Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
ALLIE
I gripped the bow tight enough that the wooden waves and flowers dug into the meat of my hand. I felt the marks sink into my skin, calling out to my blood to pull the string and feel that familiar flicker as the arrow slashed through the air.
Beckoning me to be dangerous again.
I stared down at the quiver of arrows, perfectly aligned, their fletchings white and crisp. Unused, just waiting to soar.
A perfect round target waited over one hundred yards away, the snow softly falling down upon it, as if daring me to strike the bullseye and shake it off.
But, for the life of me, I couldn’t.
Especially not when I had a nosy audience in this small little clearing, so close to the fortress that its shadow loomed over me.
“I thought she was some expert archer,” the boy with the shaved head who’d been training with the Commander whispered clumsily from behind.
“I’ve seen her running, she’s nimble,” the girl said. We’d been expertly avoiding each other since the hounds had hunted us down, but it seemed we no longer could.
“I can hear you two, you know,” I said, not bothering to hide the edge in my voice.
I turned, narrowing my eyes at them standing to the side, watching me with less mistrust than the first time we met.
But the hesitation was still there, in the way the girl held her hand on her hip just above her ax and the way the boy’s shoulders bunched, wide eyes tracking me. “And I don’t need babysitters.”
I barely had enough strength to stand. I didn’t need an audience if I collapsed.
“The Commander disagrees,” she said at the same time he quipped, “The Commander told us to come watch you train and learn.”
Their heads whipped toward each other, gazes and eyebrows having a silent fight like I did with my cousins when we got caught after stealing apples from the orchard.
That simple display tugged at my heart painfully.
I still felt the protection spell I cast on Evie pulsing through my veins.
At least I knew she was safe. But Dax, Dara, and Clara’s locations were still one big mystery, so setting up palaver discussions was difficult.
I had to trust the Vegheara brats were strong enough to survive and live to get our vengeance.
“I’ve seen your warriors, I’m sure one of them can teach you archery better than I can,” I said. “You don’t even trust me with your names, I doubt you’d trust my teachings.”
What was it with everyone wanting to learn things from me? Evie wanted to learn how to control her Protectorate powers, these two wanted to watch me hit a target which suddenly felt too intimidating.
Was this the Commander’s way of pressuring me?
After he’d delivered the bow, I finally left my room to keep him from coming back and confusing me with threats that sounded too much like promises for me to dwell too much on them.
All I knew was the thought of him carrying me in his arms pulled something inside of me that had always felt fragile.
Which meant it was dangerous.
“No other archer is The Huntress,” the girl said and crossed her arms in front of her chest, working her jaw. “And my name is Nadya.”
I gawked at her. Giving me her name, just like that.
“I’m Geryll,” he said quietly, almost unsure.
I didn’t know what to do with the silence that followed–or how a small part of me seemed to ache and restitch at the same time.
In the Protectorate, someone giving you their real name was a sign of deep trust.
“I’m Allie,” I said. Allegra–the heir and future of the Protectorate–was still curled up in the depths of my soul, licking her wounds and crying over the shards of her broken heart.
“I like The Huntress better,” Nadya said, adding a half-smile.
I couldn’t mirror it, not right now. So I turned back to the target, the pressure to perform now even grander.
“You shouldn’t trust so easily,” I muttered. For themselves, for me, for this entire crater.
But as the words slipped from my lips, so did an arrow between my fingers.
I released a soft breath as I cocked the arrow, eyes trained on the wooden target. The same as the other thousand targets I’d stared at back in Aquila.
The bow was new.
This world was different.
I had changed.
But the simple act of cocking an arrow and releasing it had not.
Before I hesitated even more, I pulled the string back with all my might. It fought me for a few moments, still stubborn in its newness, but it relented under my trained grip.
Arrow. Target.
That’s all I needed to concentrate on.
With a sharp exhale, I let the arrow go.
Its hiss through the air sent unwanted shivers down my spine as the screams from the wedding echoed in my ears.
But the unmistakable thump as it pierced the wood soothed me. A whisper from my former life, proof that I was still there somewhere underneath the hollowness and despair.
The screams dulled until they receded in the back of my mind, where they’d taken permanent residence and would probably haunt me for the rest of my days.
But for now, for just a moment, I felt like myself again.
I refused to let that awful day steal anything else from me, even this small joy.
Perhaps The Huntress wasn’t totally dormant.
“Mrs. Thornbrew says you have a good heart,” Geryll said just as I reached for another arrow, freezing me once more. He sounded like someone who hadn’t had his faith fractured yet.
Hopefully never, but I’d seen too much of this life to truly believe it.
I shook off the sudden shivers down my spine and faced the target again. “She’s barely met me.”
“Same as all of us,” Nadya said. “But the Commander’s the one who’ll marry you and he said you’re harmless.”
The arrow almost slipped from the string.
Not only did Nadya talk about my marriage like it was some inevitable, done thing, but he’d called me harmless ?
The Huntress inside me rebelled.
Allie bowed her head in shame.
The sting to my vanity quickly dimmed behind that icy barrier.
How fearsome could I be if I’d needed to be saved from my own people?
I plucked the string. Another arrow pierced the first, wood splinters and feathers bursting free.
“Wow,” Geryll said.
Nadya whistled, impressed.
“We’ll see about that marriage,” was all I said.
“The Commander said it’s inevitable,” she said. “Didn’t seem all that thrilled about being married with someone he’s just met.”
“That makes two of us,” I grumbled.
That was the maddening truth.
We were strangers.
Complete and total strangers being herded for an altar both of us wanted to avoid like the plagues of the past.
“A lot of things can happen in a short time.” I’d lost my Clan, family, and will very quickly. I clenched my jaw and yanked another arrow from the quiver. “Your precious Commander isn’t my first would-be groom.”
The difference was I’d chosen the first one and I’d been fully committed and deliriously happy at doing so.
At first.
“Who had the guts to face the feared Huntress in blissful matrimony?” she asked. Her voice had softened in tune with the bow’s string.
The Blood Brotherhood respected power above all else, after all, according to my spies. It seemed my little show of skill had done more to warm Nadya’s tongue than me saving her from the hounds.
Or maybe she’d caught a glimpse of the mark still marring my neck and felt sorry for me.
It didn’t matter and it didn’t change anything. At least she wasn’t asking me where The Huntress had gotten her bruises.
I flexed my jaw. “Waden Pillion.”
I hadn’t spoken his name since that heinous day. It still tasted rancid on my tongue–but the bastard didn’t deserve me protecting his name.
Another arrow joined its brethren, this time slashing the line of wood violently clean in two.
“Pillion, Pillion,” Nadya muttered. “Wait…as in the Pillion family from the Fair Isles?”
I turned around, surprised. The Fair Isles were a long way away from everything, especially this frozen crater. “Yes.”
“Those little merchants who traded their way up into lordship?” Nadya raised her brows and scoffed. “Profiting bootlickers, all of them, I hear.”
I slashed a look toward her. “Where someone comes from is irrelevant, lord or not.”
“My biggest crush was a stable hand, I don’t need convincing on that subject.
But don’t tell the Commander that, he still thinks I dream of bunnies at night.
” Nadya cocked her head to the side. From the way Geryll turned to her, eyes wide with surprise, he thought the same thing. “It’s just strange.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re The Huntress.” Nadya gestured at my woolen coat, my bow, and my wild hair. “I expected you to tie your fate with some legendary warrior or a general or–”
“A Commander?” I curled my top lip, turning back to my target. “So did everyone else. The problem is so many strong men want to be the only ones with power.”
I’d raised more than a few eyebrows when Waden began to spend more time in Aquila and around Protectorate headquarters than on his own family estate at the lush outskirts of our Clan territory.
The land had been bought by his grandfather with all that trade gold long before either of us had been born and the Fair Isles had carefully kept their Clan neutrality to be able to live so close to us.
My father hadn’t exactly warmed to him, either.
Not because Waden wasn’t some hulking warrior or because he didn’t have Protectorate powers.
Simply because of compatibility of spirit , he’d said.
I’d thought he’d been referring to him and Waden, one with a calculated nature, the other shrewd.
But my father had been talking about myself and my beloved fucking fiance.
He hadn’t come out to say it plainly, though, content to let me make my own mistakes. The same as everyone else.
I still didn’t know whether I should have thanked him or held a grudge for that.
And now I’d never get a chance.
A fresh wave of sadness threatened to take over me, but Nadya’s voice quickly snapped me back to reality. “Then what possessed you to look twice at a Pillion?”