18. Onora
Chapter 18
Onora
O nora woke before dawn on their fourth day of traveling to Dryston nudging her shoulder with his foot. She startled awake and stood quickly, the chain tugging and making Dryston stand swiftly as well. He scowled at her, then gestured for her to lead the way. They trudged for hours, and she looked for markers of the direction they were going, heading west toward the merchant city. They saw no signs of anyone in their vicinity, just thickets of vines and wildlife throughout the wood.
Walking in the woods always gave too much time to ruminate. In the past, she’d appreciated it. The solace and the wild had always given her a way to process everything going on inside her.
At that moment, she hated it.
She had no clue what to make of her conversation with Dryston earlier. She could detect no lies from him. He could almost convince her he hadn’t done the things he’d been accused of.
But Brayden had seen him go north.
Did she trust him, though?
She’d never known Brayden to be a liar, not that he hadn’t. Maybe he had, and she’d never known.
She needed this trip to end. She needed to be home and talking to Amherst and Jackson and making sense of all of this. Amherst wouldn’t lie to her—he was like a father to her. Dryston had to be the one lying.
A loud horn blew in the woods, long and insistent, making birds scatter.
Onora halted, her heart aching with a keen hope she’d hadn’t felt since Dryston captured her. The sound of a Hunter's horn, and nearby at that. She knew better than to scream—he would fight her again. But she had to go toward the horn. So she jetted forward, going in a way that she knew wasn’t directly toward it, diverting enough that Dryston would trust her and follow her headlong into it. The sound drew closer with each blow of the horn.
So close, so close.
“Onora,” Dryston said, halting and making her stop as well, stumbling into a tree.
She didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare make a sound. Freedom was so close.
“You’re leading us toward them,” he ground out.
She turned, her mouth bobbing open and shut, her mind scrambling for any excuse to give as fear seized up her limbs again.
But she didn’t have to. At that moment, an arrow whizzed past her head, and in a second he had twirled her behind him. Protectively. Her mind was too slow to understand what was happening, why he had done that. Hunters emerged from the trees, bows nocked with arrows and swords at the ready.
She stepped around Dryston and held up her hands. “Don’t shoot. He needs to be given more poison and—” She grunted, her words halting as an arrow lodged in her shoulder. She stumbled back several steps and looked up in shock. “I’m on your side,” she hissed.
The Hunter at the front shook his head. “Our orders were clear. Kill the demon and the Hunter with him.”
“Who would have given that order? It’s ridiculous.”
The Hunter, a man she vaguely recognized from around the barracks, grimaced. “The chief did.”
Her heart stuttered to a halt, head swimming. “Liar.”
He shrugged, a conflicting emotion on his face, something like regret as his hand hesitated, holding the arrow back, poised to hit her. “You’re under his thrall and aided in his escape. We have to kill you both on the spot.”
Under his thrall? Aided in his escape?
“I am not under his thrall. I was taken as his captive, and under the rule of Archan, number 235, you must give me a trial and allow me cleansing before you kill me.”
The Hunters exchanged a tense glance. The front one looked back at her. “I’m sorry, but the command of the chief overrules that.”
Her head spun. This couldn’t be true. The chief wouldn’t have ordered that.
“I was tricked,” she said calmly, holding up her hands. “Let me help you get Dryston back to the barracks.”
The man pursed his lips, hesitating for a moment, just long enough that Onora didn’t see it in time. The other man loosed his arrow and she couldn’t move, couldn’t dodge. Shock filled her as she watched it unfold, but she felt a heavy yank of the chain, Dryston tugging her arm to the side and making the arrow lodge in her shoulder instead of her heart.
The Hunters held up their bows. Rage filled her, and before she knew it, she’d flung daggers, hitting two in the throats. Another arrow hit her thigh, but in the tension she barely registered the pain. The others stood in shock, immobile, terrified, while she slashed at another one, watching him drop dead.
Dryston moved in tandem with her, using his fist and shadows, taking out two while she used her dagger on the other two. She ducked and parried, blocking the blows that came at her. She finally got in a hit and sliced up the abdomen of one, and then she heard a cry and turned to see that Dryston had flung the other away from her, crashing him into the tree, his neck cracking.
She breathed hard, looking them over. Their blood covered her hands, coated her cape and leathers. She moved, wincing at the pain of the arrow in her shoulder, and bent to the first Hunter. Rummaging in his pockets, she finally found what she was looking for—a letter. She pulled it out, carefully examining it.
Her stomach plummeted. It was the chief’s signet, which she desperately wanted to believe had been used against his will to sign this decree. Then she looked at the scroll.
It was his handwriting.
She felt sick, like she might vomit, as her world tilted. She folded the letter and stuck it in her breast pocket. Something was wrong here. It had to be. This couldn’t be true. Someone had to have forged his handwriting. But who? There were human spies who knew how to do things like that, but Hunters were less about finesse and more about brute force and fighting.
Dryston knelt before her. A torrent of emotion roiled in her, but in that moment, all she knew was that he had saved her, even if it was to be her damnation.
Voices shouted in the distance, and she stood, swaying on her feet from the pain. Wasting no time, Dryston grabbed her by the waist and tossed her over his shoulder. She let out a yelp, but he darted deeper into the forest at a speed she couldn’t match on her own. Her stomach twisted, his tight grip on her other leg making her body tremble. His wings fanned out behind them, his tail looping up and her body heated in a confusing mix of terror and ...
She wouldn’t think about that. She closed her eyes and breathed in and out.
“You’re my special little girl.” Varek ran the flat side of a knife across her face, a vile look of greed filling his eyes.
Onora scrambled against Dryston, hitting his back until he halted and set her down. She pulled a dagger and pressed it against his chest, her own rising heavily. Something softened in his gaze, a keen understanding that she despised.
“How many of those do you have?” he asked, his large hand closing around hers with the dagger, gentle but insistent.
“Silence.” He shut his mouth and she didn’t know what to say, what to do.
“What is it you want, Onora? To kill me? That won’t help you now.”
“I want answers to my questions.”
“What questions?”
Her nostrils flared. “Why haven’t I heard about the missing women?”
Things weren’t adding up.
It was silent as he waited for her to continue.
“I’m close to the chief. I would think he’d tell me if we had a demon problem again.”
“I didn’t do it,” Dryston whispered.
She pressed the dagger tighter against his chest. “I didn’t say I believed you. Only that I don’t understand what’s happening. That doesn’t mean I still don’t want to kill you.”
“Kill me. Then you can drag my body around until you find a mage that will get these shackles off.”
“I’ll drag your corpse back to Venatu.”
“And you’ll be killed.”
She gritted her teeth. “That was just those Hunters.”
“You killed them. Don’t you see how that will look?” He paused and swallowed. “You helped me escape?—”
“I didn’t.”
“In their eyes, you did. Because I wasn’t supposed to be strong enough to be able to do that, was I?”
A band tightened around her chest, her breathing constricted and labored.
“You helped me escape, then you killed two of your own men and escaped with me.”
“If I can just explain to the chief what happened ...”
Her voice trailed off. It had been his signet.
It had been his handwriting.
He hadn’t believed her before when she said she wasn’t under Dryston’s thrall, and he certainly wouldn’t now.
“Fine,” she said.
She had no other choice than to work with him for the moment. Until she could figure out how to convince Amherst that she was a woman free from any spell or influence.
He stepped forward, gesturing to her shoulder, and she was suddenly aware of the wounds again. Her body was lit up like a lightning storm from the battle, and any pain that should be there was muted to where she barely noticed it. Jackson had always marveled at her ability to block things out, to discard pain or unwanted emotions in favor of pushing on and surviving. He called it a strength. Sometimes she wondered if it wasn’t just more proof of her brokenness.
“Let me take care of those.”
She hesitated, hating that she needed help, but finally nodded. His hand gently pressed in on her shoulder, and she gave an involuntary yelp. His other hand flew to her mouth, gentle yet firm. The nearness of him, the looming strength, the way his wings curled around them—it should have frightened her. It should send her senses whirling, her fear spiking.
But it didn’t. She felt all too safe with him.
“Shh,” he said.
She nodded, and he pulled his hand away.
“I’m going to count to three, then yank the arrow out,” he said. “One ... two ...”
He didn’t say three, he just yanked, and as she tried to suppress crying out, he pulled her against him, burying her mouth in his shoulder so she could. Breathing hard, she inhaled the musky scent of him, pine and smoke, and her racing mind calmed a fraction more, the pain in her body easing, the tension loosening. She could stay here forever, pressed against him, hearing the beat of his heart and breathing him in.
So she found it particularly startling when he drew back, disrupting her reverie abruptly, making her sway. His hands found her hips, steadying her, and flame coursed through her, blood and pain and comfort and desire a muddied mix.
But hadn’t it always been? Her life had been marked by waves of pain and blood, followed by a deep and aching desire she couldn’t name and rarely slaked.
Then Dryston knelt, his hands slipping down to her thighs, and she caught her breath, hating what the sight of him kneeling like that did to her. If her pain had been muted before, it vanished entirely as she gazed down at him, his large hands encasing her thighs, fingers tracing the arrow wound. He looked up, and she went as still as she could, afraid that the slightest movement, the slightest hitch in breath would expose her traitorous thoughts and feelings to him.
He was her enemy.
Wasn’t he?
He’d done terrible things.
Hadn’t he?
The voice in the back of her head seemed to wake, brushing against her consciousness with a chuckle.
Demons are confusing creatures, are they not?
She slammed the voice down, swallowing, focusing on the pain, how it radiated up her leg, making her tremble and sweat.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded, afraid of speaking, and then she closed her eyes as his hands pressed in and then yanked out the other arrow. She clamped a hand over her mouth as pain came over her anew, the sensation washing away to a dizzying euphoria.
He was standing now, a hand on her waist as he helped her lean against a tree, and every touch from him felt like a hot brand. She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. This all felt too vulnerable.
She’d had plenty of battle wounds before. Plenty that had needed treatment in the field. She knew that pain was something she could handle and, much to her dismay, was something she’d found long ago brought her a certain level of pleasure in certain contexts. This wasn’t the context, though, and she wanted to curl up and die from the way that his care, coupled with the pain, was making her feel ... things. Things she didn’t want to unearth. Things she didn’t understand about the nature of him and her.
His hand pressed on her shoulder again, and she snapped her attention to him with a glare, a nasty remark waiting on her tongue. But she was silenced by the clinical look of focus he gave to her wound.
“Let’s see if this works ...” he said, then started muttering in old entailish , his words slow and halting.
She felt nothing at first, then a dull ache, then the pain like a fire spreading through her veins, and she writhed, but his hands steadied her until the pain subsided. All of it. She grasped for the wounds and felt nothing.
“What in the darkest pit did you do?” she demanded.
“I healed your wounds,” he said. “You’re welcome.”
Which was amazing, frankly. She was curious what else he could do.
“Don’t ever use your fucking magic on me again,” she said, standing upright and pushing away from him as best she could. Which wasn’t much. His hands still held her up, and she markedly refused to acknowledge it.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t using my magic,” he said. “I used yours. You’re a conduit, but you don’t have to just use my magic as it presents in me. You absorb magic and can use it as you will. Your body has been trying to heal, but it’s just been coming out as shadows. So I used an old healing chant the elves taught me, and your magic responded.”
“How is that possible?”
He frowned. “I’m not certain. I’ve only seen it work with colony members when one’s abilities tie into medicine, but I’ve rarely dealt with conduits, so I suppose that’s why.”
“I don’t like you using my magic.”
He only raised a brow and she sighed, begrudgingly admitting only to herself that she was thankful for it. She felt better.
Gesturing to his arrow, she said, “Let me.”
He nodded, and she moved to get a good angle, pressing against his wings, then counting down before pulling it out. A small grunt was the only noise he made. She smelled the tip of the arrow. No sign of poison, which was good. She wasn’t certain they’d be so lucky next time.
“We should continue on,” she said, and he followed her deeper into the woods.