The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (44 page)

She picked up her shuriken and
her knapsack from the ground, shrugging into the blue straps and securing the
weapon on her back. “How is he?” she asked.

Drake shook his head silently,
his gloveless hand gently working its way down the gelding’s leg, which
appeared even more swollen than it had been last night.

Ashlyn folded her arms across her
chest, contemplating their options. She felt much better with Drake here, but
that didn’t solve the problem of how to get back to Toryn.

A flash of color caught her eye
through the waterfall, and she frowned, moving closer so she could try to see
outside. The water kept her from seeing much, but she did make out a small blob
of red moving swiftly across the opposite side of the lake. It was high up
enough that it could be an unusually-colored bird…or maybe a person with bright
red hair…on horseback.

Vargo!

Ashlyn rushed to the edge of the
cave, holding her hand up to shield her face from the worst of the wet. She
heard Drake say her name as she ducked through the waterfall, but she ignored
the warning in his voice. There was only one person on the island right now
with that exact garnet shade of hair.

She slipped on some moss, and one
boot went into the water. Ashlyn grimaced and hastily leaped onto the wet grass
at the lake’s edge, shaking her foot. Using her hand to shield her eyes from
the sun, she peered across the clearing and saw Vargo disappearing into the
forest.

Cursing under her breath, she bit
her lip. She didn’t particularly want to draw attention to herself by shouting,
but the Spartan’s horse was already moving at a fast trot and she wasn’t sure
she would be able to catch up.

“Vargo!” she yelled, running
after him. “Wait!”

She sprinted across the grass as
fast as she could, which was pretty fast considering one boot was sopping wet,
incredibly slippery and squishing out water with every step.

Vargo must have heard her though,
because she was still at least fifty feet from the edge of the forest when he
suddenly burst out from the trees at breakneck speed. Ashlyn came to a sudden
halt, both from surprise and an intense desire
not
to be squashed by a galloping horse.

The horse hadn’t even come to a
complete stop before Vargo jumped off and closed the distance between them in
three long strides. Ashlyn was yanked into a hug, his arms going around her as
he pulled her to him.

“Thank the gods,” he murmured
against her hair, and Ashlyn smiled uneasily, unsure of how to respond. Her
arms were pinned to her sides, so she couldn’t return the hug- and, oh yeah,
that huge boatload of guilt that she totally hadn’t missed earlier? It was
making an appearance now.

“Are you okay?” he said, pulling
back but keeping his hands on her shoulders. “Where’s your father?”

“I’m fine- he’s in the cave
behind the waterfall. He’s not so good.” Her mind was already racing. She could
send her dad back to Toryn with Vargo, and stay behind with Drake until Aaron
could come pick them up in the airship. Or she could just send Vargo to fetch
the airship. She didn’t like the idea of moving her father, but he needed
medical care as soon as possible.

Vargo tucked her wet, tangled
hair behind her ears, his hands lingering at her neck. “Skye made it back to
Toryn last night. He told us everything, said that you’d be meeting him there,
but when you didn’t show this morning, I knew something must be wrong. What
happened?”

“I’m so glad that Skye is okay,”
she said, pressing a hand to her suddenly-warm cheek. “My horse tripped while
we were escaping, and came up lame. We really need to get my father to Toryn.
Can you take him back with you? I can stay here until Aaron can bring the
airship.”

“Hang on just a second,” Vargo
replied, and finally let go of her to turn to his horse. He pulled a long red
cylinder from the saddle bag and cracked it against his leg, then flung it as
far as he could towards the large end of the clearing. The cylinder landed in
the yellowing crab grass and began smoking fiercely.

Ashlyn’s eyes widened. “What are
you doing? If Kou’s army sees that smoke, they’ll know we’re-”

“Relax, princess. Trust me.”

She bit her lip nervously, and
Vargo’s gaze locked with hers. He smiled reassuringly. She noticed for the
first time that his eyes were bloodshot and he had a black smear on one cheek.

“Did you get any sleep last
night?” she asked suspiciously.

One eyebrow quirked. “With you
out here alone? Knowing that Lockhart lost
resist
?
Yeah, right.”

His admission that he’d stayed up
waiting for her was strangely touching. “You didn’t have to worry,” she said,
smiling. “Drake got
resist
back,
everything’s okay.”

“I’ll always worry about you when
you’re not with me,” he answered, and looked as though he wanted to say more,
but just then they heard the familiar hum of machinery, and both turned to see
the airship emerging over the trees.

Ashlyn took a few steps back,
holding up a hand in an attempt to block the wind as the ship descended. Vargo
grabbed his horse’s reins and followed her, staying close.

She glanced over her shoulder and
saw Drake emerging from the waterfall. He carried her father in his arms, and
as he stepped onto the grassy bank, his horse poked its head out from behind
the waterfall as well, seemingly contemplating the route before limping out
after its master.

“You stayed the night with
Lockhart?” Vargo said from behind her.

Um…

“I was really glad to have the
extra help with my dad,” she offered lamely.

At this point Aaron and a Toryn
man Ashlyn didn’t recognize were making their way down the ramp, carrying a
stretcher between them, with Sara following close behind. Drake stopped next to
Ashlyn, and she gave him a tight-lipped smile before reaching over to smooth
her father’s damp hair back from his face. He was still asleep, and in the
sunlight his face looked even more gaunt and pale than it had the night before.

“Dad,” she said softly, trying to
rouse him.

“Let him sleep,” Sara advised,
pausing in front of Drake. “His body needs to heal itself right now.” She
quickly lifted Lord Li’s hand, examining the scarred flesh of his forearm
before checking the pulse at his neck. “Drake, would you mind…?” she asked at
last, motioning to the stretcher.

The vampire gently lifted Lord Li
onto the stretcher, being very careful as he withdrew his hands from beneath
the other man. Ashlyn’s throat tightened as she watched the simple action. Most
of her excitement was because her father was alive and safe, but the compassion
that Drake was showing to Lord Li made her heart flutter.

Aaron and the other man began
carrying her dad towards the airship, and Ashlyn followed closely. “Is he going
to be okay?” she asked Sara.

The shorter woman shook her head.
“We’ll do everything we can for him, but it’s too soon to tell. I’m sorry.” She
followed Aaron up the ramp, quietly issuing orders about how to carry her new
patient.

Ashlyn stopped at the base of the
ramp, feeling very discouraged and worried. She shouldn’t be surprised- Sara
was a realist, and Ashlyn didn’t want the other girl to lie to her, not
really.
But right now all she wanted to
hear was that her father was going to be all right. After everything they’d
gone through, after she’d waged war inside herself for the past several weeks
over whether she could truly challenge him or not…after thinking that he might
be lost to her forever, Ashlyn couldn’t help but feel that a little optimism
was deserved. Her father had fought to survive against all odds, when people
were draining his body of its life force. Sara would save him. Perhaps Aaron
could even take Lord Li to Cosmea, where the healers were renowned as the
greatest in Kresmir.

“Don’t sweat it, Ash,” Vargo said
to her, squeezing her shoulder. “Your dad’s gonna be fine.”

She smiled up at him, grateful
for his unexpected kindness. “Thanks.”

“Ashlyn.” Drake appeared beside
her, and gestured up the ramp, indicating that she should ascend. He followed
by placing his hand at the small of her back, pushing lightly. Confused, Ashlyn
obeyed the pressure, and Drake walked up the ramp beside her, keeping his hand
against her back, his horse following behind them.

It occurred too late to Ashlyn
that Drake was deliberately moving her away from Vargo, and also making his
intentions towards Ashlyn clear to the red-haired Spartan. She glanced over her
shoulder and saw Vargo standing at the bottom of the ramp, eyes narrowed as he
stared at her.

He wasn’t stupid- he had to know
that something was going on.

The last thing Ashlyn wanted to
do was cause tension within FLD. Her feelings towards Vargo were decidedly
mixed, especially now. She’d thought earlier that there was no danger of
ambivalence regarding the situation with Drake, but after seeing Vargo again,
she felt…well…she felt confused and sick to her stomach over the entire
situation.

When Drake turned towards the
wing of the airship where the horse stalls were located, Ashlyn firmly stepped
away from him. “I’m going with my dad,” she said. Drake nodded, but she knew
that as astute as he normally was, he probably would not miss the warning in
her eyes. She didn’t like the thought of men fighting over her, and she
especially disliked the idea of Drake staking his claim as though she was a
piece of property.

By the time she made it to the
infirmary, her dad had already been moved into a bed. Aaron was gone-
presumably prepping the airship for lift off- but Sara was carefully inserting
a needle into Lord Li’s arm. The older woman looked up as Ashlyn entered the
room, and her blue eyes were warm behind her glasses.

“I’m going to set him up with an
IV,” she said. “He needs to get hydrated if he’s going to recover.” She worked
quickly and efficiently, hooking a tube to the needle and connecting it to a
hanging bag of clear fluid. “I hope I didn’t scare you earlier, Ash. I didn’t
want to give you false hope, but honestly, the fact that your father has made
it this far bodes well for him. He must have been in exceptional physical
condition before this ordeal began.”

“He was…getting a little tubby
the last time I saw him,” Ashlyn said affectionately, smiling slightly at the
memory. “But he’s always been fit.” She stared down at her father’s thin face,
noting how very different it was now than it had been during Lord Angelo’s
reign.
It doesn’t seem right,
she
thought.
Lord Angelo couldn’t break my
dad, even when he had control of Toryn, but Kou managed to do it just by
telling him that I was dead.

“Aaron wants to talk to you,”
Sara said. She had a stethoscope around her neck, and fidgeted with the
earpieces for a moment. “You should probably head to the bridge. I’ll let you
know if anything changes with your father’s condition.”

Just then, the airship rose off
the ground, and Ashlyn clutched the railing on the side of the bed, her stomach
flip-flopping. “I hate flying,” she said out loud, and sighed, shaking her
head.
You’d think at almost nineteen I’d
be over this.
“But I’ll go find Aaron. Thanks, Sara.”

The other woman nodded to her
distractedly, and Ashlyn turned to leave.

She half-expected either Vargo or
Drake to be outside the infirmary, waiting, but she was relieved to see that
the corridor was completely empty. She just didn’t want to deal with romantic
entanglements right now. Holding one hand to her stomach and the other one to
the wall as she walked, she made her way up the hall towards the bridge.

She paused outside the doorway,
leaning up against the wall for a moment and welcoming the feel of the cool
steel against her flushed skin. So much had happened, and she’d hardly paused
to process any of it.

Unless Skye had confirmed his
death, there would be no way to know if Kou was still alive or not. But the
fact remained that he had survived being shot by Drake and falling from the top
of Na Michico. His survival was something Ashlyn wouldn’t have believed if she
hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

Her dad had clearly been held
hostage this entire time, helpless to stop Kou from taking more and more Li
blood to enable the army to use
shift.
Perhaps
the reason Kou had been searching for her and had brought her back to Toryn in
the first place was because her father was growing too weak to supply blood
anymore. But she still wasn’t sure why Kou had lied to her, pretending to be
her brother. Had he been toying with her? Or was he just trying to figure out
if she would join his cause? The unanswered questions and possible answers
disgusted her.

Her thoughts were about to turn
to her own mess of a personal life, and the situation with Drake and Vargo,
when Aaron suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“You gonna stand out here all day
or what?” he barked. “We got things to talk about!”

“Like what?” Ashlyn answered
testily. “Can’t it wait until we get to the city?”

“Hmmph.” Grabbing her none too
gently by the arm, Aaron stomped into the bridge and lead Ashlyn to the viewing
screen. “They’ll be arrivin’ at ‘bout the same time we are,” he told her,
pointing.