Chapter Forty-Two
Fallyn
The snow-tipped Grim Hollow mountain range bowed and bent, turning into the colorless and icy Evergrey Rise in the distance to match the sky, a sure sign that we were getting closer to the city of Greylark’s Rest. The other sure sign of our northern trajectory was the wicked wind and lack of sun forcing me to keep my cloak tightly around my body to fight for every bit of warmth that was left.
Once we get to the city, I was hopeful to obtain some new, much warmer apparel.
Ash walked side by side with me, his eyes scanning the terrain ahead for signs of concern.
I bristled against the silence between us, especially because this continued awkwardness felt like my doing.
“Who are you, even?” I asked the question I’d be terrified of voicing, trying to strike up a conversation to take my mind off my severely aching body.
At some point I think I slept on a rock, because in no position did my body not hurt.
And Ash still seemed fresh as a daisy, waltzing around on the light steps of someone unburdened by low back pain.
The dirt road did nothing to pain the soles of his feet.
I fucking hate him.
“You know who I am.” Ash’s curt reply at one point might have deterred me, but this wasn’t an actually angry tone.
I’d seen him angry, back in the village.
The deep, resonate wrath that had the very shadows deepening like dusk around us.
This wasn’t even close to that, so I continued to my questioning, determined to get something that wasn’t broody out of him.
“I only know your name. I don’t know anything else about you.
You have strange magic I haven't seen from any god-blessed before, a random abandoned mansion in the foothills of a mountain, you fight as if you’ve been born of fury, you made someone angry enough to stab you in the heart and seal you for what, sixty years?
Though, if I’m honest, I kind of don’t blame them. You’re a bit testy.”
He gave me a mock gasp. “Testy? Me? I think you might have me confused with someone else. A five-foot-tall brat who thinks she’s tough until,” he stopped and turned, pressing his face close to mine, close enough that our breaths mingled in the limited space between us.
My feet stalled in place. Even my mind was frozen, unable to come up with a response, “until anyone gets even a little close to her, and then she turns quiet and bright red.”
He laughed as he turned and walked on as I regathered my thoughts.
“You think you did something there, don’t you?” I pressed again, watching with a strange sort of glee as his lips pressed together in annoyance. “Do you think sarcasm and flirtatiousness keep people away who want to get to know you?”
“Do you think sharp words and sharper blades do?” He countered, the comment tossed over his shoulder at me.
“It’s been pretty effective in the past.” When he didn’t respond, I felt my smile fade. He just kept walking. “I see you, Ash. I see you, and I want to understand you. I want to know why I should believe you when you say I’m safe with who is in some ways, my captor.”
That got his attention.
His steps faltered so abruptly I barely caught myself from slamming into him.
“Your captor?” His outrage was apparent in the knife's edge his words danced along. “We’re breaking the curse for both our sakes.” I didn’t respond.
I just stepped around him and kept walking.
If he didn’t want to divulge anything to me, I suppose I had no right to pry, let alone the ability.
But it would mean he would get nothing from me either.
I smoothed the sadness from my face and tried not to think of it as a rejection and walked on with him trailing behind me, the silence thicker with each step we took.
Why did he have so many pieces of me, know so much about me, and yet he refused to open to me? What was he hiding?
“I was betrayed." his admittance was as jarring as it was unexpected, once again freezing my feet mid step. I turned to find his eyes flickering with remnants of old hauntings—a clinging phantom that only he could see. "I was forced out of the only home I’ve ever truly had.” His voice was softer than the lick of shadows, so soft I turned around to ensure I had in fact heard him speak. “And that home was still one that was forced upon me—I’m bound to it. Being away from it is an agony unlike anything I’ve ever known.
I feel it calling to me, a call I can no more answer than I can grasp smoke.
I live beside that pain in a way that sometimes resembles peace, but it's more like I'm bleeding out, but I won't die when I'm empty. Sometimes I hate you for releasing me from that dagger, because at least when I was under, I could breathe without the pain of missing somewhere I can never return.”
My heart ached for him, my chest tightening with something too heavy to name.
It hurt to look at him. To see him go from glacial indifference to looking like he was barely breathing beneath the weight of his admission.
Something within me bent toward him. Placing my hand in his, I encouraged him to keep talking. “What happened?”
“A traitor happened.” The words were a blow, a surprise I hadn’t anticipated. “And to this day, I’ve no idea what happened to my family, if you can even call them that. Or my home”
“Were you not close?”
A light scoff that made me think his hurt ran very deep indeed. “It’s a long and complicated history, but no, not especially.”
“You’re not close even with your parents?” I genuinely couldn’t imagine not being close with mine. Had death not separated us, we’d never know days apart. Grief hit me, both new wounds and old. Father’s demise, and Mother’s.
The image of her burning as a heretic from an overly zealous Morningstar worshipper would never leave me mind. His end was too swift, too merciful, while my mother’s screams would always follow those who heard it.
An unamused laugh fell from his lips as he raked his hair out of his eyes. “I’m part of the reason my parents are dead. Especially my father. My siblings and I killed him.”
There was no regret in his tone. Instead, a long-simmering anger appeared, a wound still on the fringes of healing. I squeezed his hand, pushing away my instincts and common sense screaming at me to run, because what even would be the point?
“Why?”
“My parents tried to kill us. All of us. So, those I was raised with, those I would refer to as my siblings and I banded together to kill them.” There was no malice there, nothing but anger, and now that he was opening up, I saw a glimpse of the exact thing he didn’t want anyone to see.
A deep, unrelenting sadness. Loneliness.
“That must have been difficult. I can’t imagine having to make that decision. And now that someone betrayed you, it must be unbearably lonely.”
His lips pressed tightly together. He didn’t have to answer.
He didn’t hide his emotions as well as he thought he did.
I just squeezed his hand a little tighter before entwining our fingers, not willing to say the words aloud that a small part of me wished I would.
That if he wanted, he didn’t have to be lonely anymore.
Because wasn’t I staring at the same fate right now?
At least for right now, neither of us had to be alone.
Maybe it was the bend in the road, maybe it was the fact that we were distracting one another, but neither of us heard the telltale drum of hoofbeats until we rounded the corner to the sight of five mounted riders, all dressed in Ipsilon’s finery. All bearing the black and red sigil.
The King’s Guard.