CHAPTER 6 Torj
CHAPTER 6
Torj
‘Thezmarr has been the training ground for every notable warrior in history. Novices known as shieldbearers must pass the initiation test to become Guardians of the midrealms, sworn to protect the kingdoms. Very few Guardians hear the call of the Great Rite. Fewer still pass its trials to become a Warsword’
– A History of Thezmarr
Four years ago
A YEAR HAD passed, and they still hadn’t taken the gods-damned spikes down from the walls. Torj knew that would be the first thing Wren noticed when she arrived, the first of many things that would tempt her to turn on her heel and run as far from the fortress as she could.
He winced as he rode through Thezmarr’s gates, hating that after nine months, his thoughts were still of her. How she was, what she was doing...He hadn’t seen her since that night at the Laughing Fox, since those willow-green eyes had pierced his own, and that delicate hand had rested against his chest.
‘I have nothing left to give you, Bear Slayer.’
Wren had already started down a dark path, even then. And the whispers he’d heard since had only fuelled his worry for her. But he’d respected her wishes, kept his distance. He’d accepted the Warsword assignments that took him as far afield as possible.
But now, the dead called him back. And the black banners of mourning welcomed him home.
It had been one year since the end of the shadow war, and in the days of fragile peace, the new Guild Master, Audra, had ordered a memorial service to take place.
‘You’re late,’ Talemir Starling said as he emerged from the stables, smiling warmly.
Torj swung down from his horse and embraced his fellow Warsword. ‘Then so are you.’
‘It’s Ryland’s fault.’
‘That’s right, blame the child.’
‘Always do.’ Talemir clasped his shoulder. ‘I want to ask you how you are, but we really are late. The proceedings are down on the Plains of Orax.’
Together, the pair of Warswords headed beyond the Bloodwoods to the fields down by the cliffs where they’d lit funeral pyres a year ago. Wren had spoken over Anya’s body then, had told them all how her sister had been ‘a mosaic of contradictions, a blend of darkness and light’ ...Torj couldn’t help but think she’d been prophetic in that moment. Perhaps she had known even then what she would go on to do.
‘Can you believe it’s been a year?’ Talemir said as they approached the plains.
‘I don’t know,’ Torj said honestly. ‘Sometimes it only feels like yesterday we were fighting monsters in that courtyard. Sometimes it feels like decades ago. And I don’t know which worries me more.’
Talemir made a noise of agreement.
Torj peered through the trees, his pulse quickening with sudden nerves. He nearly balked at the sensation. He didn’t get nervous. And yet here he was, nervous to see Wren Embervale after all this time. He had known she’d be here. Wren’s sister Thea had let slip in one of her letters that she’d badgered Wren into attending. But knowing and actually seeing her were two very different things. He hated the part of himself that wondered if she was looking for him too.
He and Talemir joined the gathered crowd, and Torj clasped his hands solemnly before him as Audra’s words rang out across them all. His eyes wandered over the sea of black-clad figures, their faces etched with the same tired grief that he felt in his very bones.
In the front row, he spotted Cal, his former apprentice. Cal had wielded his bow with deadly precision on the battlefield, a fierce glint in his eyes. Now, those same eyes glistened with unshed tears.
Cal’s best friend Kipp stood beside him, all traces of his usual devious grin wiped from his face, his head bowed in respect. Beside them was Thea, wearing her Warsword armour as always, her bronze hair braided, her hand holding that of Wilder Hawthorne, who towered next to her.
Torj’s gaze drifted to the left, where a group of veterans were clustered together, their battle-scarred faces grim. He spotted Vernich, the retired Warsword who he’d despised for the longest time before they’d fought side by side. The older warrior caught his eye and nodded, a silent acknowledgement of the blood they’d spilled together.
The breeze picked up, carrying with it the briny scent of the sea below. It seemed almost cruel, Torj thought, for the day to be so beautiful when they gathered to mourn so much ugliness and death.
Audra’s words were lost to the wind, and Torj had even less chance of hearing them as he spotted a familiar head of bronze hair at the far edge of the crowd. His heart seized.
Wren.
Even from this distance, he could see the tension in her slight frame, the way her fists clenched at her sides. She stood with the rulers of the midrealms, and he was reminded with a jolt that as an heir of a kingdom, that was indeed where she belonged.
As though sensing his gaze on her, she turned, ever so slightly, her eyes locking with his.
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
And then she dipped her chin in recognition before turning back to the ceremony. She offered nothing more, not so much as a second glance.
Torj felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him.
Beside him, Talemir let out a quiet whistle, looking from Torj to the Delmirian heir. ‘Still haven’t figured it out, then?’ he asked under his breath.
‘Nothing to figure out,’ Torj muttered.
He knew he was kidding himself, for he hadn’t taken his eyes off Wren since. She stood stoically as her sister, Anya, and her friends, Ida and Sam, were mentioned by name, dubbed war heroes by Audra herself as the mournful notes of a lute played. All around Wren, people were crying, leaning on one another, sharing their grief, their trauma from the war.
Not Wren.
Wren stood still and silent.
But when the eulogies and tributes ended and the crowd dispersed, she was nowhere to be seen. Dozens of people gathered around Torj and Talemir to pay their respects, but Talemir gave him a gentle push.
‘Go find her,’ he said, and barred the well-wishers so that Torj could slip away.
He found her in a secluded herb garden, tucked away in the Bloodwoods. There, she sat in the dirt, hunched over her knees, her body wracked with sobs. The sound was like a knife to his already bruised heart, and without thinking, he went to her.
‘Wren...’ he said softly.
She started, jumping to her feet, hastily palming her tears away. He knew she hated for anyone, even – or especially – him, to see her this vulnerable.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, her voice raw.
He came closer, though he didn’t reach for her, not yet.
She took a trembling breath and turned away to hide her face. ‘Just leave.’
‘I can’t,’ he said simply.
Wren stared, her face falling, as though his sincerity had devastated her. What else had she expected him to say?
And then a broken sob escaped her, and her legs buckled.
Torj caught her as she fell to the ground, drawing her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her. Nothing had ever felt more right, not as her arms slid around his waist, and her chest rose and fell against him as she tried to suppress her grief.
‘It’s alright to cry,’ he murmured, his palm rubbing circles between her delicate shoulder blades. ‘It’s alright.’
Wren hiccupped against him, her whole body shaking. She clung to his shirt as it grew damp with her tears. Torj stroked her hair, clinging to the precious feeling of being the person to hold her when she was at her most vulnerable. Could she feel the thundering of his heart?
‘I won’t leave you like this,’ he told her.
‘Everyone leaves.’
‘Not everyone,’ he said, ignoring the ache in his own chest. Seeing her like this broke him, but there was also a small part of him that was relieved. It gave him a glimmer of hope – hope that she was allowing herself to feel , to grieve after so long. And the fact that she trusted him to be the one to hold her as she did? It meant more to him than he could say.
And so, despite how they’d left things last time, Torj didn’t let go.
‘They’re gone,’ she wept into his chest. ‘Ida and Sam...Anya...’
‘I know,’ he murmured against her hair.
Wren cried herself hoarse, cried until she was trembling against him, until her short, shallow gasps became steady breaths once more.
‘Where have you been?’ she whispered. He could feel the heat of her pained words against his wet shirt.
‘I thought you wanted me to stay away,’ he said gently.
A broken laugh left her lips. ‘What I want hardly matters now.’
‘It matters,’ he told her fiercely. ‘It always matters.’
She looked up at him then. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her skin pink and blotchy, and yet she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
‘Do you ever think about our last conversation?’ she asked, wiping her face with her sleeve and drawing back from his embrace to study him.
Always. Torj felt her stare like a brand as she scanned his silver hair, the scar through his brow, and the V of tattooed skin his open shirt revealed, a hint of marred flesh there too.
He forced himself to keep his voice even. ‘What about it?’
Tears were caught in her long lashes, bringing out the vibrant green of her eyes. She blinked up at him. ‘What could have been...?’
For nine months, what could have been was the one thought he’d tried to fortify himself against. The one thought that had haunted both his waking and dreaming hours. He had imagined it so many ways. He pictured them laughing in a tangle of sheets, her smile pressed against his bare skin, her hair fanned out across his chest. He fantasized about her legs spread beneath him as he drove into her wet heat, moans of pleasure on her lips. He had seen himself showing her his homeland, and all the darkness that came with it. No matter which way he pictured it, there had never been any hope of just one night, of walking away from her afterwards.
‘Do you?’ he asked at last, noting that she was watching him carefully, as though she might read the thoughts in his head by the expressions flickering across his face.
‘I wonder if your outlook is still the same...?’
Torj tensed. ‘Yes.’
She broke away from him, the cold air sweeping in all too quickly.
‘Pity,’ she said, suddenly detached, her grief locked away once more in that box she buried deep.
Hurt lanced through Torj then, but he steeled himself against it, against her. ‘I won’t be your distraction, a balm to an open wound,’ he told her. ‘I can’t give you what you want.’
‘Clearly,’ she replied.
A noise of frustration escaped him. ‘I want to, Wren. Believe me. But the way you’re coping...You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? I would know your methods anywhere. These poisonings have your name all over them...And I can’t condone that path. It will destroy you.’
Eyes flashing, Wren rounded on him. ‘I’m already destroyed. What’s left but to take the corrupt down with me?’
Despair hit Torj like a blow. Was that what she truly thought of herself? He gripped her shoulders. ‘Don’t say that. I’ve seen what you can do, what you’re capable of. You have so much to offer the world.’
‘I do. Justice. Vengeance.’
But Torj shook his head. ‘More than that. There’s still light in you yet, Wren. I see it.’
She laughed, hollow and pained. ‘You see what you want to see.’ She shoved him away. ‘There’s no light any more. Only darkness.’
‘Wren...’ He reached for her, but she slapped his hand away.
‘I don’t need your pity,’ she hissed. ‘Just stay away from me, Torj. Far away.’
She looked around wildly, shaking her head at the sight of the bleeding trees, at the Mourner’s Trail beyond the crest in the terrain, and then, finally, at him.
‘Gods,’ she muttered. ‘This place is a poison. I’ll never come back.’
And with that, she left.
Heart fracturing anew, Torj stared after her, understanding for the first time that where she was going, he could not follow.
She needed to face her monsters alone.
And only once she’d fought them amid the flames could she rise from the ashes.