Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
ALLIE
“ P lant your feet.” I stood shoulder to shoulder to Geryll–well, my shoulder to his upper arm; they raised them tall in the crater. “The ground will never steady for you, you steady for it.”
Geryll gulped, but did as instructed, spreading his legs in one swift movement that spoke of precise military training.
He looked like a warrior, but the training bow shook in his hands. It snowed as calmly as ever and the constant wind hadn’t taken a break today, but I knew the trembles weren’t from the cold.
“Good,” I said, softening my voice.
After the whole negotiation debacle, which had been anything but a cool, calm discussion, my entire being had been ignited with a new worry. A different kind of fretting, one which I’d never endured, threatened to consume me.
After so many losses, the greatest of my life, I’d managed to make a fool of myself in front of the Commander–and I’d fucking enjoyed it.
I’d been so distraught and unfocused, I barely remembered the conversation I had with Evie. Something about cutpurses and flickering fires.
Godsdamn him and me, kissing him had felt good.
But that moment of weakness would now bring a world of embarrassment, probably for the rest of my life.
I was supposed to marry my enemy–former enemy?–through a shoddy decree.
What in the underworld was I doing kissing him? And liking it?
Worse still…what if I’d only kissed him because I needed someone to hold me up as the world around me crumbled?
The desire still bubbling in me didn’t agree.
One thing was sure–I had no clue how I could ever face him again and look him in the eye with that memory seared into me.
Then, like a coward, I’d ran, too ashamed to sit in the discomfort–and I had no clue how to solve the issue. Did I even want to solve it?
Maybe this way, we could have just avoided each other for the rest of our lives out of sheer mortification. That would make the whole not-doing-stupid-things-around-him problem go away fast.
I’d been piercing the target with my borrowed arrows, as if I could diminish my anguish with each thump, when Geryll and Nadya had broken the stillness in the clearing. They’d marched up to me, her with that mean ax, him with a training bow and a hesitant smile.
“The Commander thinks it would be good for me to learn archery,” he’d mumbled at me.
Thankfully, he’d kept his gaze on the ground, so he hadn’t noticed the way I flinched at the mere mention of my inevitable future husband.
But Nadya had seen and raised her brows; mercifully, she remained silent, for once. “Would you–would you teach me?”
I’d opened my mouth, ready to say no. I was in a mood that definitely wasn’t suited for teaching.
But then Geryll had finally found the courage to look me in the eyes and he’d looked so open and hopeful, all I’d been able to do was nod.
So here I was, screaming inside and keeping a calm, confident facade.
“You aim with your eyes first.” I jerked my chin at the twin targets waiting in front of us.
Nadya had commandeered the third and was busy groaning and hurling her axe at it like she wanted to slice it until nothing but splinters were left.
“Got it,” Geryll said with the shaky voice of someone who did not have it.
I swallowed my sigh. “Imagine that red circle is your enemy’s face.”
Mine had Silas’ stupid grin plastered all over it in my mind, two arrows sticking out from where his eyes would have been.
“I don’t have any enemies,” Geryll muttered.
“You must have had a lucky life, then.”
Not all of us had the luxury of being overlooked. Some were born with targets on their backs. By the time I’d turned eighteen, I was already receiving threatening letters from the Borderline Bands, simply because of my name.
“Not really.” He shrugged. “Just…a quiet one. Nobody really bothered with me once they realized I wouldn’t be as fierce as my father, other than the Commander and then Nadya. I miss him, but I don’t miss the expectations his absence has placed on me.”
The words speared my chest harder than Nadya’s axe did the target.
My father’s memory imbued every single breath I took, but the weight of his passing had placed so much strain on me.
His death was the start of my destruction as the heir to the Protectorate throne.
If he were still alive–if he hadn’t been murdered , stabbed in the back–where would I be? Not in this crater…or would I?
Would he have used the Protectorate crown to gather the army and bring me back to Aquila–or would he have decided I was safest here if our Clan had been attacked?
If he hadn’t died…I could have still been at home. Never met Mrs. Thornbrew, Nadya, Geryll.
Would have never kissed the Commander.
But that thought was still too fresh, too raw, to lean on too hard. Heat rose up my neck just at the barest whisper of the memory, his tongue in my mouth, my fingers digging into his back.
I shook my head and stared up at Geryll, this boy who towered over me, who looked like a warrior, but bit his lower lip like a youngling on his first day of schooling. “You’re smart.”
“Smart doesn’t win battles.”
“Smart always wins. In battle, in life, when you’re fighting with yourself. Never underestimate that.”
I raised my bow and watched him mimic me with that same vulnerable, wavering expression on his face, even as his hands gripped hard and his muscles bulged underneath the leather.
His problem was with the mind, not the body.
“You know why I became an archer?” I asked, keeping my voice light, as I let him adjust to the stance. “I didn’t like getting dirty.”
Geryll huffed a surprised laugh, then cleared his throat to cover it up.
“I’m serious. I didn’t like people rushing at me, wrestling them in the dirt, scraping my knees, dirt caked under my nails, bones crunching when training got tough.
Horrible. To be honest–” I lowered my voice.
“–I just didn’t like hand-to-hand combat.
It scared me, being so close to someone.
Having to imagine snuffing them out. My heart wasn’t made for that. ”
Geryll turned his head to me slowly. In the distance, even Nadya’s throws quieted.
“Plus, my thin wrists were just a liability.” As Geryll focused on my words, I took out two arrows from the quiver and handed him one.
He took it out of instinct. “I could use my eyesight and nimble limbs in better ways, instead of forcing my body and soul to contort to something they hadn’t been made for.
Some people thought I was a wimp at first. Then I became the best damn archer they’d ever met and nobody said anything ever again. ”
“People have a lot of things to say about what you should and shouldn’t become, as if they live your life.
Those expectations are yours to mold, not suffocate under.
” Maybe, one day, I’d believe those words myself.
But if they’d free Geryll, they’d done their job.
My gaze swept the clearing and landed on him, watching me intently.
“Notch your arrow on the right side of the bow.”
“Hold on!” Nadya’s voice broke the stillness. “Our warriors notch them on the inside.”
“That’s why this crater has never had a Huntress,” I said with all the courage I didn’t feel–what I did feel was Geryll’s attention quickly crumbling back into doubt. “And why your warriors can’t do what I do.”
Nadya folded her arms in front of her chest. “They can all hit those targets, just like you.”
She truly was a handful, wasn’t she? I liked that–I’d been a handful, too. But I didn’t envy the Commander having to keep her in check during her rebellious years. If Nadya had been even half as mouthy as me, she’d gotten herself into some trouble.
A corner of my lips ticked upward, for what felt like the first time in forever. “Stand between me and the target.”
Nadya’s eyes widened. “It was just a remark, you can’t shoot me dead for it.”
“I won’t shoot you.” My smirk widened as my hand grasped the bow tighter; it was feeling more and more like mine with each passing day, even if I’d been using it to get out all of my frustrations about the man who’d gifted it to me. “The Commander told you I wouldn’t harm you, yes?”
Nadya and Geryll nodded slowly.
Apprehensively.
Like they still only saw The Huntress, despite the Commander’s words.
When Nadya still hadn’t moved, I shrugged. “Fine, if you’re scared, I can demonstrate–”
“Solkar’s Reach warriors are never scared.”
As Nadya marched with a vengeance through the snow and posted herself and her attitude a few dozen yards in front of my arrow, I hid my face in the hood as my mind raced like it had been trained to all my life.
Solkar’s Reach.
Solkar was one of their gods, Mrs. Thornbrew had said.
Xamor, the merciless god of war and death, was the main deity in bloody Malhaven, but all Clans had their own particular divinities to answer to.
Lunara, the powerful goddess of the moon and sea, watched over Aquila, drawing her arrows to pierce the skies to shower us with rain.
Solkar’s Reach was either the name of a local guild…or this entire maddening crater.
I squirreled that information away before I caught myself–so what if I knew the name of the crater? It wasn’t like I was plotting some grand scheme where it was actually useful.
I gritted my teeth and raised my head back up. After a lifetime of stringing pieces together to create solutions for problems before they even hatched, my mind still searched for cues.
“Did you just tell me to move just so you could order me around?” Nadya raised her brow at me.
“See? Smart always wins,” I mouthed to Geryll before taking a determined step forward. “Notching your arrow on the outside gives you more flexibility. I saw a stranger on horseback doing it once, tried it, and never looked back.”
“Archers stay in one place,” Nadya said, with much less confidence this time.