Chapter 5 Scarlett
CHAPTER 5
SCARLETT
“Y ou need to strengthen your core. It will help you maintain balance even when your opponents are physically stronger than you,” Ryker told Scarlett, reaching down to help her from the ground where he’d knocked her on her ass…again.
Scarlett scowled at him. “Just add it to our training routine,” she grumbled, as she was yanked to her feet. Her legs were sore from the extra two miles he’d made her run that morning when she had asked him if that ever-present scowl was permanently stuck on his face, and her arms were sore from the new maneuvers he’d been making her practice over and over. Her shoulders hurt in places she didn’t even know they could hurt. She was looking forward to a hot bath before bed tonight to soothe all the soreness.
“Oh, there are lots of ways to strengthen your core. I am sure Mikale could help in more ways than one,” he said, winking at her.
“Mikale is a fucking ass,” she replied, rolling her eyes.
After a few weeks of training and studying him, this new place of easy teasing and conversation was one that Scarlett didn’t mind. They were far from friends. She still annoyed the hell out of him. He still said things that pissed her off. More than once she’d announced they were done for the day. The days following such a time, he usually made her run extra miles and seemed to “accidentally” strike her harder with whatever weapon they were training with.
They had begun sneaking in evening sessions a few times a week when possible. She had forgotten what it was like to be in control of her body and had found comfort in her old habits and ways as she sparred and felt her muscles regaining lost strength.
One such evening, when he had again brought up her relationship with Cassius, she had announced they were done for the night. She had chucked her short sword to his feet and turned on her heel to leave, and a second later, she had found herself on her back in the training galley. Ryker had tackled her and was not only sitting on top of her, but pinning her arms to her sides. She knew all kinds of fancy maneuvers. Ryker had even taught her some new ones since the clearing, but that did nothing when he still had brute strength on his side.
“You do not get to decide when we are done,” he had snarled at her, his lips set in a feral sneer.
“Get. Off. Of. Me,” Scarlett had replied, her voice a lethal whisper as she enunciated each word.
His face had turned smug as he stood and snapped, “Pick up your weapon.”
He hadn’t even been fully standing when she had leapt to her feet and hit him as hard as she could in the face. Her hand throbbed and stung, but an angry red mark, to her satisfaction, marred the side of his face (and had turned black and blue the following day). He stared at her in shock as she snarled back at him, her voice vicious, “If you ever touch me like that again, I will gut you.”
She had picked up her dropped sword then and turned to face him in the ring.
“I’d like to see you try,” had been his only reply, with a challenging gleam in his eyes. “Your first kill is always the hardest.”
“Who says I’ve never killed anyone?” she had sneered.
Ryker had straightened at her words. “Have you?”
“No questions. Remember, Captain?” she’d replied sweetly.
That had been the end of it. There hadn’t been any other instances of randomly frozen exploding trees, and for that she was grateful, but she had spent time in the library looking for any information on such a phenomenon. She’d found nothing.
The rest of her time had been spent trying to find information on her target, but there was nothing anywhere. She didn’t know who he was, let alone how she was supposed to track him down. She had snuck out into seedy taverns and gone to high teas, subtly asking about him, but no one had ever heard of him. It had been nearly a month since she had gotten the assignment. She suspected the Assassin Lord would be checking on her progress any day. Making him nearly impossible to find was obviously part of the game he was playing.
As they’d agreed, Ryker and Scarlett ended every training session, offering something up about themselves. Sometimes it was silly, meaningless things. The day he’d tackled her and made her continue training, he had shared some tale about the first time he’d been punished in his own training as a new soldier. She had shared that her favorite color was purple as she walked out of the training barracks, and that hadn’t even been true. Her favorite color was a deep shade of red. Ryker had called her a wicked brat, to which she had merely thrown a vulgar gesture over her shoulder and continued on her way without a backward glance.
Now they sat on the floor against the far wall of the training galley, drinking from their water skins. He’d had a meeting that morning of some sort, and they hadn’t been able to meet, so they had trained tonight instead. She was panting slightly from their last round. Ryker, as usual, seemed barely winded. She could feel his eyes on her, as if wanting to ask her something, but not sure if he should.
“What?” she demanded, turning to face him.
“I am debating.” He hesitated before saying, “If tonight you would let me ask you a question rather than volunteer information.”
Scarlett studied him hard. His dark hair curled slightly at his neck from the sweat of the sparring. His golden eyes seemed muted, as if they should be brighter. “I suppose as long as I’m afforded the same courtesy. And if it’s too personal, I have the right to decline.”
Ryker nodded in silent agreement, then said, “Tell me about the tonic you take every night. What is it for? What does it do?”
Scarlett was a little taken aback. Of all the questions he could ask, he wanted to know about her ailment? She had expected a question about her mother or Cassius or who had trained her previously. She had expected a question about anything other than this. Ryker was quiet, waiting for her to either say no or start talking.
“You want to know about that? Why?”
“Because where I am from, I have access to some of the most gifted and skilled Healers in all the lands. Maybe I can send word, and they can help.”
Scarlett was speechless for a long moment before saying, “Careful, Captain, or it will seem as if you actually care.”
Ryker gave her a pointed glare. “I only care that I am not wasting my time training someone who is never going to be able to use it.”
“I spent the first nine years of my life in a healer’s compound. If they couldn’t figure it out, no one can,” Scarlett replied with a sigh.
“Healers here are very different from the Healers I have access to,” Ryker said carefully.
“I’m fairly certain that the healers I have access to are the best in all three kingdoms,” she replied dryly. When Ryker said nothing, she brought her eyes to his, studying him hard, before letting out a long breath and saying, “My mother was the most skilled healer in all of Windonelle. She was sought out by the poor and nobility alike, and people came from the other kingdoms to see her. I assure you, if she couldn’t figure it out, it is not something that can be done.”
“Your mother was a healer?” he asked. His tone was contemplative, as if he were trying to solve a riddle.
Shit. That wasn’t something she’d particularly wanted to share with him, but she couldn’t exactly take it back now.
Scarlett let out another sigh and said, “I’ve been taking a nightly tonic for as long as I can remember. My mother mixed the tonic for me every night. I can remember sitting on a stool in the kitchen watching her add the various herbs and elixirs. I take it at almost the same time every night, and it makes me tired. One night when I was six, she let me skip my tonic. There was a huge celebration going on in the city, for what I don’t remember, but there was going to be fireworks. I begged her to let me stay up and see them. My closest friends were going, and I wanted to go too. She finally relented.
“The fireworks were beautiful. Everything a six-year-old would expect them to be and more. Brilliant explosions of reds and golds and purples filled the sky. They went on for nearly two hours. It was in the finale when I started to not feel well. My vision became blurry. I vomited. My mother scooped me up, and I remember her exclaiming how hot I was. I was burning up but not with a typical fever. I felt like my insides were on fire, and I felt like the dark night was literally swallowing me up.”
Scarlett was staring straight ahead. She could still see the panic in her mother’s eyes as she raced them back to the compound. “I don’t remember how we got back to the compound. I’m assuming she found a horse. It felt like we were there in a matter of seconds. I was in and out of consciousness as she forced a different tonic down my throat. I slept for two days straight before I awoke and was completely fine. She made me swear I would never miss my tonic again unless it was absolutely necessary. Then she gave me emergency vials of the tonic she made me drink that night to take should I ever not be able to take the tonic. After she died, the successor High Healer at the compound I had lived in took over making my tonics. She still does. It is delivered to the manor every night.”
Ryker had his arms resting on his bent knees. His hands were lightly clasped as he stared at the floor. Scarlett sat cross-legged beside him, a few tears escaping down her cheeks. She hastily brushed them aside, wiping her damp fingers on her pants. She rarely spoke of her mother.
“Have you ever not taken it since then? Is the reaction always the same?” he asked quietly, still looking at the floor.
“The blurry vision and vomiting and losing consciousness, yes. Now that I am older, I do sometimes skip the tonic if I desire to partake in nighttime activities, or when I have…other things to tend to. But I do so knowing I will sleep for the next few days because I will need to take the emergency vial before dawn or become violently ill. The emergency tonic puts me into a deep sleep for my body to recover or something. I don’t remember much, to be honest. One time I vomited water as if I’d been drowning.”
“Do you dream when you are in those deep sleeps?”
“That’s an odd question. You’ve asked four, by the way,” she answered, elbowing him lightly in the ribs.
“You do not have to answer it,” was his only reply.
“I do, but they’re just normal dreams, although longer than an average dream, I suppose,” she shrugged. “Last night I dreamt about the Fae lands.”
“What?” Ryker’s head snapped up. He was looking at her as if she had sprouted a second head.
“I found a book a few months ago. It’s a book about the war with Avonleya, but it also has detailed information about the Fae lands.” Scarlett shrugged again. “Don’t you normally dream about things you’ve read or things that have been going on?”
Ryker’s face had gone back to the usual unreadable mask. “It sounds like an interesting book. I would like to see it.”
“I didn’t know you were a reader,” Scarlett replied, raising an eyebrow.
“It is just as important to train your mind as it is to train your body.”
“That’s the take of a warrior on reading,” Scarlett scoffed, pulling the string from her braid and shaking out her long hair.
“And what is the take of reading for you, Lady ?” he asked, watching her carefully.
Scarlett paused the raking of her fingers through her strands. “It’s an escape. It gives me someplace to go when I have to stay where I am.”
Ryker reached for her hand, and Scarlett went still, barely breathing. Her hand felt small wrapped in his giant one. His calluses were rough against her own. Scarlett swallowed, not sure what to say, but Ryker spoke first. “You are not as alone as you think you are.”
“What makes you think I am alone? I have plenty of people who care for me.”
“Yes, but you can be around people and still feel alone. You can feel alone in life, even when you have people you love and who love you in return.”
Tears burned at the back of her eyes, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She felt him tense slightly, but they sat silently in the dim room against the wall. She was alone, even with Cassius and Nuri and Tava in her life. They all knew where their life was going. They all had purpose. And her? She was just drifting along, like ashes in the wind, trying to get her feet under her in whatever she was supposed to be doing. She’d had purpose once, but now she had no idea what she was doing. She didn’t even know who she was any more.
After several minutes, when Scarlett had blinked the tears back and had swallowed the lump in her throat, she said quietly, “I am alone, though. One day they will leave. Cassius. Drake. Tava. And —” Scarlett stopped before she said Nuri’s name. “One day, everyone will leave. And one day, I’ll find my way out, too, because I’m not supposed to be here. Not really.” She paused as a single tear managed to escape and slide down her cheek. She wiped it away and said, more to herself than Ryker, “Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, but in the end I’ve found being alone isn’t really all that bad. Not when there are moments like this in between the being alone.”
They were both silent again, and Scarlett found herself torn between knowing she really needed to go take her tonic and wanting to drag this moment out just a little longer. She found herself unexpectedly comfortable in his presence. Likely because he was a welcomed reprieve from the monotony of her days, she supposed.
Finally, she started to stand, but Ryker tightened his hand around hers. His other hand gently gripped her chin as he made her look at him. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders now. His golden eyes seemed to swirl, almost as if flames danced in them.
“I know you will be just fine alone, Scarlett Monrhoe. You are strong and wicked and brilliant.” Scarlett felt heat rush to her face, but he wouldn’t release her chin. He held her gaze and continued, “But maybe, just maybe, alone is not where you are supposed to be either.”
Ryker released her, and Scarlett stood. Before she turned to leave, she looked down at him and said, “You owe me four questions.”
Ryker gave her a half grin. “Don’t waste them.”
“I don’t intend to,” Scarlett answered, and she sauntered out of the room.
There was blood everywhere. On her hands. On her bare torso and legs. Her dagger lay beside her as she hugged the body that had stopped breathing to her chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe around the sobs.
A cold hand gripped her elbow and hauled her to her feet. She could feel his breath on her neck as he leaned in and whispered into her ear, “This was a reminder, my pet, that should you fail to follow through, I do not.”
Then she was being dragged down a hall to a small, cold office, but another man stepped into view. He was beautiful. There was no other way to describe him. He had shoulder length silver hair and silver eyes that seemed to glow. His muscles rippled as he stepped towards them. The smile that filled his face had her shrinking back into the other man. She instinctively knew that this man was far more dangerous than the one who had just made her—
Scarlett shot up in bed. Her forehead and back were dripping with sweat, her sheets soaking wet.
“Shh, Seastar,” Cassius soothed from the edge of the bed. “Breathe.”
“I can’t,” she gasped.
“I know,” he whispered. She felt Cassius pull her into his arms. His hand began stroking the hair that was matted to her head. He held her tightly as she struggled to get down a breath. She didn’t notice Tava at the bedroom door, her hand at her throat. She didn’t notice the look Tava and Cassius exchanged. Her lungs wouldn’t expand enough to get a full breath down.
She gasped again.
“Scarlett,” Cassius whispered. She could hear the slight panic in his voice.
In and out. She tried to talk her body through the motion. She just needed to get a solid breath down. This was real. She was in her bed at the manor, not in that cold cell or that small office. In and out, she ordered herself.
Finally, the oxygen filled her lungs fully, and her head fell against Cassius’s shoulder, his hand continuing to stroke her hair. When she had managed to get down a few more breaths, she felt him rise from the bed, taking her with him. A moment later, he was setting her into his own bed in his room next to hers. She felt the bed dip when he crawled in beside her.
“Sleep, Seastar,” he whispered as he resumed the calming motion on her hair.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered back.
“I know. I’m sorry I haven’t been here.”
She didn’t know how long she laid there, but sleep eventually found her again. Cassius’s hand never stilled.