me by returning the kiss, and shortly after that, we found Tesni in one of the emergency shelters. The next morning, she and I admitted how we felt about each other.”

Rowan looked at Ryder, suddenly wary. “Is this a trap?”

Ryder was confused, at first, by his protégé’s question. Then he realized that he had basically just told Rowan to go kiss Tesni, and that was the last thing he wanted, was another boy to keep an eye on. He understood, suddenly, the boy’s suspicion, and he laughed. “No, Rowan, this is not a trap. This is me telling you that when you are twelve, and  you tell a ten-year-old girl that you will court her when she comes of age, and then you don’t follow through six years later, she is going to think you have no interest in her, and she is naturally going to seek attention elsewhere.”

“You knew about that, too?” Rowan asked, his eyes wide with fear.

“Not until she mentioned it last night,” Ryder said. “She was practically sulking over it and trying to cover it up with the joy of Aeron paying attention to her.”

“That Aeron…” Rowan said, starting to get angry. “I have been waiting patiently for six years. He comes into camp, and suddenly he gets the girl I’ve waited six years for, all because I was too shy to approach her?”

“And why were you too shy to approach her?” Ryder asked.

Rowan sighed. “To be honest, I thought you might kill me if I dared to even ask about courting Tesni.”

“Rowan, you are a good kid. No, scratch that. You are a good young man. I actually dislike the idea of anyone courting my daughter, but Arya has convinced me that I need to let it happen, or else Tesni will just resent me. At least you had the decency to come talk to me about it, first.”

“So what do I do, now?” Rowan asked.

“You and I are going to work together,” Ryder said. “We are going to find a way to break them up. I don’t know why, but something unsettles me about that kid.”

“You don’t trust him, either.” Rowan finished up his sword, sliding it into its sheath.

“No, I don’t,” Ryder admitted. He sheathed his sword, as well. “I can tell you this, though. He clearly isn’t interfering with her training too much. If he was, Arya would have made it clear, and probably would have seen him out of camp at the point of her arrow.”

Rowan laughed. “Something tells me you would have joined her, with your blade at his back, as well.”

“Oh, aye,” Ryder said, “absolutely.”



The logical part of Tesni’s mind was telling her to put a stop to this immediately. Aeron was rushing things. He was pushing too far, too fast, and if she didn’t stop him, soon, she could kiss her virginity goodbye. Her father and Arya both would be disappointed in her. She would be disappointed in herself.

Tesni really wanted to tell that part of her to just stop thinking. There was something about Aeron that made her want to just do anything he asked of her. Every time he looked into her eyes, she could sense that he wanted her with every fiber of his being, and it made her want him just as much.

The one thing that Tesni didn’t dare do was miss out on her training. This left her little time to actually kiss Aeron, but she did it, anyway. So it was that she found herself sneaking out late one night to meet him in his tent. He was alone, that night, his mentor out on patrol, Aeron too early in his training to go along.

“A man could get lost in your eyes,” Aeron whispered, staring into them. “They’re such beautiful, deep pools of sapphire. I would gladly drown in them.”

His words made Tesni melt the way they always did. Every time they were together, he was finding some new way to compliment her eyes. They were, he said, his favorite part of her features. They were windows to the soul, and her eyes told him that her soul was a good one.

“Aeron… Do you think we might need to slow down a little?” she asked finally.

“Why should we slow down? Aren’t we in love? In fact, Tesni, would I be too forward in asking for your hand in marriage?”

“My father would not approve of me marrying so soon,” Tesni said. “I haven’t earned my bow. I haven’t even earned my sash, yet, and we are still so young.”

“Then let’s not even ask him,” Aeron replied. He and Tesni were lying on his cot, and he moved over her, staring into her eyes again, his forehead resting on hers. “Let’s run away, tonight, and find an official in town. In the morning, we will return, a married couple, and there will be nothing he can do about it.”

He trailed kisses along her jawline, then, and down her neck, leaving her plenty of leeway to give her answer. She had to admit that it didn’t sound like such a bad idea. What was it in the back of her mind that was keeping her from saying yes? “I don’t know, Aeron,” she said at last. “We’ve not known each other all that long. We’ve been courting each other for such a short amount of time…”

“And yet part of you really wants to,” Aeron said, “and you know it.”

His eyes were on hers, again. The logical part of her mind was practically screaming at her that this was a bad idea, that if she ran off with Aeron, she would regret it forever. As grey eyes bore into blue, though, she chose to ignore it, and off they slipped through a small hole in the wall surrounding the camp.

They practically ran through the woods, and Aeron took her to a house where he said he knew a sympathetic officiate would wed them then and there. Part of her was still hesitant, even as Aeron knocked on the door, but, she told herself, it was too late to turn back, now.

After a moment, the door opened, and there stood a woman in a cloak.  “Come in,” she said.

“You were expecting us?” Tesni asked.

“I get young couples who wish to elope in the dead of night more often than you would think,” the woman said. “I was a priestess of Harena, but I had to leave the temple because I was getting so many. It was disturbing the other priests and priestesses who stayed at the temple with me.”

“So we’re not the first?” Tesni asked.

“Oh, no, dear, of course not. Young couples elope for any number of reasons. Perhaps they just want to escape the idea of a formal wedding. Perhaps they like the excitement. Perhaps their families are feuding, or just one or more parents, usually the bride’s parents, don’t approve of the match at all.”

“That last would be our reasoning,” Aeron said.

“Very well. It is a simple ceremony,” the priestess said. She repeated the magically binding questions that Tesni remembered Enid asking her father and Arya. To all of them, despite her own misgivings about this, she and Aeron answered in the affirmative.

When it was over, Aeron claimed her in a soul-searing kiss. As he did so, however, they were grabbed and pulled apart. As they were tied up, the priestess threw her hood back, laughing, and only then did Tesni recognize Agrona.

Chapter 13

Aeron and Tesni were thrown into a small room in Agrona’s castle. They looked around carefully, looking for some way to escape. Or, rather, Tesni looked around for a way to escape. Aeron just sat on the bed. “You know,” he said at last, “at least it’s a nice room instead of the dungeon.”

Tesni’s temper reached a boiling point. “You are absolutely useless! And you call yourself a Ranger? How did I ever let myself fall under your spell of romance? And now I’m married to you. I took magically binding vows for you! Well, let me tell you something, Aeron Windrunner, as soon as we escape, we are going to find a way to get this marriage annulled. The Windrunner name is shameful to me, but the Greenblade name will always hold honor. Even the Redleaf name holds more honor than yours!”

Aeron grabbed Tesni and pinned her onto the bed. “Are you saying you’d rather be married to a thief?” he asked. His eyes had turned dark, from granite to the color of storm clouds.

Suddenly, Tesni found herself afraid of him as he forced another rough kiss on her. Her mind reeled as he began tearing at her clothes, and she remembered that he had taken her to that house. He had sworn that there was someone there who would marry them right that instant, at a house that she now remembered had always been empty before.

Again, her temper rose up, and she threw him to the floor. She kneeled over him, her hand flying to his throat. “YOU! You
knew
it was Agrona! You work for her, don’t you? Well? Tell me the truth!”

“You’re….choking…me…” Aeron’s voice was ragged as he spoke.

As dawn broke over the horizon and the first rays of the morning sun spilled in through the window, Tesni’s eyes darted around the room. She realized that Aeron had been allowed to keep a knife, likely so that he could force her to submit, and she grabbed it out of his boot and held it to his throat. “Speak.”



Ryder, Arya, and Rowan all awoke with the dawn as usual. It was Tesni’s custom, as well, but the girl was no longer in the tent. She hadn’t been in the tent since late the night before. It was only now, at dawn, that any of them realized it. “Where’s Tesni?” Rowan asked.

Ryder and Arya both looked over to where Tesni should have been lying and found her cot empty. Ryder darted out of the tent to look for his daughter. He was met by Aeron’s mentor, Liam. “Ryder! Have you seen Aeron? I came back from patrol to find him missing.”

“Tesni is missing, as well,” Ryder said. Then his eyes went wide. Had Tesni and Aeron really been that stupid? He knew that there was a romance blooming between the two of them, but could they really have decided to elope?

If so, there was a possibility they might be in town, still. He voiced his suspicions to Liam, who nodded. “It is a possibility. I know the boy seemed to mutter in his sleep a lot about the need to marry her, and fast. I never did understand why, though. It isn’t as if one of them was dying or she was pregnant.”

Suddenly, both of their eyes flew open. Ryder began to twitch even more than he had before. He ran back to his tent and grabbed his sharpest blade. “Did you find her?” Arya asked.

“No, but Liam and I have a fairly good idea about what happened,” Ryder said, explaining it.

Arya sighed. “If your theory is right, killing Aeron is not going to help in the slightest. It would just deprive the babe of his or her father, the way Tesni was deprived of hers for the first nine years of her life.”

That stopped Ryder in his tracks. “Well, I’m still going to take the blade. You know, just in case they’ve found themselves in danger and that’s why they’re not back yet.” Rowan hadn’t voiced it, but Ryder was pretty sure the younger man would certainly step up to the job if Tesni would let him.