3. Gabe
Chapter 3
Gabe
Ash hated me.
I woke up the next morning knowing she hated me, and she had every right to. I never should have doubted her cleverness. I had tried to kill her. Even thinking about it now made me ill. Last night when she brought it up, I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and never let her go to try to quench the burn of shame running through my bones. I’d tried to follow through with the King’s orders after I got the letter the day of the spring festival.
I tried the night she walked back from my house in the dark, the night at the Lake, and a final time in Sage Hen, while she slept next to me. She was a blonde—a scourge of the earth—everything wrong with this country .
That night in Sage Hen replayed in my head—when I went to take the bowl back and ran into Carter out doing dirty deeds for the King.
“Have you done it yet?” he asked, and I thought he knew my answer by the look on my face. It had to be him there and not anyone else. The only people privileged enough to know about Ash were the King, the Queen, Peters, and the King’s four most-trusted guards. Two of which were Carter and Barrett that had usually paid me visits.
He laughed. “Better hurry up and get it done, Etan. Unless…you don’t have the balls.”
It was a taunt and I knew it, but it didn’t mean the insult stung any less. I had always followed through with the King’s orders, even when it meant going against people I had grown close to. No one was allowed into my heart. Even when it meant killing for the King. I had done it before. This wouldn’t be any different. Except it was, and I knew I was only lying to myself.
Guard your heart and your will because they are the only things that are truly yours.
I was doing a piss-poor job of that. Ash had burrowed so deep into my chest, I couldn’t get her out.
“What? Can the King’s golden boy not do as he’s told? If you can’t do it, I’m sure Barrett would love to get his hands around that pretty little neck,” Carter mused, taking a drink from his cup.
I clamped my teeth down on my tongue to hold back what I really wanted to say. “Tell Maximus I haven’t failed him yet and I don’t intend to.”
If Ash had to die, I’d do it. I’d do it while she slept, quick and painless. Even she couldn’t change my will and the beliefs that I held on to like a vice .
Except she had changed my will. Not my beliefs yet, but I no longer thought of her as the enemy. I failed Maximus, and more so, I failed Regina, the Queen of Novum. She hated blondes more than anyone and sought revenge at any opportunity. We had grown close over the years with my time spent under her and Maximus’s guidance. She was a cold-hearted woman, but seemed to have a soft spot for me. We even made a pact when I was nine years old to get revenge on the blondes for killing my mother and taking her son and daughter-in-law and now, I loved a blonde woman. I failed to complete my mission and gave up the one thing they told me to never give to anyone: my heart.
But Ash seemed different. She had not grown up with the rest of the blondes and gotten infected by their beliefs. She didn’t seek power, and she didn’t have abilities to hold against us. Ash was just herself. Kind, smart, and resilient. I wanted to change things for her—bend the rules for her. Hell, I already had. For some outlandish reason, I had convinced Maximus that she was better off alive in my letters, which I had been furtively sending him via messengers since our return from Rollins. I had made my wish come true. The city of Hope was our future and Ash remained alive; we could change things together. I couldn’t save my mother, but I would be damned if I couldn’t save Ash.
As far as I knew, the King didn’t know about our exploits in Rollins. He didn’t know that I had killed his soldiers and fought for Ash’s life when death was her destiny. The soldiers that saw us…well, their hearts no longer pounded in their chests. No one remained alive that could tell the King what happened beyond a blonde girl had escaped.
As soon as I crawled out of my bedroll, I glared across the clearing at Carter and sent him out searching for signs of wolves. Predators like those were aggressive. If you were to encounter a pack, they followed until they got what they wanted, or you were smart enough to evade them. Maybe Carter would get eaten while out on patrol. Would serve him right. I’d never particularly cared for the King’s most trusted guards, but of the four, Carter rattled my cage the most.
The eerie howl last night crawled under my skin and left me feeling uneasy for our journey ahead. Something about the lone wolf’s cry was different—otherworldly somehow. When Carter returned, he reported a single pair of tracks circling the camp. The wolf continued to follow us in the days that passed. Our caravan moved with caution through the forest, silent, alert, and on edge from the wolf’s haunting presence—Ash more so than anyone. Her eyes darted around the forest as we walked, like she had seen a ghost. Not only that, but I could tell her leg hurt her by the way she rode her horse. Not that she would ever say anything about it to me. Her strength was one of her greatest weapons. Streaks of blonde hair started to show through her brown as the days went on, and the soldiers began staring. I shoved a hat into her hands one afternoon, and she gratefully pulled it on her head and left it there.
The further south we rode, the more civilized the country became. The population grew denser and the trees scarcer. We wove along the bank of the Paloma River from Cedar Hill until we came to a town that lay at the interchange of three rivers. The weather quickly changed and the nights became cold enough that you didn’t dare leave your face uncovered at night. Peters rode up next to me as we made it to the outskirts of the settlement, where a boy saw our approach and ran back toward town, yelling our arrival to the townsfolk .
“Let’s see if we can find a place here to stay tonight. I’m tired of sleeping on the cold ground,” Peters grumbled.
I nodded, glancing at Ash, who rode behind us. She had a stoic look on her face and a hint of a scowl—a permanent feature there since she found out I lied to her.
“You get used to it after a while,” I said, looking back at Peters. His slicked-back hair didn’t so much as move, even as his horse rocked back and forth. His usually pristine black clothing bunched and wrinkled in places making him appear as tattered as I I felt. He had been with Maximus since I was nine, and was getting on in age, but his loyalty to the King persisted.
The settlement appeared to be a trader town with docks in the rivers for passing boats and canoes to be tied. Ash and I had passed the town on our way back from Rollins but didn’t dare enter at the time because her hair was blonde and we hadn’t taken the time to try to find something to dye it with after she escaped. It must be a new town, as most of the houses were canvas tents and partially finished log cabins. Flurries of activity rose throughout the muddy roads as the midday sun beat down on us. I welcomed the heat of the sun’s rays, warming me from the chill in the fall air.
Trader carts and booths lined the roadways and the gravely river bank, while people on rafts unloaded goods onto the bank. The scent of campfire smoke intermingled with the musky scent of river mud touched my nose. I grew tired of the scent of the forest and yearned for the smell of cleanliness from my room at the King’s estate. Some people glanced at us but paid us no mind. To them, we were another group of soldiers passing through. Others scampered away and hid.
The soldiers in front of us stopped, waiting for instruction on which way to go. A commotion caught my attention from further down the river where a cabin stood near the water. People gathered around and shouted at the men in the center. I urged my horse onward to see what the turmoil was about when I caught a glimpse of black clothing in the crowd. As we approached, the shouts grew louder and I noticed a soldier that wasn’t in our company at the edge of the circle. I dismounted and gestured for the guards to hold Ash’s horse and watch her while I pushed my way through the crowd toward the soldier amongst the others.
Two men in the middle of the circle battled with weapons and fists. To my surprise, one was a soldier, and when he turned and I could see his face, I realized I’d know that telltale smirk anywhere. Except, the last time I’d seen him, five years ago, hadn’t been a pleasant interaction. Would he welcome me with open arms or shove a knife in my back? To be honest, I didn’t even know where he’d been all this time, but I did know that Jerek Wavern just stepped back into my life.