Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) (19 page)

Biting her lip, Ashlyn moved to
the foot of the bed and stared down at her dad. The outline of his body was so
tiny and frail beneath the covers, and the shadows beneath his eyes were more
prominent than before. His long, dark hair was splayed around him on the
pillow, and Ashlyn noticed for the first time that ribbons of silver were
snaking through the strands. Lord Li had always been so ageless and powerful,
commanding respect by his presence alone. Now he just looked like someone’s
very sad, very sick grandpa.

 
“Has he been asleep for very long?” she asked
Sara.

The older woman shook her head.
“No. But he did ask me to wake him up when you arrived. He knew you’d be
coming. Actually, I think he thought you were already here, but for some reason
didn’t want to see him.” She stuck her pen behind her ear. “I’ll give the two
of you some time alone.”

“Wait. Is he going to be okay?”

Sara nodded. “He lost a lot of
blood, but he should make a full recovery. This-” she indicated the clear bag
of liquid hanging from a hook on the wall, which was connected to a tube that
ran underneath the covers- “is helping with rehydrating. I need to get some
sleep, but if you’ll come get me when the bag is empty, I’ll switch it out for
a new one.”

“Of course,” Ashlyn said,
realizing that the other woman probably hadn’t slept since Lord Li was brought
onto the airship. “Thank you so much, Sara. I can’t…I really just can’t thank
you enough.”

“I’m happy to help.” Sara smiled,
and her eyes were tired behind her thick glasses.

Ashlyn glanced at Aik. “I’ll stay
with him for now,” she said. “Can I come get you when I need a break?”

The wolf nodded, and followed
Sara from the room. The door shut quietly behind them.

Ashlyn took a deep breath and
looked back at her dad, reluctant to wake him. As she stood there, though, he
stirred, his eyelashes fluttering before he opened his eyes. Ashlyn said
nothing, watching him as he gained his bearings. He stared at the ceiling for a
handful of heartbeats before his gaze flicked down, focusing on her.

There was a pause as they
regarded each other silently.

At last he smiled, his eyes
crinkling with laughter as he fumbled to get his arms out from underneath the
covers and reached for her. “My sweet girl,” he said softly in Toryn.

That was enough to trigger the
waterworks. “Hi Dad,” she said tearfully, and went to him, wrapping her arms
around his neck like she used to when she was a little girl. It should have
been awkward, trying to hug him when he was lying in bed, connected to tubes
and needles, but somehow she managed. Ashlyn squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to
remember this moment, wanting to make it last forever.

“I thought you were dead,” he
said at length, and she laughed through her tears. Typical Li- no subtlety
whatsoever.

“I thought you were crazy,” she
countered, straightening up and wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt.

His eyes were dark and warm, a
rich ebony that reminded her of home. “We were both mistaken, then.”

She smiled. “I guess so.”

His hand grasped for hers on top
of the covers, and she threaded her fingers through his. It was the first time
in over a decade that she’d held her father’s hand, and it felt strangely
wonderful.

“Where were you?” he asked. His
voice was soft, but steady.

“For the last three years?” She
shook her head, trying to think of where to begin. “I’ve been all over. Landi, Storim,
the grasslands- I even stopped by this inn once, a few years ago. For the last
seven months I’ve been in Endro.”

“The…” He took a breath. “The
dead city. That explains…why I could not find you. Kou- Devlyn- said he had
seen you killed in the Heavenly City. He said…a wolf attacked you…and you fell
to your death.”

“He’s a liar,” Ashlyn said
fiercely. “I haven’t been to the Heavenly City since…well, since Jenn. And the
only wolf I’ve seen in years is my friend Aik. You know they’re nearly extinct.”

“
Shift…
some of the more powerful
shift
stanes can transform their users into wolves,” Lord Li said, pausing every
couple of words to take a breath. “It is difficult because the magic is so
unpredictable. But it is possible.”

Ashlyn paused, remembering the
dogs who had attacked her in Landi. At the time she’d thought they looked more
like wolves than dogs, but had dismissed the idea for its absurdity. Perhaps it
hadn’t been such a stretch after all. “Is that why you believed Kou? You
thought I’d been killed by a
shift
monster?”

“No.” Her father grimaced at the
memory. “I did not believe him until a peddler came to Toryn with your bo
shuriken.”

Some of what Kou had told her was
true, then.

“Do you know where that shuriken
is now?” she asked.

“Kou has it.”

Ashlyn shook her head, staring
down at their linked hands. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I know I shouldn’t have run
away. I know I should have stayed and trained for Ladyship. If I hadn’t been
such a selfish jerk, none of this would have happened.”

“Kou did this, Ashlyn. Not you.”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t have been
able to if I’d been there.”

“Perhaps,” her dad said simply.

Ashlyn brushed a lock of hair off
his forehead affectionately. “Sara says you’re gonna be okay,” she said,
changing the subject. “All you need is time to recover.”

“And no one else draining my
blood,” he answered.

“That, too.” She pursed her lips
in thought. “How did Kou even figure that out? That he could inject the blood
and use
shift
? It seems so random.
Not to mention dangerous.”

“I am afraid that was my idea,”
Lord Li said ruefully. His voice grew weaker as he continued to speak. “He came
to me with his vision, and after I found your shuriken, I trusted him. I asked
him to help me test the magic. We injected him with my blood. But there was a
difference. He could not control himself in animal form
,
and he became addicted to the magic much more quickly than I
did.”

She wondered if she ought to stop
her dad .from using his strength to keep talking, but her curiosity won out. “Why
did you let him keep doing it?”

“I did not. I told him we had to
stop, and destroy the magic, but he would not listen. It was then that he took
me captive.” Lord Li stared out the window moodily, and Ashlyn followed his
gaze, noting that it was early evening and the sky was darkening outside. She
caught a glimpse of the moon before it disappeared behind the clouds again.

“Dad,” she said. “Can I ask you
something?”

He blinked tiredly and met her
eyes. “Yes.”

“I’m…I’m really scared about
becoming Lady of Toryn. I know I should feel ready, but…I don’t.”

His gaze softened as he looked at
her, and he slowly raised one thin hand to cup her face gently. Ashlyn put her
hand over his, holding his palm against her cheek.

“You remind me so much of myself,
at your age,” he whispered. “You are very much a natural leader, Ashlyn, but
that does not mean it is your calling.”

“It’s my destiny,” she said. “My
birthright.”

His lips curved slightly. “That
is what my father told me when I declined to ascend.”

“But you did it anyway, because
it was your responsibility.”

“I did it because I felt I had no
other choice, no obligation but to the people of Toryn.” He paused, seeming to
consider his words. “I was wrong. I had an obligation to myself.”

What?
Ashlyn let her dad’s hand lower
to her lap, still clutching his fingers tightly.

“Toryn broke my spirit,” he said,
and his eyes were misty with memories. “I wanted to save my kingdom, but I
could not fully dedicate myself to a cause I did not want, and Toryn and I both
suffered for my half-hearted attempt at ruling.”

“Dad,” Ashlyn said unsteadily,
“I’m not trying to get out of being Lady of Toryn. I’m not running again.”

He smiled gently at her. “If you
want to lead, Ashlyn, I will help you. If you do not wish to become Lady of
Toryn, however, that is your decision. I would not force you to accept your
birthright. Perhaps…” He trailed off, visibly exhausted, before continuing,
“Perhaps I would have, three years ago. But not now. Besides…” His eyes
fluttered shut, his whisper barely audible when he said, “There are
other…options.”

Ashlyn waited for a moment, dying
to know more. But her dad was fast asleep, his fingers lax against hers.
Sighing, she placed his hands on his chest and glanced up at the IV bag. It was
still more than half full.

She lied down beside Lord Li and
put her hand over his. She’d be here when he woke up. They’d already spent far
too much time apart.

Eventually she drifted off to
sleep, but her dreams were violent and fitful- reenactments of the battles
she’d fought over the last week, with different endings each time. The worst
memory was from when she had rescued Lord Li from Kou’s army, and Drake had
lost
resist.
Each time she relived
the incident, something different happened. Once she had to kill Drake to save
her father. Once she watched helplessly as Drake bit Lord Li and drained what
was left of his blood. Once Skye entered and engaged in a bloody battle with
Drake, with Ashlyn at a loss as to how she could help.

It was a relief for Ashlyn when
she finally woke up, and when her eyes opened, the first thing she saw was her
dad’s peaceful profile, a slight smile on his lips. The light was still on, and
Ashlyn shifted on the bed, thinking she should probably turn it off.

As she rolled onto her back, she
started at the sight of a man standing beside the bed.

It was Kou.

He smirked down at her. “Hello,
Ashlyn.”

In the next instant she saw the
flash of her bo shuriken in his hand, and he brought it down, intending to
impale her with it. Ashlyn rolled off the bed, crashing into his legs as the shuriken
ripped into the mattress where she had been lying moments before.

Her mind was still fuzzy with
sleep, but Ashlyn had the presence of mind to grab onto Kou’s leg as it moved
right by her head. She bared her teeth and bit fiercely into his calf, eliciting
a squawk from the Toryn man. He fell backwards, colliding with the wardrobe
against the wall. His momentum knocked the huge piece of furniture sideways,
and it scraped along the wall as it fell, landing with a crash on the floor in
front of the door.

Ashlyn leaped up and danced
backwards as Kou swiped at her legs with her hira shuriken. He scrambled to his
feet, edging around the bed as Ashlyn advanced on him. She glanced over,
noticed that the window was open and immediately cursed her stupidity for not
considering it as an entrance point sooner.

“Did you forget about
reveal?
” Kou taunted her, waving the
hira shuriken in front of his face. Her stanes glittered at her from the
weapon. Ashlyn hadn’t known that anybody outside of FLD even knew how to use
reveal,
but she was so livid that she
didn’t stop to wonder how Kou had figured it out.

“You are
dead,”
she hissed, advancing another step.

“I don’t think so. Correction:
your
father
is dead,” Kou snarled.

Ashlyn’s heart skipped a beat.

Things seemed to be moving in
slow motion as she turned her head, looking at her father, who was still lying
in bed, sleeping peacefully. Ashlyn’s eyes moved to his IV tube, and she saw
with immense horror that there was a depleted syringe poking out from the tube,
its needle embedded into the IV line.

The terror in her heart nearly
caused her to miss Kou flinging the shuriken at her, but Ashlyn saw the glimmer
of the weapon from the corner of her eye and spun aside just in time. The
shuriken grazed her neck, and she simultaneously felt the sting of the cut and
heard the shuriken embed itself in the wall behind her.

There was a rattling at the door.
“Ashlyn!” Aik bellowed, and the door shook as he flung himself against it from
outside.

When Ashlyn turned back, Kou was
gone. She rushed to her father’s side. “Dad!” she cried, shaking his shoulders.
“Dad, are you okay?”

Lord Li did not respond.

“Dad!” she screamed in his face,
shaking harder. “Wake up!”

“Ashlyn, let us in!” Sara’s
voice, high and fearful, permeated the haze of Ashlyn’s consciousness. She
stumbled to the door and grabbed the edge of the wardrobe. She couldn’t move
it. Grunting, Ashlyn threw herself down on the floor and braced her feet
against the heavy wood bed, pushing her back up against the wardrobe and
shoving it out of the way of the door.

The door banged open, hitting her
in the arm, but Ashlyn was too numb to care. “Help my dad!” she yelled at Sara,
pointing at the bed. White-faced, the older woman ran to Lord Li’s side and
began searching for a pulse.

“Help me move him to the floor,”
she called after a moment, and Ashlyn scrambled to grab her dad’s legs, helping
Sara to haul him out of the bed and onto the rug.