61. Ayres
Ayres studied Rorax from over the fire pit as he twirled a branch in his hands. She was curled up with her back against the tree, her sleeping roll pulled up and tucked under her chin. Ayres couldn’t help but think she looked small and vulnerable tucked up like that, but she also looked calm and serene, the gold of the flames highlighting her features making them look soft and warm.
The memory of Rorax’s panicked eyes in the dungeon of Helfast flashed in his mind again, for the hundredth time that day. Even in the most pressing of situations, during their initial battle, or when Narlaroca almost scalped her during the Tournament of Houses, he didn’t think he’d seen any emotion on Rorax’s features except unflappable confidence, bloodlust, or the easy comfort that currently graced her features now. The fear, uncertainty, and panic she’d displayed before getting the little girl out was so confusing and foreign it still unsettled him. He couldn’t shake the image away.
It was their first night out of Karduru and they’d stopped early for the night. Ayres had caught Rorax sliding off her horse from exhaustion, and after she had fallen to the ground trying to get off her horse again, he’d forced her to sit and rest while he made the fire and set up camp.
“Before we arrived at Helfast I was staring at you. You’re the one staring at me now, Lieutenant,” Rorax said, not bothering to move her colorless eyes from the burning coals of the fire between them.
“How are you feeling? Are you okay?”
Rorax huffed a laugh. “I had no idea you had a single sympathetic bone in your whole gods-damned body.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I doubt it.”
Ayres rolled his eyes, but then became serious.
“Why didn’t you want to save her? The girl? I’ve never seen you look so. . . distraught before.”
Rorax was quiet for so long he didn’t think she was going to answer him.
“I don’t . . . I don’t think I’ve ever savedanyone before. Never rescued anyone. Not on a mission like that.” Rorax bit the inside of her cheek and sucked in a deep breath, as if the words weighed on her. “The Wolf never let me attend missions where we extracted hostages. Looking back at my time under her command, I was only allowed to attend assassinations or coups. I think it was part of her programming for me. It desensitized me towards death. I was even more violent, angry, and cruel than I am today. That day in the courtyard in Surmalinn was the first day I decided I didn’t want to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it anymore.”
Ayres cocked his head at her, narrowing his eyes. “You had to decide that?”
Rorax took another deep breath and looked up into the dark, starry sky. “Most of the time I just want to let my control go. I want to brutalize anything and anyone in my way. I know I could take what I want by force. Sometimes I just want to stop trying so hard to be good and decent . . . especially when it’s so much easier—more natural—to . . . not be.” Rorax let out a heavy sigh and bowed her head, this time studying the broken sticks and dried pine needles at her feet.
Ayres’s shoulders tightened. “You like killing?”
“No,” she blurted too fast before she let out a small, defeated sigh. “And yes. It’s powerful. Sometimes it feels like the ultimate victory, the ultimate power to stand above someone and to take their life. I think what I like most is the recognition. To know that my prey knows who I am. I demand their respect, and their fear.”
A little shiver ran through her shoulders and Ayres gripped the branch a little tighter between his hands, the bark rough under his skin. He suddenly had an urge to tell her how good killing had started to feel to him as well, how addictive it had become to use his power. He wanted to tell her how he had to fight the little roll of pleasure he got when souls ran down the bridge on his back, the release he felt when the life in their eyes faded, and their souls moved through him and into the afterlife. He wanted to say those words so desperately, to admit them out loud to someone who so clearly understood. Instead, they stayed stuck on his tongue, making the muscle feel thick and useless in his mouth.
“But I know that feeling, that power,” Rorax looked up into Ayres’s eyes, the clear white irises unguarded and honest. “It’s not what makes me happy. It is a hollow victory, and it doesn’t ever last.”
Gods, how well he knew that.
She swallowed, rolling her shoulders, and looked back at the dark trees. The loss of that connection made Ayres resist the urge to go over to her, to grip her face into his hands and force her to look at him. “Love lasts, family lasts. So . . . I chose that, I want that. A family.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “A real one.”
Ayres didn’t say anything; he couldn’t. She’d shocked him, repeating back to him almost the same inner thoughts, feelings, and battles that plagued him.
“That’s what stopped me that night. In Surmalinn.” She angrily scrubbed the tears off her cheeks. “One of your Queen’s idiotic family members begged me to save her life, but not his own. It reminded me of when it was my own brother begging for my life when Lyondrea kidnapped him. One of my only memories of my brother was when he told me to hide, and the soldiers looking for him beat him into a bloody pulp and dragged him away. I could have been dragged away with him, but Darras protected me.” She scrubbed away more tears. “At that moment the Queen’s brother, begging for your sister”s life, sounded just like him. I decided that night I didn’t want to fight to conquer. I want to fight to deserve Darras’s sacrifice. I want to fight for love, for freedom, for family. The influx reminded me of how close I came to breaking, of who I would have become, who I was before that moment.” She closed her eyes, and her head hung a little.
Conrad. The idiotic brother that had convinced Rorax to save his sister’s life. Ayres had three brothers, the two others had been with him when the Siege occurred, so Ayres had no idea that Conrad had played such a huge role.
Ayres’s mouth felt like it was made of sandpaper, but he forced himself to ask, “What did you do after you saved the Queen?”
Her face hardened, but she opened her eyes and raised her head again. “I told my commander to leave the city. I told him that if he harmed one more civilian or soldier, I would rip his heart out and use his last moments to make him watch me eat it.”
“Gods,” he muttered. The tiny seed of respect he had for Rorax grew roots deeper in his chest.
“Then I confronted the Wolf in Surmalinn’s town square.” Rorax swallowed. “I killed her there. I killed the only woman I had ever known as a mother. Then it was over.”
“Mother.”The word rattled something in him. “The Wolf was that important to you?”
“She found me. Pulled me off the streets. House of Ice has a social program where orphans are enrolled in a Warrior Program. They are taught to fight, and how to be soldiers to eventually work for House of Ice. She took me to them for a few years before she recruited me as her own.”
Rorax paused for a second then grimly said, “You need to know, Lieutenant, that I am a product of hers. The Wolf. Every single skill, all my control—everything I am, she sculpted—she molded me day in and day out until everything she saw in me was perfectly honed. I was built to be her weapon. To help her be a conqueror. To kill.”
Rorax looked up at him, almost begging him to see her. To see into the darkest part of her, to see the influence of the woman he hated most in the world, to see the parts that he could have decided were too heavy, too painful to bear. She wanted him to understand all of her. And he did. And it frightened him.
He saw so deep inside of her that he saw parts of himself looking back from within her. Parts he had buried and locked so deep inside he hadn’t even admitted it to himself yet. Not really.
“I understand, Rorax.” More than she would ever know.
He tried to ignore the sharp breath she took as he stood, turned, and walked into the forest.
“I’m going to leave horseshit on your pillow every night for a week,” Rorax grumbled.
“How thoughtful,” Ayres playfully said back. “I love the scent of manure first thing in the morning.”
“You would.”
Ayres bit his tongue, desperately trying not to laugh.
Rorax was stiff, uncomfortable, and still in pain from her injuries after being on the road for nearly a week. Every jostle from her horse had Rorax mumbling something like, “I’m gonna spit in his milk” or “I’m gonna stab him in his sleep for not letting me die.”
Something about her being so grumpy made his spirits soar. Her little empty threats were strangely endearing, and with every teasing grumble he wanted to chuckle. She was cute when she was hurt and ornery.
It was late, almost midnight, and only a few guards were on duty to watch them as they brought their horses in through the gate. They took a sharp left once they were inside the bailey, towards the stables.
Ayres dismounted his horse, feeling the weight of her snowy gaze as he started to undo the bridle of his horse. She cleared her throat, and he turned around to see her cheeks going pink. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she gripped the leather reins in her hand a little harder.
“Lieutenant, will you . . . help me down again? Please?” she mumbled, keeping her eyes down on the leather reins she squeezed in her hand. “My thigh . . . I just don’t want to fall into the shit.”
Rorax had fallen when dismounting her horse three times already on the way here, her leg that had been struck with two arrows kept collapsing underneath her as she dismounted, the muscle too injured to support her weight on the way down.
Ayres eyed the flush on her cheeks, and something in his chest warmed further. “Of course.”
He walked over and palmed one of her muscular thighs as she grasped the pommel and slid her other leg over her horse. He gingerly cupped the thigh that was covered in gauze still from where she had taken an arrow, and slowly lowered her to the ground.
Ayres straightened—but for some gods-damned reason, he kept his hands on her—letting his fingertips trail over the leather on back of her thighs . . . up . . . up . . . up, until they were inches from the rounded curve of her ass. He pulled his hands away from her slowly, using every fragment of his self-control not to knead his hands into the round muscle there.
“Thank you,” she murmured, turning gingerly around to face him, before he could manage to take a step back from her.
Rorax’s face was only inches from his and the space between them suddenly felt electric. Ayres could see the tiny freckles sprinkled over her nose, over the tan skin of her face, and he could see the tiny sparkles in the white of her irises, as her eyes darted down to look at his mouth before flitting back up to his eyes.
I have to fight every day to be good. He had never met a woman that had made him feel so seen before, and she hadn’t even meant to.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly. His eyes flickered down to her mouth in return. Her lips were pillowy and pink; she held them just slightly apart, just apart enough that he could slide his tongue in between them. Marras save him, he couldn’t remember ever wanting to taste anything more in his life. The kiss they had shared during her influx had consumed him for weeks and he wanted more. So much fucking more he wanted it all. She had heated his blood to the point where he felt like he was going to come apart at the seams. Why was it that the one woman he should hate the most in the world so fucking beautiful? The gods were playing with him, surely.
He forced his eyes back to hers, and what he saw there pulled his self-control so thin it threatened to snap like a worn thread.
“Yeah,” she whispered, and he felt her breath against his lips. “I’m okay.”
Ayres wondered what it would be like to feel her under him without them fighting an influx.
With his other hand, he started to reach down to her hip and was just about to pull her against him, so he could feel her completely, to feel how alive—how hot she was for him—when the stable doors slammed open.
Cannon, Piers, and Kaiya stormed inside the stable. All three of them froze solid when they saw Ayres and Rorax, all with varying degrees of shock.
“Marras save us,” Kaiya growled.
Rorax stepped back away from Ayres, her cheeks flushing, and Ayres had to reach up and grip the pommel of her saddle to keep his hands steady, to keep him from reaching out to snatch her back. Or to keep himself from punching Kaiya, Ayres didn’t know which.
Something like cold water zipped down his spine. Ayres knew this kind of involvement with Rorax would be extremely complicated, but reality hit him as he looked at the shock and anger on his friends’ faces.
What happened out there? Cannon signed, looking pissed off. We felt the tiny ripple, and then the surge. We didn’t hear back from you besides that shitty little bird that said you were alive.
“We were worried,” Kaiya snapped, folding her arms over her chest, shooting an accusatory glare at Rorax who just raised her chin slightly back.
“Stand down,” Ayres bit at Kaiya. “Rorax was the one who got the book out. There were more men there than I originally thought. Way too many for two people. And I . . . took care of it.”
Kaiya slid her narrowed eyes to Ayres. “Can I speak with you? Privately?”
Ayres rolled his jaw, no dancing on his lips, but instead he nodded. He turned to Rorax whose cheeks were still pink. “Go to the Healer’s Hall. Get them to work out whatever they missed in Karduru. I’ll take care of the horses.”
She hesitated as if she wanted to say something, but then nodded once before turning away from him.
He moved over to his saddlebags, fished out one of Sumavari’s books which he’d wrapped in a white linen cloth back at camp, and handed it to Cannon. “Book five. Get this to the Queen.”
Cannon took it, and Piers came up to clasp Ayres on the shoulder. “I’m just glad you guys made it back. Both of you.” He nodded toward where Rorax was walking away then left Ayres alone with Kaiya, whose eyes were blazing.
As soon as the stable doors closed behind them, Kaiya waved her hand to where Ayres had almost kissed Rorax. “What the fuck was that?”
Ayres gritted his teeth. He didn’t owe Kaiya an explanation. “What was what?”
“Are you and the Spine Cleaver lovers now? Are you going to let the Pup become the Guardian just because she has a nice ass and blinks her pretty fucking eyes at you?” she snarled, and Ayres’s temper flared, remembering how Rorax had shoved him out of the way, taking four arrows for him.
“The House of Death would never accept her as the Guardian,” Kaiya continued. “Not after what happened in Surmalinn, it makes me sick—”
“Stop.” Ayres took a breath in, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, forcing himself to calm down. “Kaiya. Step back.”
“What happened out there to justify that?” She hissed back.
“She saved my life. She saved a little girl’s life. She got the book out single handedly,” Ayres rattled off. “And with her dying breath, she said that she was sorry.”
Kaiya’s brows knitted together. “Her dying breath?”
“She died, Kaiya. For nearly three minutes, after taking arrows for me, after saving my life.” Ayres blew out a breath and rubbed his hand over his short hair. “She went back and got that fucking book out by herself.”
“Was it a setup?” Kaiya asked, suspicion dancing in her eyes. “Did she orchestrate it to be like that?”
Doubt flared through him for a half second before it was replaced with a twinge of guilt.
“She died. Her last words were ‘I’m sorry’ and she was furious when she found out she was still alive.” Ayres shook his head, knowing with every fiber of his being she had given her heart and soul to make sure they got the book back, to make sure that he survived to keep up the work. “She had nothing to do with it; be careful not to ask again while you’re in front of her.”
Kaiya’s doubts still burned in her eyes, but she slowly nodded her acceptance, trusting Ayres.
“Enna is progressing swiftly. She has a good heart. She’s fierce, and she would be a better fit for the Guardian. For all the Realms,” Kaiya said.
Something flickered on Kaiya’s face, something Ayres couldn’t identify, but he nodded anyway. “I’ll come watch her this afternoon.”
Kaiya nodded back at him, then slowly pushed open the double doors and walked out. Ayres stood in the stable for a few moments, wondering what the fuck was happening to him.