25. Ash
Chapter 25
Ash
I was going to die. Kane would kill me, and he knew it. The twisted, sadistic man loved watching me suffer. Except the bit of kindness he’d shown me when I thought the panic would surely win a few nights back. It seemed as if he knew exactly how to help me, as if maybe he’d been there before himself. Yet, here we were again, training until my legs shook like the quaking aspen trees in autumn.
“What do you do when you’re not here torturing me?” I asked between labored breaths.
“Drink the blood of my enemies. Keep going,” Kane replied from his spot standing beside me with crossed arms and a scowl.
I flipped the sandbag over my shoulder once more.
“Seriously, you’re out of a job now. Not that I believe the King is holding up his end of the bargain, but do you go do this with other blonde people? That’s part of your job, right?” I grunted and tossed the sandbag again.
“That’s none of your concern,” he replied.
“Well, I think I’d like to make it my concern unless you’d like me to tell the King your little secret.”
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“I’d call it using my resources. You know you really shouldn’t go showing a secret like that willy-nilly to any girl who looks at you twice. I mean, I know you’re an ugly son of a bitch and girls don’t look your way often, but that’s a pretty big secret to show a stranger,” I said, picking up the bag again.
He cracked a smile while I continued to work, sweat dripping down my face. “Is that why you can’t keep your eyes off me? I’m ugly?” He quirked an eyebrow.
I threw the sandbag again, my legs and arms burning. “I think it’s your nose. It’s so bent out of shape; I can’t help but stare at the oddness of it.”
His mouth fell slightly ajar, and it looked like he might even smile, but at the last moment, it disappeared. “If you’re going to blackmail me, at least do it properly and tell me what you want.”
“I want you to take me to the Pit.”
“No.”
“Then I guess I’ll just go talk to the King.”
“You’re a pain in the ass,” he growled.
“Is that a yes?” I asked, batting my eyelashes.
He stilled and put his hand to his chin, assessing me. “If you can outshoot me, I will take you to the Pit.”
“Gun or bows?”
“Both.” He smirked.
We walked into a neighboring building, constructed much like the one we’d been training in, but this one held tables divided by walls that looked like sections for shooting targets that lay at the far end of the building. Jerek had since left us, and the guards stationed outside the building only nodded at Kane as we passed.
Weapons of all shapes and sizes were caged in behind metal doors fashioned with locks that Kane produced a key to open. Guns. Probably the reason for the guards outside the building. Guns were the rarest source of power in Novum. It was the reason the King held the power that he did. He was able to make them, and only his soldiers used them. Our old-fashioned bows, swords, knives, and other weapons paled in comparison.
“How exactly is this going to work?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. If I was going to win, I needed to know the rules and how to break them.
“Simple,” Kane said, his eyes on the weapons as he looked them over, searching for a suitable option. “We both get five shots with a bow and then with a gun. Whoever gets in the bullseye the most wins.”
Easy. With the bow, I could hit my own arrow ten times over. But I’d never shot a gun before. I’d held one. The thought made my stomach sink like a rock, thinking of when I’d pointed it at Diesel on the way here. I swallowed and shoved it from my mind .
My stubborn will came through, and I hesitated on whether to ask if he was going to show me how to shoot a gun before our duel. I didn’t want to seem incapable or weak, so I held my tongue. I could figure it out.
“What’s the difference between all of them?” I asked, eyeing the assortment of weapons.
He pointed to the smallest of the guns. “These are handguns, standard issue to all soldiers. Higher ranking soldiers and captains get two. Small, easy to carry and to hide. Also the easiest to manufacture.” He pointed to the next largest gun. “A smaller rifle. Can shoot longer distances—only used in the capital and the advisors cities.” The last one he pointed to was a long gun that looked like hell to carry. “Sniper rifle. Very rare. Not very many in existence. Can shoot very accurately from long distances. There’s actually a specially trained unit of snipers in Hope, no one else is allowed to have these.”
He finally decided on the weapons as he explained and pulled two bows, some arrows, and a single handgun down. He walked over to one of the sections and placed the gun and bows on the table. Then, he leaned his back against it in a casual manner and crossed his arms, mimicking me.
“You pick first, Blondie.” His eyebrow quirked up.
I looked at the gun, all of the mechanisms so foreign to me. Instead, I stiffened my back and reached for the smaller bow that looked my size. When I picked it up, my jaw locked. It was the same bow that had been in the arena with the cougar. An exact replica of Pop’s old bow that Luke broke.
“Where did you get this?” I asked through clenched teeth.
He leaned forward ever so slightly toward me. “Why, does it mean something to you?”
I didn’t want to reveal anything to him. “No. Only wondering who made it. Fine craftsmanship,” I remarked in a monotone voice, running my finger down the marks in the wood.
He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips to the side, producing five arrows from where he gripped them behind his back. He held them out to me, and I reached for them, only to have him pull them away again.
“You’re not going to shoot me, are you?” he asked.
The thought had crossed my mind, but I must hold my cards until the time was right, and killing him would get me nowhere right now. When I was too slow to answer, he spoke. “You see, you already know that I will not hurt you—that I will not kill you because I want you alive. Which I believe I’ve proved to you.”
“I think our training sessions say otherwise.” I scoffed.
His lips pulled up, and it almost looked like a real smile. “I’m only trying to make you stronger.”
“No, you are trying to get me to snap and show you an ability which I do not possess, so you can run to your boss, and he’ll throw you a bone, like the good dog you are.”
Kane winced at the insult.
“What I haven’t figured out is why you didn’t let me die in that arena. Obviously, your pride made you want to pry my ability out, but why do you want me alive? What do you have to gain?” I asked.
He stood straight and moved closer to me. “You’re not asking the right questions. The real question is: what would I have to lose?”
Our eyes locked, and the air charged between us in anger until he held the arrows out to me again.
“Don’t shoot me. I’d hate for you to have that on your conscience,” he quipped .
I laughed and grabbed the arrows. “I wouldn’t lose one bit of sleep over it.”
He smirked. “Keep telling yourself that.”
I slammed the arrows down on the table in front of me and readied myself to shoot at the target across the building. It was a good distance for a shot with a bow and arrow, but I wasn’t concerned in the least bit. I picked up an arrow, and for the first time I noticed the fletchings. Fletchings that I had seen before. Exactly the same, actually, as the ones that were on the arrow that came through the waterfall when me and Diesel were… I gulped.
“Something wrong?” Kane asked.
“Do all soldiers with bows have these arrows?”
“Yes. The few that carry bows get them directly from the armory where they produce them.”
I twirled the arrow in my fingers. Will said that his brother had shot at us, but why? He never said why. Did that mean Will’s brother—Jackson—was a soldier. The implications were too much to dissect. Was Will not on my side after all?
“Where’s the doctor from Rollins? You said you haven’t killed him yet. Then where is he? Is he here? Is he in the Pit?” I asked.
“Is that why you want to go see it so badly? To see him?” A crease formed between his brows.
Now it was. Originally, I only wanted to see where all the people like me were held, but if Will was here, if he was alive and here, I had to see him. All the riddles he told me back in the hunters’ house made no sense, and I needed to know the truth.
I nodded slightly.
“Too bad he’s not here,” Kane said with a hard edge to his voice.
“You’re lying.” My blood simmered with rage .
“You may have formed your own opinions of me, but I have never lied to you.”
“Then where is he?” I enunciated every word.
Kane sighed and looked away. “If you win, I’ll take you to the Pit and tell you where the good doctor is, deal?”
I drew and fired four arrows in quick succession, all of them landing dead center in the target, each splitting the arrow before it. I reached for the fifth arrow and caught sight of Kane’s lower jaw hanging almost to the floor. I pulled back the fifth time and Kane spoke. “I am curious, though, why 238 marks?”
His words stunned me enough to throw off my aim, and my eyes darted to the tiny marks on the bow, just big enough for the tip of my knife to have dug into the wood. The arrow flew toward the target, and it landed to the right of the bullseye.
I jerked my head toward him. “So afraid that you’ll lose that you resort to cheating!” He knew exactly what this bow meant to me. Where did he get it? Had someone carved it to look like my old one or somehow fixed Pop’s broken bow?
“It was only a question. Are you too afraid to answer?”
What was it about him that got my blood boiling? “Where did you get this?” I held the bow up.
He shrugged. “Is it the number of animals you killed, perhaps, or were you counting the number of days for something?”
“I. Hate. You.”
“The number of lovers you’ve had?” His brow raised, and the moment before I snapped, I realized what he was doing. He was trying to push me, make me angry. He couldn’t do it by physical feats alone; he was playing with my mental abilities now. He wanted me to snap .
I took a deep breath, steadying myself, and decided to fight him with my words. Looking down at the marks, I brushed my thumb over them.
“A mark for every time I felt afraid while I was out in the woods alone. After some time, I hated myself for marking up one of the things that meant so much to me. I hated myself for my own weakness, so much so that I stopped being afraid. I numbed myself to it. I stopped making marks because I wasn’t afraid anymore, just…accepting of the fact that if death came for me, there was nothing I could do to stop it; there was no reason to be afraid. 238. But these notches are wrong.”
Not because there weren’t exactly 238 on this bow, but because I was afraid again. I had been since the waterfall where I saw these fletchings.
“Your turn,” I murmured and moved out of the way. Kane’s eyes were cast down at the ground, and the words ceased falling from his mouth. Fight fire with fire. He moved steadily and took the position that I had vacated, but aimed at a different target because I had all but obliterated the bullseye of the previous one.
He shot an arrow, landing in the bullseye.
“How old are you?” I asked suddenly. It’d been a mystery for so long and I needed to know.
He paused, adjusting the arrow on his bow as he looked at me and cocked a dark brow. “Why do you want to know?”
I rolled my eyes. “Can’t a person be genuinely curious about another’s age without an underlying reason why?”
His lip twitched up. “Most people, yes. You, no.”
I turned away and sighed. My question would not be answered today .
The sound of Kane’s bow stretching back caught my attention, and he spoke right before he shot. “27.”
I turned to see his arrow landed barely to the right of the bullseye. His shooting ability with a bow was excellent by most standards, but mine was better. Our eyes met as I mulled over his answer.
“What?” he asked and for a moment he seemed unsure of himself.
“Nothing. You’re just older than I thought,” I mused. Older than I thought, but I found myself entranced by his maturity and commanding presence. The way his eyes crinkled at the edges and the line that formed between his brows when he was concentrating. No . Those were thoughts I couldn’t have. I cleared my throat and looked away.
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
“Why would it bother me? It’s not like we are even friends,” I scoffed.
He turned away in an instant and focused on his bow once more. “Right,” he mumbled and drew back again. It seemed as though I had gotten under his skin in some way and I intended to dig deeper—fluster him even more so I could win this game.
“Do you know what I’m still trying to figure out?” I asked, as he shot the third, and it careened to the left of the bullseye.
“What?” he asked, nocking his fourth arrow.
I waited until he was about ready to shoot to speak again, my voice making him pull his shot a third time. “What your ability is.”
I watched his profile as his Adam’s apple bobbed and he reached for his last arrow. He fired the last time, his arrow meeting the bullseye, but it didn’t matter. I’d already won the bow portion of our contest .
“Also, what do you use to dye your hair? It looks fantastic, by the way, but how did you get it so black?” I smiled at him, and I could tell by the way his jaw flexed I was getting under his skin. “I think black suits you, just like everyone else here. Black to reflect the pits of darkness that are your souls.”