64. Rorax
Rorax’s eyes flew open, her mind lurching violently from sleep.
She was in her room, the night before the next trial, and someone was picking her lock.
If it was Jia, Rorax would already have a knife to her throat. If it was Narlaroca then Narlaroca would be dead in moments. If it was Ayres or his Guard . . . K??n help her, they were about to learn something tonight.
Rorax grabbed the knife she kept on her bed stand and nimbly rolled out from beneath her covers. The plain knife didn’t pulse, warming her palm like Glimr would have. But Glimr was in the Black Salt chest in Ayres’s room.
She padded silently to crouch behind the door and eventually the lock unlatched, and the door swung open. A woman’s head with a familiar set of white-blonde braids peeked in, and then a lean body stepped through the doorway, taking a few stealthy steps closer to Rorax’s bed.
Why the fuck didn’t she just knock? Ayres, the prince, and his guards were all going to give her a raging migraine.
Rorax waited for a breath to see if anyone else walked in, and when she didn’t sense anyone, Rorax silently padded behind Kaiya who was now at the foot of her bed. She reached around and pressed the flat edge of the knife against the smooth dark skin over Kaiya’s throat.
“That’s a kill,” she hummed into Kaiya’s ear. The woman jerked slightly in her arms and let out a low growl.
Rorax was just releasing Kaiya, removing her knife from Kaiya’s throat, and stepping away, when someone grabbed her wrist. She was yanked back a step and a warm band as thick as an anaconda wrapped around her throat.
“That’s a kill,” Ayres growled down into her ear, his thickly muscled forearm pressed against her throat. He could have crushed her windpipe if he really wanted to.
She smirked at him. “Touché.”
Ayres didn’t look amused as he moved his arm from her neck, his dark eyes glittering dangerously as he glowered down at her. “Get ready to go, we’re leaving in twenty minutes. We have the location for the next book; there was a small pull on the ley line. We don’t need everyone, so I’m leaving Jia and the prince here. It’s a day and a half’s ride west of here,” he said quietly.
Their bodies were so close, she could feel the heat from his skin permeate her bones. She remembered the hug he’d given her a earlier, remembered how his hard chest felt under her cheek.
She had to shake her head. Focus. The trials.
“Can I leave?” She wrinkled her nose up at him. “The next trial is tomorrow.”
“We got word they”re postponing the trial.” His jaw worked as he stared down at her. “House of Ice needs their dragons back to help transport troops. Death needs those troops to reach their destination, so we need to stay out of their way.”
The trial was postponed? Due to Ice Troop movements? Why hadn’t she heard anything about it?
“Rorax,” Ayres clipped, pressing slightly into her, his voice low. “I don’t think you heard me. Get ready—”
“We are leaving in twenty minutes,” she clipped back.
His jaw worked as he looked from one of her snowy white eyes to the other, and she couldn’t help it. He was too close. Too hot. Just like he’d been in the stables, when Ayres had pulled her closer and all she had wanted to do was arch up and—
Just before she would have done something incredibly stupid, dark fingers reached around and grabbed Ayres’s shoulder, yanking him back a step and breaking apart the tension.
“Come on,” Kaiya snapped, giving them both a dark look before leaving the room.
Ayres blinked down at Rorax, and she felt a light blush cover her cheeks. She’d forgotten the woman was even in the room. She was getting soft.
“Twenty minutes, Rorax. We’ll meet you down in the stables.”
Twenty minutes later, Rorax met Cannon, Kaiya, and Ayres outside.
Kaiya was in a dark mood, and it seemed like the lieutenant was, too, so the four of them rode together in almost complete silence for over a day, stopping only briefly to rest the horses, take care of their basic needs, and steal a couple hours of sleep. Ayres took the lead, directing them to where the next book was supposed to be located. When they reached their destination, they reined in their horses a distance away and crept on foot the rest of the way.
Ayres’s appraisal had been correct this time. Only fifteen soldiers were at the makeshift camp, and several of them huddled around the book, reading through it, trying to figure out how to summon and command Sumavari’s fucking monsters.
Ayres signaled for them to spread out, then gave the signal to attack. Rorax decapitated five of the soldiers before they even knew what was happening. Glimr seemed almost gleeful to be out of the Black Salt box and sang through the air at Rorax’s command.
Kaiya, Cannon, and Ayres swiftly handled the rest of the soldiers.
During the battle, the book had fallen into a puddle of blood next to a dead soldier. It hummed happily in Rorax’s hands when she picked it up.
Not caring that the book was dripping with blood, she shoved it into Ayres’s chest, splattering the blood across his armor. “These books give me the creeps.”
“Me, too.” Kaiya grimaced at it as Ayres bent down to slip it into his bag. “They always make me shiver whenever I see them.”
Cannon stood apart from the group, hands on his hips, his attention down on his feet. He looked troubled.
Rorax tapped her foot three times on the ground to get his attention.
Cannon looked up at her, his mouth pinched tight, when a roar—a painfully familiar sounding roar—erupted in the woods behind them.
“Mother fucker,” Rorax hissed, and Cannon’s face went white.
A troll? he asked.
Rorax nodded and turned to Kaiya who already had her battle ax in her hand. Ayres was just pulling the backpack onto his shoulders. She used her hands to furiously sign at them as she talked. “That’s a mountain troll. We need to run.”
They nodded but made it only a few steps before the troll burst through the trees. It looked the same as its counterparts had during the trial. Big, muscled, apelike with six eyes that ran in a two row back toward its ears. A black stone glittered on the troll”s forehead and Rorax wanted to scream. An obsidian circlet.
The troll had a sharp stick—a handmade spear—clutched in its hand that it raised above its head.
Then it lunged at Kaiya.
Cannon was there, shoving Kaiya out of the way, and the troll’s makeshift spear went straight through his right shoulder and pinned him into the ground.
“Cannon!” Kaiya shrieked, fear and panic raising her voice. She scrambled to her feet and swung her battle ax at the troll. It scrambled back to avoid the wicked edge.
Ayres’s tattoos lit up, but the Troll’s obsidian circlet was still in place. It wouldn’t do any good, not even from him.
“Ayres,” Rorax snapped out, and his bright red gaze locked with hers. “The obsidian circlet. It has to be cut before magick will work. Give me your belt. Transport Kaiya, Cannon, and the book away.” Her gaze moved to the giant troll, who was swinging at Kaiya while barely dancing out of reach of her battle ax. “I’ll kill the troll.”
“My belt?” he snarled.
“Now!” she snapped again, as the troll took advantage of Kaiya’s slowing limbs, backhanding hard enough to send her skidding across the forest floor. With nimble fingers, Ayres whipped his belt off and pressed it into her waiting palm.
“Rorax, wait—” Ayres hissed, but she didn’t have time to argue, and neither did Cannon.
She sprinted towards the troll, who had abandoned Kaiya and was moving towards Cannon. He struggled in vain against the wooden spear pinning him to the ground.
The troll raised its huge, muscular, fur-covered arm and made a fist with its hand ready to crush Cannon’s skull, when Rorax lunged.
She slammed into it and wrapped her legs and arms around the troll’s arm. The momentum made them both topple over, the troll hitting the earth with a loud crash.
The troll pushed itself up on one elbow, but it was slower than Rorax, who had already gotten to her feet. The troll”s head was at the same level as her hip from this position, and she took advantage to land a roundhouse kick right into the troll’s face.
One of the troll’s eyes ruptured under her boot, and blood squirted out from the destroyed socket.
The troll roared in agonizing pain, pushing itself to its feet, one hand covering the side of its head where the bloody hole was.
It saw Rorax and bellowed an angry roar right in her face. She took a step back.
Out of her peripheral vision she saw Ayres yank the spear out of the earth, and out of Cannon’s shoulder. The troll must have noticed, too, from one of its five other good eyes. It started to turn its big, ugly head towards them when Rorax took Ayres’s belt and cracked it like a whip against the troll’s chest.
Immediately she had the troll’s entire attention.
“Fuck,” she muttered as the troll threw its head back in an angry roar before lunging at her.
He missed, but only by inches as Rorax turned and ran. She ducked behind a tree, barely missing another blow. Then another, then another as she ducked, dodged, and rolled under the troll’s sweeping, lethal arms. She brought the troll farther and farther into the pine trees away from Ayres, the book, Kaiya, and Cannon.
The troll picked up a giant, club-like stick from the ground, and started to swing it violently.
Sliding to her knees, she ducked under the troll’s waving club.
As soon as it passed her overhead she lunged to her feet, pivoted around, and sprang onto the troll”s back.
The troll roared in savage fury as she wrapped her left arm around its throat and used her right hand to slice her knife across the troll”s forehead, straight across the troll”s obsidian circlet.
The troll roared again, this time in pain, and it reached back, grabbed Rorax’s shoulder in its massive hand and hurled her forward off his back.
Rorax flew. She made it at least fifteen feet before she landed hard on her shoulder. She tried to roll forward to lessen the impact, but something in her chest snapped, and she couldn’t hold in an agonized cry of pain as her clavicle bone snapped in two.
Rorax struggled to her knees, glaring over at the troll who was wiping uselessly at the blue blood dripping down its face from the incision on its forehead.
“Eat shit, you ugly fucking bastard,” she muttered, as hauled herself to her feet. Before the troll could regain its bearings, she threw Glimr with her good arm.
She directed it to his neck with her fingers—and with the magick it usually took her to sever the spinal column of twenty gifted men—she severed the troll’s head from its shoulders.
The head fell to the earth with a violent thump, the body collapsing right next to it. Rorax breathed heavily for a moment, her shoulder in complete agony, and felt her magick tap out as she summoned her knife back to its sheath.
She could feel her bone tenting up, bulging under the cover of her skin, the stretch there painful as she staggered to the nearest tree and collapsed at the base.
Sitting there, she leaned her head back against the rough bark and focused on breathing without aggravating her injury.
If Ayres didn’t come back for her, she was going to kill him. She didn’t know how long she sat when she heard a stick cracking.
She whipped her head around to find Ayres, cautiously approaching the body of the troll, his sword gripped tightly in his hand. Relief filled her chest.
“Ayres,” she coughed, pushing herself to her knees with her uninjured arm.
“Gods above,” Ayres bit out as he sheathed his sword and stalked over to her side. His silver eyes widened as he took in her collarbone. “You killed it.”
She huffed out a laugh, before wincing at the pain in her chest.
“Come on. Let’s get you to a healer.” He squatted down next to her, so they were at the same level. They clasped forearms, and with a squeezing sensation that agonized her shoulder so much she almost blacked out, he transferred them back to the horses.
You saved my life.Cannon signed to her from his cot. Thank you.
There was a thick gauze bandage over his chest, seeping with blood where the troll had speared him through. The healer had taken care of most of his internal damage, but the surface skin was only held together by stitches.
Rorax cried out in pain as the healer grabbed her arm, pulled back her shoulder, pushed her collarbone back into place through the skin, and started to heal it. “You’re welcome,” Rorax choked out through tears that pricked at the corners of her eyes.
“That was fucking dumb,” Kaiya griped from where she stood guard over Cannon. Her wrists dangled over the top of her battle ax casually. “But so ballsy I just might tell the story over my next campout with the Guard. You know, it”s truly amazing you don”t look more like ground-up meat with how often you”re visiting the healers, Greywood.”
Her words were warm, but Kaiya’s eyes were still cold, and mistrusting as they watched Rorax struggle.
Rorax winced and gritted her teeth to keep from whimpering as she felt the fibers of her bone slowly weave back together.
Ayres sat next to Cannon, his eyes also on Rorax. “Thank you. I owe you their lives.”
The healer kept going until Rorax’s bone felt sturdy and his fingers were trembling. “That will hold but be careful. When you get back to the Northern Castle, make your way up to the Healer’s Hall immediately,” he cautioned.
Rorax nodded her thanks, rubbing her palm over her flat collar bone where it had been visibly broken only minutes before.
Ayres’s eyes tracked her hand moving slowly over the smooth skin before his jaw hardened and he fixed her with a glare. “You continue to surprise me, Greywood. You’re tough. But the next time you want to do something that risky, I want to be told. You shouldn’t have to do that alone. I could have—”
Rorax held up a hand. He was right. She needed to treat them more like her team and less like she was just a disposable guard who would do anything to preserve their lives. They would all have a better chance of survival if they acted more like a team, but she couldn’t say that. Would never admit out loud to Ayres that he was right.
So instead, she leaned back and grinned up at him.
“You’re just mad I ruined another one of your precious belts.”
Cannon huffed a reluctant laugh, and Ayres just gave her a sardonic tilt of his lips.