45. Ayres
“You’re not going to like this.”
Ayres looked up from the sword he was sharpening to find Milla standing above him, waving a letter in front of his face.
“Who is it from?” he asked, even as he recognized the beautiful, scrawling penmanship on the parchment.
“The Queen. This is her final decision on whom she wants you to choose to be House of Death’s Contestar.”
Something in Milla’s tone felt ominous and Ayres’s scowl deepened as he tore apart the envelope.
Ayres,
I know you have your reservations about Rorax Greywood, and rightfully so. However, I would like you to choose Rorax as the House of Death’s future Contestar.
Use her to help you track the summonings.
Prepare the men, ask for help if you need it to contain her influxes.
This is an order.
I love you.
-Rosalie Sumavari,
Queen of the House of Death, and your most beloved sister
Ayres read the letter four times before he crumpled the parchment up in his fist. He couldn’t remember the last time Rosalie had directly commanded him to do anything, and it grated on his skin. She left him to his own devices, let him work with Erich during peace, and hadn’t gotten in his way when the summonings occurred and he had to leave to retrieve Sumavari’s Books. She didn’t intervene or even request regular updates but let him work with his guard to stop Lyondrea from summoning anything worse than what they had probably already pulled out of the Pits.
For her to command Ayres, to give him a direct order, it meant something.
Ayres shook his head, clenching the parchment in his fist, and glowered at Rorax, who was across the field of the arena stretching on the lawn. Jia Frostguard, her ever-present companion, was nowhere to be found.
Milla let out a little sigh. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy about it.”
Ayres narrowed his eyes and looked up at her. “Did you tell the Queen you wanted to pick Rorax?”
Milla shook her head. “No . . . I would have, but she’d already made up her mind before I’d arrived.”
Ayres gritted his teeth, shifting his eyes back to Rorax.
How much trouble would he be in with his sister if he said no?
Milla must have been able to read his thoughts because she huffed. “Even you wouldn’t go against a direct order, Ayres. Not from Rosalie.”
Ayres flexed his jaw but said nothing as he continued to stare a hole in the back of Rorax’s head.
Eventually Milla moved. “I am going inside. It’s happening, Ayres. Rosalie is my queen, and we follow her orders.”
Ayres gritted his teeth even harder but nodded his ascent. Every instinct told him no, told him that choosing her as the Contestar was wrong and dangerous and irresponsible.
“Rorax isn’t evil, Ayres,” Milla said over her shoulder. “She was just . . . misguided at one time in her life.”
His hands curled into fists. Milla was wrong, but she slipped away before he could bite back a response.
Lamonte stood on the side of the arena, sweaty and hot despite the early hour. His hands were up and moving as he used his Dark Magick to conjure and weave a replica of what a real Shadow Wraith would look like. Dark, hooded, smokey, with long black fingers and wicked claws.
Rorax was fighting it, bending, and twisting, dancing out of the way of any of the wraith’s blows, while dealing her own damage to the shadowed body. For this drill none of the Highborns were allowed to use their magick to combat it, only their practice weapons, and Rorax had volunteered to go first.
Ayres had known she was talented; he’d seen her in the Tournament of Houses and Rorax herself told him she’d trained for the House of Ice army since she was only seven years old. But what he watched here made him feel uneasy.
Ayres was one with death. His very life force connected that bridge between worlds, ensuring it was smooth and intact so that souls could pass over into eternity. He could sense death—taste the fear of it—and with the blink of an eye, he could deal death.
He could never be afraid of death; they were old friends.
But if Ayres and death were old friends, Rorax and death were lovers.
Not only was she as willowy as the wind, but she was also tactile, precise, risky—like she knew death intimately and was not afraid.
Movement out of the corner of Ayres’s eye made him reluctantly move his gaze from Rorax’s display to find Elios making his way to stand next to him.
Ayres gave his friend a short nod and Elios nodded back as they stood shoulder to shoulder, both watching Rorax battle the black smokey wraith.
She moved gracefully on her feet, and her movements were confident and flowing, like a pre-learned, choreographed dance until she struck out like a viper, utilizing even the smallest opening to hit her target.
“Ayres, if you’re not going to ask her to be yours, I’m going to ask her. She could change everything. She would be one of the most powerful Guardians in history. The House of Fire needs someone like that at their back,” Elios murmured as Rorax dealt a roundhouse kick to the wraith’s head, making it fall back a few feet.
Ayres grunted, trying to ignore how Elios’s words made his heart burn in indignation.
Ask her to be yours.
Rorax would never be anything to Ayres.
“Does Milla want to recruit her?” Elios asked.
Ayres’s hands clenched tighter around the letter still balled in his fist, and he forced his jaw to unclench. “Yes. And so does Rosalie.”
Elios hummed a short laugh before clapping a hand on Ayres’s shoulder. “Well, it sounds like you have a Contestar to look after, whether you want one or not.”
Ayres let out a resigned sigh as Rorax ducked under an oncoming blow from a clawed hand, one of the claws slicing off a small lock of her hair, before she lunged up and used her God’s cursed knife to punch up into the wraith’s chest.
The wraith popped into a cloud of dark smoke, and Lamonte threw his head back and laughed. “Very good, Rorax. Very good! Now you all see why you need that endurance training you complain about so much!” Lamonte laughed again, looking at the other Contestars watching from the crowd.
Ayres sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, as a small portion of the onlookers laughed with Lamonte and congratulated Rorax. “It looks like I do.”
Rorax stood bright eyed, sweaty, and proud, but under Lamonte’s praise she ducked her head a fraction as if the praise made her feel a bit bashful.
Her humble show was almost endearing. Almost.
If Rorax hadn’t been responsible for the deaths of so many of his people he might respect her, like her even. As it was, it made him sick not to go over there and snap her neck or run his sword through her heart.
He wanted her to hurt, wanted her to be in pain over what she’d done and all the people she had taken from him.
Rorax must have felt his hot gaze on her, because she looked up, her two white irises burning into his soul. Her eyes were striking; the dark circles that surrounded the white irises were only a few shades darker than her pupil. Her Contestar leather armor hugged her body tightly, showing off both the strength in her limbs and the curves of her waist, hips, and breasts. Everything about her was beautiful and strong in an addictive kind of way and he wanted to put his hands all over her to feel her, to watch her respond to him. It infuriated him.
He bared his teeth at her, but before he went over to use her own knife to gut her, he turned to Elios and gave him his full attention.
“Rorax doesn’t want to be the Guardian. Rorax, Milla, and I have talked about it, and we want you to pick Enna Mistvalley as your Contestar when the time comes. Rorax will help her survive through the trials, and we will give you Kaiya or Cannon to help train her,” Ayres said.
“Enna?” The corner of Elios’s mouth pressed down into a frown. “What about Rorax?”
Ayres shrugged. “Her brother is in Lyondrea in a prison there, and Rorax wants to free him. She doesn’t want to be in charge of the Guardianship.”
The frown on Elios’s face deepened. “She doesn’t?”
Ayres shook his head. “We are still going to choose her as our Contestar, we want her to help us with some . . . security problems we’re having with Lyondrea, but we don’t expect her to win the Choosing. In fact, the deal is she frees herself from the Choosing or she dies at the end.”
Ayres would rather let his power go rampant and accidentally pluck the souls out of everyone involved than ever see Rorax as the Guardian.
Elios rubbed his hand over his chin. “But if we choose Enna then you’ll help us win the Choosing?”
Ayres nodded.
“Ice is on board with this?”
Ayres shrugged. “More or less.”
Elios pressed his mouth together, thinking for a long moment before he held out a hand, which Ayres shook. “You have a deal.”