Chapter 4 #2
Minutes ticked by and finally Red took a breath, slow, rattling but on his own. Then another, and another. I sat back on my heels, sweat beading my brow. Shaking, I took my own slow breaths as I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do now.
Helayne and Aron would be discovered soon and I had to get out of here. I knew who would be to blame for both deaths.
“You stopped my uncle.”
Startled, I looked up to see Red and Helayne’s daughter staring at me. “I did. Avalyn, right?”
“My father told me to hide.” Her eyes—Helayne’s eyes—filled with tears. She limped over to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You saved us again.”
Gods. The pit in my stomach couldn’t have been larger if she’d dug it with a pickaxe. I wasn’t saving them. I was the one bringing this on them, just by being here. Then again, Aron had likely been just waiting for a moment that Red wasn’t on his game.
Maybe me being here hadn’t been all bad.
I hugged her back, her tremors calming as I held her. “Stay with your dad, he’s breathing well now. I’m going to get Dakota.”
She pulled back. “Uncle Aron said…he said he hurt my mom. He said it to my dad.”
Fuck me.
I cupped her face, bringing it close to mine. “Your mother did everything she could to save you. Do you understand?”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, carving a streak through my own heart. “She’s—”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Avalyn.”
Her eyes fluttered closed but the tears didn’t stop, they fell faster.
I didn’t swipe them away, because grief…
grief came only where there was love. Family.
Connection. The ache in my chest had nothing to do with my rib, the difficulty breathing nothing to do with the adrenaline, and everything to do with a past and pains I could feel even if I couldn’t remember.
I let her go and stood. No matter how much I wanted to protect her, I could not stay here.
“Please don’t leave.”
I knew she meant not to leave her alone in the tent with the dead body, but it felt like I’d heard those three words before.
Please don’t leave.
I have to.
“I’ll take your uncle’s body with me. Just…don’t come out. Okay?” The last thing I wanted was for her to see her mother, slumped over, dead in a chair. I helped her tuck in next to her father. “Put your hand here, against his neck. If you feel the beat stop, you scream for help, okay?”
She bobbed her head and swiped at her tears. “My mom taught me. I’ll keep track of his heart.”
My throat tightened, grief for a little girl who’d lost her mother and might lose her father…that grief I’d been fighting raged up through me and I felt it so keenly I had to bite back a sob.
Swaying where I stood, I worked through a few breaths before I could reach down and grab Aron’s boots to drag him out of the tent.
The sound of music, drums, singing, laughter filled the night, covering the sounds of his death and my need to dispose of his body. A twang across my middle—my ribs were better than they’d been but they still pulled at me.
And If I called for help to spare my own body, thirty people would flood in, panic would eat the truth, and Red might die anyway.
It wouldn’t matter that Avalyn would speak for me, that she’d tell them she heard Aron confess to killing her mother.
She was a little girl. I gave another yank, hissed as the move jerked my midsection, but it got Aron and his lazy ass all the way out of the tent.
Where I bumped solidly into a standing body.
“What the fuck?” Dakota whispered, grabbing my arms and spinning me around. “What the fuck did you do?”
He shook me hard, but I didn’t fight him. “I came to say goodbye, found Helayne dead, and Aron choking his brother to death. Look at her neck, Dakota. Those are not my hands.”
Dakota stumbled to Helayne, going to his knees, his hands to her neck. “I…gods!”
Calm flowed through me, kicking in to get me through this mess. “Red is alive. So is Avalyn. Helayne…was not so lucky.” I slid the bow off my back and handed it to him. “Your friends are right; I am only bringing sorrow to you. This started when I arrived. I need to go.”
Dakota spun on the spot, his hands in his hair. “I knew that it would come to this, Aron was…he was always trying to…he was the one who told us to set up near the seam. I think he’s been looking for a way to get Red out of the way for a long time. This isn’t your fault, Mallory.”
I laid the bow and quiver on the ground seeing as he wouldn’t take it.
I didn’t want to run from this, but…facing down thirty people was not going to be good for anyone and I didn’t belong here.
That grief that felt like my bones and soul were coming apart hit me again and this time I couldn’t catch it in time.
Please don’t leave.
I have to.
My chest tightened under the combined crush and explosion of the pain, like a supernova falling into a black hole of something that sadness was too weak of a word for—this was an absolute annihilation of my heart as if I’d lost everything and not remembering was the final blow.
Dakota was talking but my ears buzzed, and I couldn’t hear anything over the hum of my heart.
He grabbed my forearms and held me tight, finally shaking me hard enough that it snapped me out of the grief tsunami that had me in its grip. Shoving the emotions down with some effort, his words finally penetrated my ears.
“Listen to me. The others will not hate you for this. Everyone knew that Aron was after Red. Always, he wanted what his brother had and that included Helayne. They will understand that you did what you had to, to save Red and Avalyn.”
Only I didn’t think they would understand. Too many of them believed that the sorrowbird had marked me, just like the old woman had said. “Dakota. I have to leave. Tonight, you know it and so do I.”
He closed his eyes, his shoulders drooped and he slowly nodded. “Then…I will help you pack. You will need supplies, a map, a weapon.”
I stared at him. “Why are you doing this? You don’t even know me.”
His hands tightened again. “Because my wife would have loved you, she was fierce and wild like you, she stood up to Aron, and took in strays, and she fed the birds for years before anyone found out. The sorrowbird is not a mark of anything. There is too much superstition in this world. But the others can’t see it… you’re right. You’re right.”
It took us less than five minutes to get a pack with essentials, a map, a spare set of clothes, mess kit, a small amount of food, water canteen, and a blanket. “You need a good weapon,” Dakota and I were back in front of the weapons trailer. “Aron had a stash he kept from everyone.”
He motioned for me to follow, and I fell in just a step behind him. “Why did you let him have a stash?”
“No letting here. He hid it well. Used a glamour spell he picked up from a cheap witch to keep his precious items from anyone else. But bragged about it to me when he was drunk.” Dakota stopped at the tent that was furthest from the center of camp.
The exterior was filthy and stained, and the smell that rolled off it was rank with body odour and rotting food. We slipped inside. My nose wrinkled and the scent seemed to stick to the back of my throat.
Dakota gagged. “Here,” He pointed at the bed and together we flipped it over.
Nothing, just bare dirt. No, that wasn’t quite true. Dakota turned away. I stayed where I was and reached for the bare ground.
My palm looked like it met dirt—and kept going. “Glamours don’t like my touch.” The nugget of understanding popped out of my mouth even as the weave of magic thinned and drifted away like spiderwebs on the wind. My fingers closed on a wrapped bundle.
“You were right, he was hiding it.” I pulled the bundle of weapons out, the illusion shattering fully as the thin canvas was unwrapped.
“That bastard, some of these were in the weapons stash! I remember this bow,” Dakota crouched beside me.
But I was already searching for something buried at the bottom…
something that drew me to it. There. The handle of a sword that was solid black, silver veins shooting through it like tiny lightning bolts.
My fingers touched the handle, and the pulse of energy was immediate, warmth and strength woven through the inanimate object.
“Shadowsteel, like your daggers.” I pulled the blade up, and stared at the shapely curve through the body, dropping to a point in the bright silver toned steel.
Two and a half feet, perfect for just about any fight, the falcata was a true beauty.
I dug around until I found a sheath that would work and strapped it to my left hip and thigh.
“You should take a bow too,” Dakota held out a bow from the stash.
Another recurve, not as nice as Dakota’s but it would do the job.
I slipped it over my head, and stared at the stash, a feeling of being almost there…
I grabbed the edge of the canvas and rolled the weapons in their entirety.
They tumbled and clanked but the move uncovered a pair of daggers with the same hilt as the falcata.
Black, shot with silver. A trio of blades.
They were twelve inches and would be good back-ups, as good as those that Dakota had on his bow. I slipped one into the top of my right boot, and the other I strapped to the outside of my left bicep.
Helping Dakota, we carried the remaining weapons out of the stinking tent. “Dakota—”
A scream interrupted the goodbye I was going to give. Wings in the night, the flap of that fucking sorrowbird as it landed on the top of Aron’s tent. The bird’s silver-flecked eyes fixed on mine. He clacked his beak once, twice, spread his wings as if pointing north and then it spoke a single word.
“Run.”