Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Ryot smirks. “With pleasure, Fuck You.”
He moves so fast I barely see him. I bring the scythe down hard, but he’s already dodged to the side. His hand catches the shaft mid-swing. He twists, and the momentum sends me tumbling to the ground.
Seb lets out a strangled sound and starts toward us.
“Don’t,” I snap, thrusting a hand back without looking at him.
Ryot takes a step back and raises an eyebrow, not even breathing hard.
“Are you ready to go now, rebel girl?” he asks.
I grit my teeth and charge again with my scythe angled forward, but he sidesteps my strike effortlessly. I narrowly avoid crashing into a tree and turn to face him—and he’s already there. The foot he drives into my chest throws me against the trunk with a thud that knocks the air from my lungs.
“You need training,” he says. “An untrained Altor is dangerous. You think you can protect your brothers from the hazards in this forest?” He snorts. “You can’t even protect them from you.”
His words land harder than his kick.
I remember Leo’s arm, bent at a sick angle. I remember his scream. The copper stench of our parents’ blood soaking into the wheat field.
I hesitate.
In that pause, he closes the distance. His hand locks around mine on the scythe and holds it in place.
Then he kicks out again, this time to sweep my legs out from under me.
I crash to the ground, and my head hits the tree behind me with a sharp, stunning crack.
Pain radiates through my skull. The scythe slips from my fingers.
I glare up at him from the forest floor, my breath ragged. His face is hard but there’s something softer in his storm blue eyes. Without a word, he reaches down, grabbing my arm to haul me up. He leans in close, his voice brushing against my ear.
“Are you ready to come with me now?”
My body quivers not from fear, but from fury. I pretend to stumble slightly, one hand reaching for balance as he lifts me… but it’s a lie. My fingers close around the hilt of one of the daggers on his belt. In one motion, I twist free and press the blade to his throat.
He goes completely still. For a heartbeat, neither of us breathes. His body is taut under my touch, all tight muscle and restraint. The thrum of his pulse is steady against the blade. My breath rushes in and out, hot and fast, but my hand doesn’t tremble.
I could end him. I should end him.
But I don’t.
Ryot exhales. The sound is soft, almost a hum. Amused? Impressed?
“Well done, rebel girl,” he murmurs, voice low.
His words slide over my skin like the first drop of rain before a storm. And gods help me, I hate the way my heart responds. It stutters, just once, but even that is enough to make me furious with myself.
His hand lifts—slowly, deliberately—and comes to rest over mine on the dagger’s hilt.
“Now, you could kill me,” he says. “Slide that blade in a little deeper and end this right here. But you won’t.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I whisper.
His gaze doesn’t waver. “If you were going to, you would’ve done it already.”
I press the blade harder, enough to breach skin. His breath hisses out.
The rhythm of footsteps pounding the forest floor break my focus. No battle cry. No shouted warning. Just the dry scrape of leaves and the raw, reckless heat of Seb’s fury rushing toward us.
We both turn. Seb is running toward us, sword raised.
“Seb, no!” I scream and jump in front of Ryot. Seb doesn’t stand a chance. An Altor could break him in half without blinking.
I try to shove Ryot back, but he’s already moving to intercept Seb. He knocks the dagger from my hand and grabs my arm.
“Stop,” he barks, whether to me or to Seb I don’t know. But as I twist against his grip, desperate to reach my brother, his hold tightens. There’s a sharp pop, and pain explodes through my shoulder.
I scream—a ragged, instinctive sound—and Ryot curses under his breath as he shoves me out of the way. I crash into the ground, shoulder useless, pain flooding my vision with white. The world tilts. Dirt grits between my teeth as my cheek hits the forest floor.
The dagger’s gone along with any pretense of control. I’ve landed near my scythe, though, and I scramble for it with my good arm, fingers curling tight around the worn wood. I drag it close and lever myself up with one arm, my injured shoulder screaming with every breath.
But I’m too late. Ryot has locked an arm around Seb’s neck and is holding the black tip of one of his daggers at Seb’s exposed throat. The sword is on the ground at his feet, not a drop of blood on the blade.
“The longer I’m here—the longer you’re here—the more likely your brothers die,” Ryot says, his voice calm, too calm, like he’s discussing the weather over biscuits and not threatening everything I have left in the world. “The quicker you surrender, the less likely anyone gets hurt.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. My knees threaten to buckle, and it takes everything in me to stay upright rather than launch myself forward and make the kind of mistake I probably won’t survive. The kind my brothers definitely won’t survive.
“I should’ve killed you,” I manage, barely recognizing my own voice.
“Yes,” he agrees. The sight of his dagger at Seb’s throat is more than I can handle.
“I’ll go with you,” I say. “I won’t fight back, if you swear Seb and Leo will be safe.”
“Don’t do it, Leina,” Seb whispers, his determined eyes meeting mine. He tries to shake his head, but the tip of that dagger is too close and that little movement pricks his skin. A single drop of blood runs down Seb’s throat. A warning.
“I can’t swear they’ll be safe, but I swear they’ll be safe from me,” Ryot answers.
“That’s not good enough,” I snap. “Swear they’ll be safe from other Altor. That you won’t aid in their capture. That you won’t tell anyone where you found us.”
I’m not sure how much negotiating power I have, really, but Ryot seems to consider my request anyway.
He doesn’t answer immediately. His gaze shifts—not to me, but to Leo, still curled in the blankets in the little wagon.
His eyes land on the quilt I wrapped around my youngest brother, the one embroidered with the winged silhouette of a faravar stitched in fading blacks and golds.
He tilts his head slightly, studying it.
“I will not aid in their capture in any way,” he says. “That is the truest vow I can offer.”
I whip my gaze to Seb, needing to verify the veracity of Ryot’s vow. My brother’s eyes meet mine and he gives me the slightest nod. Ryot is speaking the truth.
The relief that blazes through me makes me lightheaded and I nearly fall to my knees. This stranger’s pledge isn’t much to leave my brothers with, but maybe it will be enough. I drop my scythe, and Ryot lowers the dagger and shoves Seb forward, sending Seb to his knees.
“Leina,” Seb whispers, and the pain in his voice nearly breaks me.
“I’m so sorry, Seb,” I whisper back.
Ryot stoops to retrieve the scythe from the ground. His movements are careful, but there’s no mockery now. No smirk.
“You have another weapon you’ve bonded with here,” he says. “Call it.”
Bonded? I think of that flash of heat when I hold the scythe or my pruning shears. I stare up at him, dazed.
He shrugs his shoulders in exasperation, and I realize I never responded. “Call it or not—it’s up to you. But being separated from a bonded weapon, even a minor one, is painful.”
A single tear slides down my face, and a helpless laugh escapes my lips.
“You think being separated from my pruning shears will be painful? Burying my dead parents—the harmless farmers your soldiers slaughtered—is painful. Abandoning my brothers, knowing they’ll fight for their very victory.
That’s painful.” And I smile a twisted facsimile of a smile.
“Losing my pruning shears? That’s nothing. ”
There’s a moment of silence while he studies me before he turns to the little wagon and digs through the pile until he finds the pruning shears himself. He shoves them into his pocket before he walks back to take my good arm and march me toward the trees.
“Wait!” I cry, jerking back with what strength I have left. “I want to say goodbye. To Leo. To Seb. They’re my family! I can’t just leave them here!”
Ryot glances over his shoulder to Leo snuggled in his quilts.
“Trust me, you don’t want your brothers to be part of your world.
This one,” Ryot says, gesturing to the quiet forest around us, “this world right here, with the whispering trees and the soft fading light? This is as good as it gets. Leave them to it.”
His eyes find mine again, and for one sliver of a second, something is there that makes my heart skip. Regret? Warning? The cold finality in his voice makes the air feel thinner, but I don’t resist this time as he drags me forward.
Seb makes a strangled noise in his throat.
I stumble after Ryot, tears burning my eyes and sliding down my face, blurring my last glimpse of my brother as the trees rise between us and the forest swallows him whole.
Then, I’m alone with the man I should’ve killed.