The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (2 page)

“Hey,” Ashlyn said
finally, when no one made any move to greet her. “Gang’s all here. I guess I
picked the right time to stop by.”

It was Restlyn who
spoke first. “Ash?” she said, arching one perfect brow as she turned towards
Ashlyn and Skye.

Ashlyn’s knees suddenly
went weak, and she clutched at Skye as she stumbled forward. He caught her
again with his hands beneath her shoulders, pulling her to him. If Ashlyn
hadn’t been in so much pain, she might have appreciated standing toe to toe
with Skye Damien, the man she’d practically swooned over at age fifteen. But at
this particular moment, she didn’t care who was holding her up- she just wanted
someone to help heal the knife wound in her side.

“Here, sit down,” Skye
muttered, directing her into a chair at a small table. He knelt beside her and
pulled up her shirt to examine the knife wound just below her ribs, not
bothering to ask for permission. Ashlyn’s breath hissed through her teeth as
the fabric of her blood-soaked shirt stuck to her raw flesh.

“Aaron,” Skye said over
his shoulder. “Come here and help with this. Do you have your
heal
stane?”

Ashlyn gripped the edge
of the table determinedly as dark spots crowded her vision. Through the haze
she could see the hulking blond pilot rise from his seat and make his way towards
her.

As Aaron knelt beside
Skye, the expression on his face was anything but thrilled. “Back from the
dead, are ya?” he growled at Ashlyn as he pulled a
heal
stane from one of the slots on his belt.

She didn’t comprehend
what he was saying, but then his hand warmed against her skin, and she sucked
in a breath as her wound began to close.

Restlyn appeared beside
her then, and reached down to pry one of Ashlynn’s hands free of the table and
cradle it with her own. “Where have you been?” she asked. “No one’s heard from
you for years.”

Ashlyn took a deep
breath, trying to gauge her management of the pain. “I’ve been…all over,” she
said slowly. “Everything was fine until about seven months ago. I think
someone’s got a price on my head. I was attacked by dogs twice. I holed up in
Endro, thinking maybe it would blow over. I just left yesterday for Storim- and
then this happened.”

“It was the Toryn
ninjas,” Skye said to Restlyn. “I don’t know how they knew she was here, but
they did. She was almost to the city when they attacked her.”

“I could have taken them,”
Ashlyn told Restlyn wryly, and the other girl grinned.

At that moment the door
opened, and Drake stepped inside, carrying Ashlyn’s saddlebags with him.
Ashlyn’s heartbeat quickened.

Three years ago she might
have carried a torch for Skye, but her feelings for Drake were an all-consuming
wildfire. The vampire could be infuriatingly gentle one-moment, and
heartbreakingly cold the next, but Ashlyn had been captivated by him
nonetheless.

All that had changed when
she’d glimpsed him at North Camp Inn last year, smiling at Trace, one of the
female Spartan assassins.

Aaron stood, grabbing a
rag from the table and wiping the blood from his hands. “She’ll be fine,” he
said gruffly to Skye. “It was deep, but the knife didn’t hit nothin’ vital.”

Ashlyn was still
staring at Drake, and finally tore her gaze away from him when Restlyn pressed
a glass of water into her hand. Ashlyn drank, glad for something to distract
herself with.

“We should get you into
dry clothes,” Restlyn said, and stood, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Not just yet,” Skye
said, and Ashlyn looked up at the former DEMON soldier, swallowing the last of
her water. He returned the stare solemnly, and she could tell that there was
something he wasn’t saying.

“What is it?” she
asked, putting her glass on the table and shaking her head to clear it. Even if
her wound was healed, she would be feeling the effects of blood loss for some
time.

“We thought you were
dead,” Jackson said from the table at the center of the room, and Ashlyn’s
curious gaze drifted to her friend. Three years ago, when they were
establishing the democracy, Jackson was elected as President of the Free Lands.
He looked every bit the regal politician now, his dark hair slicked back and
his suit immaculate.

“Dead?” Ashlyn
repeated, frowning. “I’m not dead.”

“We now that
now,”
Aaron muttered, and she glared up
at the pilot. Undeterred, he continued, “Yer father thought ya were murdered.
Some seer or somethin’ told him as much.”

“My father is notorious
for overreacting,” she responded, and shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“Somebody tell me what’s going on here. I’m obviously not dead, so I don’t see
what the big deal is. And- wait a minute- why the heck are the Spartans here?”

She eyed the two
Spartans seated beside Jackson suspiciously. Trace and Vargo were just two of
the ten Spartans who had challenged FLD three years ago. They had been Lord
Angelo’s most trusted assassins, second only to the prestigious DEMON army.
Maybe the Spartans had struck some kind of treaty with her friends in her
absence, but that didn’t mean she trusted them, knowing the sordid things the
Spartans had done under Lord Angelo’s reign.

"They’re here to help us. I told ya. We all been
thinkin’ you was dead," Aaron growled. "So did yer father, and he
gave up leadership to his son."

Ashlyn was suddenly alert again, her dizziness
forgotten. "What? My father would never...wait a minute, his son? I don't
have any-"

"His adopted son," Aik spoke up. "Your
father assumed you were dead, and abdicated leadership of the kingdom to a man
named Devlyn, who he had been training for the role since news of your
death."

“News of my death?” Ashlyn shook her head, staring at
her sopping sneakers. “I don’t understand this at all. Who told my father I was
dead?”

“Who cares?" Aaron burst out, making them all
jump- except for Drake, who might as well have been a lump of mud for all the
response he gave. "This Devlyn guy’s a maniac who's set on takin’ over the
Free Lands now that Lord Angelo’s outta the way!"

"What?"

"And then we find out you’ve been hidin’ out
while we’ve been fightin’ the good fight," Aaron continued angrily,
standing up. He towered over everyone else in the room, which made his words
that much more intimidating. "We been keepin' Toryn's army trapped on your
island for three months now, and it ain't no thanks to you."

"Three months?" Ashlyn said in disbelief.
"How did I not notice this? I'd have had to be living in a cave…" She
trailed off, remembering too late that she had been secluded in Endro for the
last seven months. Of course she couldn't have known.

They stared at her, waiting for her excuses, and
Ashlyn felt all the happiness she'd experienced at seeing her old friends slip
away, leaving behind a cold void of blackness and guilt.

"I was...just wandering," she said softly.
"I didn’t know this would happen. I'm so sorry." She paused, tears
gathering in her eyes as she thought of her father, Lord Li. She had never
dreamed that anything like this could happen. "I can't believe my father
would just think I was dead. He knows me better than that. I wouldn't kick it
without a sweeping exit."

"Devlyn said he had seen your death," Skye
spoke up. "Killed by a wolf in the Heavenly City. He presented your father
with your shuriken as proof."

"My shuriken?" Ashlyn screeched, then
winced, putting a hand to her aching forehead. "Was it my bo shuriken? I
lost that two years ago. In this tavern, actually."

"You were here? I never saw you," Restlyn
said curiously.

"I know. I came to see you, but then some jerk
swiped my shuriken and I went after him. Listen, if I had known, there's no way
I would have stayed out of the loop for so long. I swear I didn't know that
this would happen.” She swiped angrily at her eyes, frustrated and ashamed at
the tears that were welling up.
This is ridiculous,
Ashlyn thought,
blinking furiously. Five minutes ago she'd been totally void of all
responsibility for anything. Now she was discovering that she’d started a war.
That thought only made the tears come faster.

"Cryin’ ain’t gonna help nothin‘," Aaron
grumbled. "Stop actin’ like a baby."

"Sorry," Ashlyn muttered. "I didn't
mean to…" She couldn't finish the sentence. What could she possibly say?
After a pause, she asked, “Should I go back to Toryn? Tell them the truth?” The
thought made her stomach twist. She didn’t feel ready to be Lady of Toryn and
if Lord Devlyn was as bad as Aaron was saying, he wouldn’t be giving up
leadership without a fight.

“I’ll wager that Devlyn already knows you’re alive,”
Drake said, moving closer. His arms were folded across his chest, the metal
fingers of his silver glove tapping idly against his opposite arm. “Those
ninjas were tracking you. They wanted to capture you or kill you- and from what
I saw, they didn’t particularly seem to care which.”

“I have to get to my father. He’ll know what to do,”
Ashlyn said, standing up. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she stumbled
forward, one hand to her head. Drake caught her before she fell.

“Let’s talk about this in the morning,” Skye said from
behind her, and his voice sounded tinny, like it was coming from the other end
of a long tunnel. Ashlyn’s eyelids fluttered, and suddenly she felt Drake
shifting his grip on her, sliding one hand behind her back and the other one
behind her knees. Before she could object, he had lifted her up in his arms.

“I can walk,” she protested weakly.

“You need to rest,” Drake said. “I’ll take you to your
room.”

“This way, Drake,” Restlyn said, leading him towards a
small door behind the bar.

Ashlyn was so tired that she barely registered their
movement through the tavern. She knew they were climbing stairs because Drake
bumped her feet against the banister and muttered an apology, but she didn’t
recognize her surroundings at all.

Finally, he set her down on a bed, keeping his hands
on her shoulders so that she would remain upright. Ashlyn struggled to stay
awake, staring intently at the vampire. He paused, his eyes meeting hers, and a
slight smile flashed briefly across his face.

“I’m glad that you’re all right,” he said, speaking so
softly that she almost couldn’t understand him.

Then Restlyn was there, shooing him out the door, and
Ashlyn watched him go, trying desperately to remind herself of how he’d broken
her heart a year ago without even knowing it.

Chapter 2

Planning a Duel

There were cracks in the ceiling paneling, threading
through the artificial wood like cobwebs, or a length of intricate lace, or
bare branches against a cloudy sky. In her years alone, Ashlyn had learned to
find beauty even in the most unlikely of places, and to appreciate it while
others may not have had the patience to notice in the first place.

The storm was moving away from Storim now, but Ashlyn
could still hear the rattle of the last raindrops against the roof of the house.
Every nerve ending in her body was crackling with the sound. It wasn't often
that the free-spirited ninja was indoors while it rained, and being trapped
inside the windowless room gave her the jittery sensation of being locked in a
box.

She ran a hand down the wall next to her bed, tracing
the uneven grain beneath the thin paper, feeling the diminishing rumble of
thunder in the house's frame. It wasn’t quite sunrise yet, but she was wide
awake. Sleep had revitalized her. Each detail of the room was firmly locked
into her mind now, every shadowed corner thoroughly explored, every speck of
dust and its exact position memorized.

There was a trapdoor in her ceiling that led to a
refurbished attic. The attic contained a single window overlooking the town square,
but there were no lanterns lit outside.

The house was unnerving in its silence. She couldn’t
hear any voices, no thumps, no creaking to let her know that the place was
settling. She would have preferred for the others to let her know of their
presence by making
some
sort of noise! Even in the matchbox lavatory
attached to her bedroom, she couldn't hear anything - not even rattling pipes
when she was bathing.

She rubbed her thumb absently against the bright
orange stane in her hand, something she often did when she was restless. Looking
down, she smiled when she realized it was the same
reveal
stane she’d swiped off Skye when they’d parted ways three
years ago.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

"Come in," Ashlyn said, sitting up on the
bed.

Restlyn entered, looking much the same as she always
did in jean shorts and a simple white shirt.

Details that she hadn't noticed the night before began
to surface before Ashlyn's eyes. Restlyn had been adopted into the Li family
and shared no blood relation, but she and Ashlyn had the same dark hair and
heart-shaped faces. People frequently used to mistake them for biological
sisters. Restlyn, however, had changed since Ashlyn had last seen her. The
half-Toryn’s hair was much, much lighter now, riddled with honey-colored
highlights. Instead of her usual braid, Restlyn wore a loose ponytail, with
carefully arranged curls cascading down her back. It was strangely familiar,
even similar to the style worn by…