The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (4 page)

She turned to face Vargo, smiled sweetly at him.
"Not in the least. I find you freckly and repulsive."

"Ha. Funny. Again with the redhead jokes."

"You know, Skye has freckles too," Ashlyn
said, staring hard at her saddlebags as she struggled to reinforce a square
knot with one hand. "On him they're pretty damn attractive."

"Yeah, he's real attractive with those freaky
eyes. Next thing I know you'll be telling me how hot the vampire is."

She ignored the digs at both Skye and Drake, and
replied stonily, "Well, at least Drake isn't some pervert who can't look
any higher than my chest."

Vargo dragged his gaze upwards, cheeks reddening.
"If you weren't glaring at me all the time, I might think about looking at
your face more often."

"If you weren't hitting on me all the time, I
might think of you as something like human," she shot back. "Now
excuse me, but I've got better things to do than swap insults with a
loser." She untied Suki from the hitching post and started leading her
into the stable.

"Ouch. I'm real wounded here. Next time bring
some updated material instead of grade-school stuff," he called after her.

Ashlyn slammed the stable door behind her, making the
mare jump. "Jerk," she muttered. "Tell me something, Suki. Why
is it that the only guys who are ever interested in me are losers? I don't
understand it. I'm like a loser magnet." She sat down on an overturned
bucket and blew out a breath.

Suki ignored the rant, nickering softly and touching
noses with the black horse in the stall beside her. The sunlight streaming
through the rafters sparkled off her flaxen mane, and Ashlyn reached up to run
her fingers absently through the coarse strands.

The door to the stall holding the black horse opened
suddenly, and Ashlyn glanced over, eyebrow quirking when she saw that it was
Drake. Anyone else and she might have been embarrassed that he'd heard her
talking to her horse, but the vampire probably hadn't been listening anyway.

"Hey," she said grumpily.

"Hello," he returned, running his hand over
his gelding‘s neck. Ashlyn rolled her eyes. Honestly, she should have figured
that he would have a black horse. If they came in blood-red he might have had a
difficult time deciding.

The armored glove he wore shone tarnished silver. She
found herself wondering if it was heavy for him. Probably not, what with his
super-strength and all. This morning he looked passably normal- with no
floor-length black coat, his plain black pants and shirt actually made him look
pretty average.

She felt the same thickening of her throat that she'd
felt with Drake three years ago, the not-knowing-what-to-say that really made
her babble like a moron. It wasn't that she cared one way or the other what
Drake thought about her- in the last year she'd managed to convince herself
that he was pretty much repulsive and more than a little weird. But he had also
been normal once, and in love once, and it was because of these things that he
had been turned into a vampire against his will, as a means of separating him
forever from the Angel he cared for. Add all that up and you had one
definitively angst-ridden, deathly silent immortal type, and someone that a
ditzy ninja had no idea whatsoever how to converse with.

"I was talking to Vargo about you," she
offered, a little tartly.

He said nothing, and Ashlyn frowned again.

"What's your horse's name?" she asked,
trying a different tactic.

"Name?" he repeated mildly.

Ashlyn's eyed widened. "You haven't named your
horse? How do you call it? 'Here, horsey?' Good grief, that's lame. The poor
thing probably thinks you don't even care about it."

The barn door opened. She turned to see Skye striding
in, his sword strapped to his back, his dark glasses obscuring his eyes. He
looked ready for war.

"Time to load up. Aaron’s already in the
airship."

"Okay," said Ashlyn, hopping off the bucket.
"Drake, I don't know where we're headed, but you better think up a name
for your horse before we get there or I'm going to call it something really
girly."

"Glad to know the Ash we all know and detest is
back," Trace said, coming up behind Skye.

"Yeah well, it could be worse. I could be a
Spartan," Ashlyn said affably as she led her horse out of the barn. Trace
couldn't think fast enough to make a comeback before the other girl was gone.

Chapter 3

Flour Power

"What's the matter, sweetie? Not hungry?"
Ashlyn cooed, holding out a tempting handful of fresh-cut hay to Suki. The
chestnut mare cocked her head to the side and stared at Ashlyn, obviously still
miffed about the loading argument they'd had only a few minutes before.

"Come on, Suki,"
Ashlyn pleaded, switching fluidly from Merchant Tongue to Toryn, which was the
language she spoke most often to the mare. "I know I should have taught
you to load into an airship a little sooner than today, but it's not like
there's a bunch of airships just lying around for me to practice loading. And
this isn't so bad, is it? Look at all the other horses that are here to keep
you company."

As if she could understand Ashlyn's words, Suki
glanced at the other horse in the stall with her- Aaron's mangy brown gelding,
Tritan, who was snoozing beside her. Suki’s dark eyes blinked as she surveyed
what was possibly the smelliest, most ancient animal known to man. Suki then
gave her insipid human owner a pointed look.

Ashlyn sighed. "Okay, then. Have it your
way."

She stepped out and slid the latch into place on
Suki's stall door. As the airship slowly rose from the ground, Ashlyn
remembered her tendency for motion sickness. Her stomach, in stark
contradiction to the smooth ascent of the ship, plummeted ominously, and she
squeezed her eyes shut, willing the rocking sensation to stop. The fingers of
her hay-less hand clenched the edge of the door slats; tight enough to turn her
knuckles white, tight enough to force slivers of the aging wood into her
fingertips.

"I'll be fine," she said out loud. The
tremble in her voice belied the brave words. She pried her fingers from the
door and turned, managing only half a step before her legs buckled and she fell
ungracefully to the floor in a tangle of limbs and fresh hay.

"Get a grip, Li," she muttered, clutching
her stomach. No way was she going to get sick this time. The month she'd spent
on the airship before had been downright nasty, but she was an adult now,
almost nineteen years old and not about to embarrass herself by barfing all
over the interior of Aaron's most prized possession.

Particularly not when Skye was in the room next door,
waiting to see how much her fighting skills had changed in the past three
years, if at all.

Ashlyn wasn't so sure herself. It was hard to see your
own improvement when you were fighting alone.

Slowly she climbed to her feet, noting a scrape on her
knee with some irritation. She scooped up the smushed hay and tossed a clump of
it into Suki's pen, but her aim was lousy. The hay scattered across Tritan’s
head, tangling in his unkempt forelock. There was no response from the gelding.
He was probably dead or something.

Ashlyn tottered away from the stalls, gaining only a
small bit of confidence with every unsteady step. If she hadn't gotten sick
already, chances were she probably wouldn't. The only serious issue she was
having was the doorway- it seemed to be expanding, collapsing, and moving from
side to side all at once.

"Focus, pipsqueak," Ashlyn said loudly,
trying to force herself to regain all senses. It didn't help that the ship was
still moving, throwing her off-balance even more. She thumped herself on the
forehead with a knuckle, aiming for a pressure point.

Miraculously, it worked. Her world began to steady
almost immediately.

Ashlyn stepped through the doorway, smiling at her
success, and stopped when she came face-to-face with Skye, who was shirtless.

Man, have I been missing out with this whole reclusive
warrior gig.

He quirked an eyebrow, a crooked smile creeping onto
his lips. "What?"

It took Ashlyn a second to realize she had actually
voiced her thoughts - in Toryn, thankfully. She switched to Merchant Tongue and
said sheepishly, "Sorry, just thinking out loud. I'm not, uh, feeling
great. I'd forgotten how much I
don't
like flying."

His curious expression turned concerned. "Are you
up for this? We can always wait . . . "

"No, I'm fine." Or she would be, if she
could keep from touching any part of his sculpted chest or well-muscled arms
during their scuffle. "Are we fighting hand-to-hand or with weapons? I
don't remember which one is required for the Leadership Duel."

"Without weapons, first. We'll look up Toryn
customs when we reach Cosmea and figure out how you're going to be fighting
Devlyn." He held out a hand, and Ashlyn reluctantly handed over her
shuriken before unstrapping her sword and placing it on the table.

Skye set the hira shuriken down and turned to face
her, clenching his fists together and bowing in traditional Toryn style. Ashlyn
smiled and did the same.

"Okay, just some basic stuff right now. I'm going
to come at you with my fists and I want you to block as best you can."
Skye advanced before he had even finished the second sentence.

Ashlyn dodged his punches easily, sometimes throwing
up her left arm to block the blows. When she realized that he was slowly
backing her into a corner, she sidestepped underneath one of his jabs and
shoved him forward against the wall, catching his arm and twisting it behind
his back as he attempted to elbow her in the stomach.

"Hey," she said, happy with herself. "I
guess I still got it, right?"

Skye laughed, and she was suddenly aware of the flex
of his forearm against her wrist. She stepped backwards, releasing him and
giving herself a mental kick in the pants. She really needed to get over these
hormonal urges or she wasn't going to be able to focus at
all
.

"Not bad," he said, turning towards her
again. "I could have taken you if I had attacked your weaker side, though.
You seem more focused on using your left arm to fight and defend. What happens
if your left side is incapacitated somehow?"

"Then I fight with my right," she replied,
not sure that it was the truth. "I had an injury to my arm seven months
ago. It just hasn't recovered yet. Not fully, anyway. It won't affect my
fighting."

"Let me see," he said. He took her arm and
ran his hand down her bicep.

"Ow," she muttered, more out of habit than
anything.

Skye ignored her admission of pain and squeezed her
upper arm gently, feeling the scarred muscles and abnormally thickened bone
within. "It was a bad break," he observed.

"You don't have to tell me that. I was
there
,"
Ashlyn said fervently. “I did what I could with
heal,
but I wasn’t skilled enough to fix everything.” She could
still remember the feeling of the dog’s fangs sinking into her skin, tearing at
her flesh with an unnatural frenzy. She could actually conjure up the memory of
the pain as if it were still happening. With other injuries she only remembered
the before and after - with this one she had a front-row seat to view a
close-up anytime she felt like it.

“I was never great with
heal
either,” Skye admitted, dropping her arm. “I was always scared
I’d accidentally mend something that wasn’t broken.”

“Me, too. I don’t know many people who aren’t
intimidated by that kind of magic- Drake and Aaron are pretty much it. And
Jenn, of course.” Ashlyn regretted saying the Angel’s name the moment it left
her lips. She watched as Skye’s face darkened.

“She was the most skilled healer I’ve ever seen,” he
said at length, and his voice was so emotionless that it was almost brittle.

Ashlyn studied him for a long moment. It was
impossible to ascertain any kind of emotion from Skye Damien’s obsidian eyes.
With whatever process DEMON recruits were put through, every soldier emerged
sporting a markedly changed appearance, with even the whites of their eyes
completely obliterated by inky blackness. It didn’t unnerve Ashlyn anymore, but
she often found it frustrating that she couldn’t read Skye’s emotions.

“Skye,” she said softly, knowing that she shouldn’t
ask but unable to stop herself, “you weren’t actually in love with Jenn, were
you?”

He laughed hoarsely, and glanced at her. “Why would
you ask something like that, Ash?”

“Were you?” she pressed.

He shook his head and sighed, turning away. “No more
than you were. But your brother didn’t ask you with his dying breath to protect
her, either.”

Ashlyn chewed nervously on her lower lip. She’d known
that, of course. Skye’s self-loathing stemmed solely from his shame at failing
Jax. Still, Restlyn thought differently. “Skye,” Ashlyn said. “You know Restlyn
thinks-“

“I know what Restlyn thinks,” he retorted sharply,
turning back to face Ashlyn. “If you love your sister, you’ll tell her to move
on. Whatever my feelings for Jenn were, I’m in no position to protect anyone
else.”