Torn: Bound Trilogy Book Two (22 page)

I lit the fuse. Cassia took off running, leaping over fallen logs, making more noise than I’d have preferred, but speed was more important than silence. I lost sight of her before the crackling noise started, and a spot at the far side of the clearing began to glow.

“What the—” one of the soldiers said, and several ran toward the flickering light. The brilliant explosion, like a star landed in the forest, threw them back.

“You idiots!” Regus yelled. “It’s a dragon flare. Pack up, we’re moving out!”

They’d seemed undisciplined, but they managed to pull together enough to begin collecting their startled horses and lowering tents. Regus stood next to the woman, who had appeared ready to dart into the forest.

“Friend of yours?” he hollered, trying to be heard over the roar of the flare.

“Not the kind I would have hoped for,” she yelled back. A dark shape passed overhead, then another.

“Dragons!” Regus roared, and drew his sword. “Get out of here!”

Their discipline broke. Trained soldiers they may have been, but not many people from the south have faced a live dragon, and their training would not have prepared them for this. Chaos erupted, men yelling and running around gathering their things, occasionally crashing into one another, still blinded by the flare. A few took horses and nothing else, and left as fast as the animals would carry them.

The two dragons passed over us again, and a low roar rumbled through the forest.

“I guess the flares work,” Kel shouted.

“Where’s Cass?”

“There.”

She ran toward us, arms flung protectively over her head. She was safe enough. The dragons focused on the men who fled from the site, easy pickings on the road. The larger dragon snapped up several men and swallowed them. The smaller took its time over kills, but didn’t stop to eat between them. Rather, it seemed to be enjoying the hunt.

Regus continued to hold onto the woman with his left hand, sword drawn and held in his right. I couldn’t fault his courage, but I also couldn’t let him keep her. I thought that he’d be as happy to use the sword on her as on the dragons.

“Get her, Kel!”

I changed, letting my clothes fall to the ground in a heap as I transformed and took off into the trees. I dove toward Regus. He saw me, and recognition dawned. He laughed.

He pushed the woman away and held his sword ready. I sheered to the left. He followed, striking out with his sword in a controlled movement. I anticipated it and pushed back at the air with my wings, slowing enough so that his swing fell short, then stretched my talons toward his face.

He screamed. The woman screamed, too, as Kel pulled her away. “Let me go!” she yelled, and he grunted in what sounded like pain.

I ignored Kel's struggle as he hauled the woman away from the fight and toward cover. I slashed at Regus’s arms when he threw them up to protect his face, and had to fall back when I lost my momentum. I climbed again, and attacked.

The smaller dragon shrieked nearby, distracting Regus for the briefest moment—less than the time it took to blink, but enough that I was able to wrap my talons around his arm and rip into him. He dropped the sword and swung his other hand toward me, grabbing a handful of feathers as he tried to pull me off. I struck out, snapping at his face, and felt his wrist bones snap between my toes.

The dragon’s cry came again, and an open mouth full of sharp teeth appeared behind Regus. I pushed away. Pain screamed through my wings and back as they slammed into the ground, but at least I was away from the dragon. A horrible tearing sound followed, and Regus’s body—complete only from the chest down—fell to its knees and hit the forest floor with a soft thud. I fled as the smaller dragon feasted.

I flew toward the sound of the woman’s voice, which came from a copse of trees near the road. When I landed, Kel was watching her warily. She glared back at him, chest heaving as she caught her breath. I shrieked, and they looked at me. I motioned with my beak toward the sky. The larger dragon circled overhead, then dropped into the clearing.

“Right, move!” Kel yelled.

The woman tried to run in the opposite direction, but Kel grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, miss,” he called to her. She struggled and kicked, but he was far stronger. He ran toward our horses. I followed, leaping between trees, as they were too close together to fly between.

“Ow! I’m trying to help you!” Kel hollered.

He set the woman down near the horses and took a few steps back, rubbing his arm. Cassia ran up behind us, leading a flame-branded horse with a soldier’s cloak and bags still attached to its saddle. “Aren, your clothes,” Cassia said, and tossed the heap behind her into the trees.

I watched the woman to make sure she wasn’t going to bolt, then went and changed. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I wasn’t going to let her go if she had information we needed. I took another quick look at her. I’d expected a sister—a twin sister, no less—to seem familiar in some way. I felt nothing.

“It’s okay,” Cassia was saying when I returned. She glanced back at me and nodded. The other woman just glared. “We saw what they were doing to you at the town. We’re trying to help.” She paused to catch her breath. “Who are you?”

The woman stood straighter. Cassia wasn’t short, but this one managed to look down at her, if only slightly, her gaze sharp and accusing. Kel stared at her, enthralled.

“My name is Nox. That’s all you need to know,” she said. “I didn’t need your help. I could have gotten away without you, or perhaps accomplished something in Luid if they had taken me there. Leave me alone.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully and trying to shed her northern accent. I caught a hint of Belleisle in there, though, which I suspected she’d picked up from her mother.

“You’re coming with us,” I said. “You owe us answers.”

She swung herself up onto the soldier’s horse and sat straight-backed and imperious. I mounted my own horse to follow if she bolted.

“I don’t owe you anything,” she said. Her words were brave, but a tremble in her voice betrayed something else. I opened myself, and her fear and uncertainty flooded me far more intensely than I’d expected. I could easily have slipped into her thoughts, but I closed it off, uncertain as to whether she might be sensitive to magic.

She gave me a suspicious glance. “If there’s something you need, you can try to keep up. I’m getting away from here before I get eaten.”

I glanced back at the clearing, where the large brown dragon approached the smaller one, intent on stealing its gory meal. Everyone else had disappeared. Cass, Kel and I hurried to mount our own horses to follow as Nox headed back to the road.

“Yeah, she’s definitely your sister,” Kel said, grinning as we chased her. “This should be interesting.”

“
T
hat was incredibly stupid
,” I said to the three of them, once they caught up with me.

The woman leading them down the road was a stunning creature with clear, bronze-toned skin and hair the dark, glossy brown of the mink that townsfolk trapped in the autumn. She kept her blue-green eyes trained on me without fear or concern for propriety. A huntress, I decided, and certainly not from the northern provinces.

I forced my shaking breaths to become even and waited for my heart to slow. These people had saved me from the soldiers. I should have been grateful for that, but my life had a tendency toward going from bad to worse. Perhaps they meant well, but in recent years I’d misjudged too many people. My husband Denn had sweet-talked me into a marriage that left me bitter, scarred, and empty long before his death. I’d wanted to leave town after his funeral, but the townsfolk needed me. They became friendly. Then rumors started about Denn’s death, and they turned on me.

I let my hair fall over my face and glanced back at the others from between locks in desperate need of a washing. Nothing about them said they were a threat. They were clearly fools, if they thought attracting dragons was an appropriate way to do anything but commit suicide, but that might make them more dangerous.

Project strength
, I told myself.
If they see weakness, they’ll tear you apart
. This was my chance to take charge. No longer would I be the little wife creeping around the house the morning after her husband came home drunk, or the student keeping her talent hidden so as not to rouse her mentor’s jealousy. Nor would I be the tiny child swept from her bed in the middle of the night, frightened and crying as she and her mother journeyed to a dark and unpredictable future.

No. From this moment on, I live up to my birthright. I am the daughter of a king.

If I could truly believe that, perhaps I could get out of this alive. How would such a woman act? Strong, I decided. I wouldn’t let them see my fear. I would force them to respect me, as few people had before.

I slowed my horse to a walk and patted his neck. He was beautiful, a fine traveling companion and better quality than any nag we’d had when I was growing up. The woman rode past me while the men remained behind.

The soldiers had been bad, but at least I knew what they wanted. What did I know about these people? Unless I was mistaken, the man with the long, dark hair was a Sorcerer, and I suspected he might be a shape-shifter, though I’d missed seeing it in the confusion of their haphazard rescue scheme.

We’d had magic-users in Arberg. None of them were strong enough to try something like that, but they’d thought themselves superior to everyone and considered their gifts far more important than those of a mere Potioner. My mother said that tended to be the way with powerful folk, especially Sorcerers, and advised me to stay out of their way.

I’d hidden in my attic when the soldiers came to claim them for Luid.

The Sorcerer rode up beside me, and I instinctively shied away. I disliked the cold look in his strange brown-and-green eyes. He appeared healthy in spite of his pale complexion, and was handsome enough in a refined sort of way. Not someone who spent his life toiling outdoors, though judging by the scruff on his face and the dirt on his clothes, he’d been on the road a few days. He appeared strong, if lean, and rode with the same proper form as the soldiers. He could have been one of them, if he’d had the right weapons and uniform.

“Did you not know what that stick was before you lit it?” I asked them. “Or was it your mission to kill us all?” Best to attack first, if only with words.

“We knew what it was,” the Sorcerer said, sounding irritated rather than intimidated. “We needed a distraction.”

I was right. They are fools.
“I’d say you got what you wanted, then. Those dragons were mighty distracting.”

He glared at me. “It worked. I don’t see any ropes binding your wrists or soldiers chasing you.”

He apparently expected some show of gratitude. Not yet. Not until I found out what he and his friends wanted with me. “I would have been fine without you,” I said.

The muscles in his firm jaw clenched.
May a windwyvern piss on my head if you ever find me a joy to converse with
, I thought. His presence irritated me for reasons I didn’t yet understand. It seemed to come on an instinctual, animal level, and I got the sense he felt the same way about me. He started to say something, but the other man placed a hand on his arm to indicate that he would try to speak to me.

One look at that one told me I had better not let my guard down with him. It would be far too easy to be overcome by his obvious charm. Skin the same color as the woman’s, eyes like the depths of a lake on a summer day, black hair that he brushed back from his face in a gesture that was somehow bashful and self-confident at the same time. His smile revealed the hint of a shallow dimple at the corner of his mouth. I glanced lower, taking in the challenge. Broad shoulders, a muscular body obvious even under layers of clothing. Big hands with long fingers gripped the reins in an awkward hold.

I’d always had a weakness for beauty. We saw so little of it in Cressia.

Even before he spoke, this man made the always-charming Denn look like a bumbling youngster at his first town social. I’d be careful not to fall into that trap again. Strong and attractive did not equal kind or worthwhile.

“Miss?” He glanced sideways at me. “Nox?”

I looked away. “Yes.” An ugly name, I’d often thought, harsh as the land. I’d forgotten my birth name until my mother reminded me of it, and didn’t care to take it back even now. I was Nox, and that was all. One needed a hard name in hard times. Still, this man made it sound almost lovely.

“It seemed that those men intended to hurt you, and that you were taken against your will,” he said. “We thought we might help you, and that you might help us.”

I gritted my teeth. His tame approach was obviously meant to make me relax my defenses. “Is that so?” I asked. “You’ll have to forgive me if I can’t be thankful just yet. You see, those soldiers saved me from certain death at the hands of people who I helped for years. I’m sure the soldiers would have liked me to help them somehow on the way to meet their master, who would have used my talents to serve
his
needs. And now you’re here, saving me from them, and I can’t bring myself to believe you mean well.” My words didn’t seem to trouble him. “Even if your intentions are good, I’ve done enough helping over these past few years to last me a lifetime. I have nothing left to offer.”

I waited for a clever line about my usefulness, but he didn’t offer any. I held his gaze for a moment to show him his overly kind attitude wouldn’t weaken me.

He studied me, then smiled. “You’re well-spoken for a person from this province. Were you born here?”

That smile made me want to return it. I refused. “My mother was from the South. She didn’t raise me to be ignorant. Or a fool.” His smile didn’t waver in spite of my clipped tone. I sighed. “What is it you want?”

He hesitated. “Aren? What exactly did you want to ask her?”

My heart froze for a beat. “Aren?” No wonder I’d instinctively disliked the Sorcerer. I reined my horse in slightly and glanced over my shoulder at the other man. “Is that your name?”

“It is.”

“Tiernal?”

“Yes.”

No denial. No apology in his voice. I’d heard many stories about Aren Tiernal, and none of them pleasant. A mind-controller, and he used that skill to support Severn—the man responsible for every loss I’d ever suffered. Aren was said to have no conscience, to think of nothing but serving his father, and then his brother. Charming. Attractive. And a person never to be trusted.

I hadn’t heard the stories from my mother. She rarely spoke of him. It broke her heart to think of the son she’d lost, and broke mine each time I realized that I alone wasn’t enough for her. It wasn’t her fault. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t his, but I’d blamed her misery and my own on my father’s family for years. Too long for me to feel anything but disgust now that I met one of them.

Family comes from love and experience, not blood. He was nothing to me, and I wouldn’t fall victim to his powers.
Never open yourself to a Sorcerer
, my tutor had once cautioned.
Never let him in, never let your guard down
. Perhaps the wisest words the man ever spoken. I hardened myself and closed my heart and my mind as well as I could.

I turned away. “You’re a long way from home, Aren Tiernal. Have you come to start a riot somewhere?” He didn’t speak, but rode closer again so that the two men flanked my horse on either side.
Strike first,
I reminded myself.
Push him away.
“Our mother was very disappointed in you.”

The look that flashed across his features in a brief, unguarded moment would have frozen the heartwood of an ice-oak, but I felt nothing. He probably wasn’t used to such an affront. I imagined a prince of Tyrea would be accustomed to deference, or to fear. He wouldn’t see either in me.

His beautiful companion turned back and narrowed her eyes at me. Her upper lip lifted in either distaste or anger. She was obviously good friends with my brother, and I assumed more. She dropped back and whispered something to him. He nodded, but that hurt expression never left his face.

What did he expect? He probably didn’t remember any more of Magdalena Albion than I did of our father, but surely he couldn’t have thought she’d be proud of what her son had grown into. They were all monsters in that family. Monsters who had been given every comfort in life that I had been denied. My mother had clung to the belief that her son, her little Aren, would never turn out like the rest of them.

She’d been a wise woman, and yet a fool when it came to the son she’d left behind.

I turned back to the other man, who I hadn’t yet got a handle on. “I think it’s customary for you to introduce yourself at this point. I know who he is. I don’t know you or your other friend there.”

“My name is Kel,” he said. “This is my sister Cassia.”

She glared at me again as she masked a long stream of coughs in the crook of her elbow. A nasty sound, dry and barking.

“Thank you.” I wanted to ask him more, to find out where they were from, but decided I’d have the upper hand if I didn’t act like I cared. I wouldn’t be with them long, anyway. “What did you say you wanted?”

We were heading south, through woods I’d searched for herbs many times during summer. They looked different now, with only the beginnings of buds on the trees. I didn’t know exactly where I was leading them, but I knew that it wouldn’t be back home. I rubbed my wrists, where red rope-burns masked the old scars.
Definitely not there.

“We were looking for you and your mother,” Kel said. “Aren didn’t know you were alive until a few days ago.”

“No? Would he have come right up and brought us home if he’d known?”

Aren didn’t say anything, and Kel apparently had no response.

Too much, Nox. They’ll dislike you.

I don’t care.
I decided I was done with being liked. People always felt they could use and discard anyone who was nice.

“My mother is dead,” I told them. “Just over two years now. I was married then, and had moved away. She caught a fever and died before I could get back to do anything about it.” Hadn’t been allowed to go back, but they didn’t need to know that. That part of my life was over.

I’m free
, I thought, and a shiver tickled the back of my neck.
Free.

“I’m sorry,” Kel said, sounding like he really was. “I’ve heard she was a lovely woman.”

“Not so lovely after a few years up here,” I said, speaking to Kel, but loudly enough that Aren could hear. “She was a good woman, but she became bitter and hard.” I nodded back to Aren. “Is that all you folks wanted? To find out whether he could have a joyful reunion with his mother? I’m sorry if you wasted all this time for that.”

Cassia’s shoulders pulled up slightly toward her ears, but she still didn’t say anything to defend Aren.

Kel looked past me to Aren, who frowned and shook his head. I disliked the way he looked at me now that he’d overcome his shock, cold and closed-off. Arrogant. Judging, and finding me lacking somehow. I’d have been more comfortable with anger.

Cassia coughed again, and waved off a concerned look from Kel.

“I suppose the other question we had,” he said to me, “was whether your father had come by here a few years ago, before he disappeared.”

I laughed. “Really? Of course he didn’t. He shipped us off almost twenty years ago on the whim of that little shit Severn, and we never heard another word from him. My mother always hoped that he’d come for us, maybe when the old queen died. She thought he loved her.”

I admired my mother. She’d comforted me even in her distress, cheered me through her own despair, and did what she had to do in order to scratch out a life for us in that godsforsaken land. But when it came to the king, she was blind and broken.

“I think she knew after a decade or so that he wasn’t coming, but she still waited.” I swallowed back the lump that insisted on rising in my throat when I thought of it. I hated Ulric for that more than I hated him for sending us away. “So the answer is no. I have no idea where he is, or was, and I don’t particularly care. May I go now?”

Kel frowned slightly. “Maybe if you stayed—”

“Let her go,” Aren said, his voice soft and calm, but cold. He stared at me from behind the strands of hair that fell over his face, all dark eyes and disdain. “If she’s not going to help us, we don’t need her. She obviously wants to go.”

Something niggled at my brain like a thought I couldn’t quite catch, and a chill passed through my mind as I realized Aren must be looking in. I gasped and imagined darkness enclosing my thoughts as I turned to him. His eyes widened, and his chin jerked upward. The corner of his lip twitched, though I couldn’t tell whether it indicated satisfaction, amusement, or something else.

It didn’t matter. He’d just confirmed everything I wanted to hate about him.