85. Ayres
Ayres paced back and forth, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Cannon stood at the opening, staring into the dark tunnel, his hands on his hips.
Piers and Milla were playing cards, sitting cross-legged on the trail, both shooting the tunnel nervous glances at every sound. When Cannon started snapping his fingers, Milla and Piers scrambled to their feet, and Ayres positioned himself at Cannon’s back.
Something’s coming,he signed, not taking his eyes off the tunnel.
A few seconds later, a tall figure draped in shadow like a blanket of thick black smoke appeared. Ayres drew his blade, and so did the others.
In one of its shadow-draped hands, the figure held Rorax’s sword, dragging it through the dirt, tip down. In his other hand, he held Rorax’s wrist, dragging her limp body along like a sack of potatoes.
Was Rorax alive? Ayres’s chest seized, and he stopped breathing as sharp fear pierced his heart.
They were all at Rorax’s side in an instant. Ayres ripped the skeletal, shadowy hand away from her wrist and pressed his fingers into her throat, feeling for a pulse.
When he felt that glorious, fluttering thump against his fingertips he whipped around, and pressed his blade to where the shadow’s skeletal neck would be, forcing it backwards until Ayres had the figure against the tunnel’s stone wall.
“What happened in there?” Ayres snarled.
“Calm, Harbinger. The Pup will live.”
Ayres didn’t even react to the moniker, Harbinger, as his heart skipped a beat in relief.
“I asked you what happened,” Ayres growled, pressing his blade harder into the column of bone he could not see through the shadows.
“I do not know,” the shadow hissed to Ayres. “I followed my orders from the Oracle to bring her here unconscious, but alive. The Oracle instructed me to inform you that Roraxiva Greywood is not to step foot on the Oracle’s Mountain again or she will die.”
Ayres stared at the shadow for a long moment, before reaching into it and grabbing the specter’s spinal column. He used it to throw the shadow back into the tunnel where it came from. It disappeared into a puff of black smoke.
Ayres turned back to Rorax, who was being carefully flipped over onto her back by Milla and Piers. Ayres’s jaw clenched in fury.
A big bruise was starting to develop on the top half of her face, and her lip was split down the middle, blood encrusting most of her mouth and nose. But she was alive, and that was all that mattered.
Ayres had half a mind to storm into the mountain and pluck the life from the Oracle and every being in its domain. But he knew the law of the land. The Death Harbinger was not to abuse his power on the gods’ creatures, and if he broke the God’s Law, Marras would punish him for it.
“We need to get her off this mountain, now.” Milla turned Rorax’s head to the side with gentle fingers, so she could get a closer look at the large bruise still forming on her temple. “I’m worried about this bruise. If there’s internal bleeding, any blood left sitting on her brain for too long . . .”
Ayres had Rorax scooped up in his arms, cradling her against his chest, before Milla could finish her sentence. “Let’s go.”
Milla snatched Rorax’s blade off the ground and they left.
Rorax roused a bit as they ventured down the trail, and relief hit him once more in his solar plexus.
She peeled one white eye open and blinked up at him twice before closing it again. “Ayres,” she breathed.
He bent his head closer to hers. “Shh, Little Crow. I’ve got you.”
She swallowed hard as her head bobbed against his chest. “Let me ride on your back. It’ll be easier for you that way.”
Ayres consented and slid her around his shoulders until her front was pressed against his back and he gripped the underside of her thighs, her arms holding his neck loosely.
“Thank you, Ayres. Your men must love you if you treat them half as well as you treat me, even if you hate me,” Rorax whispered, her breath brushing the skin of his neck.
Her words made Ayres almost stumble on the flat path. He opened his mouth to respond, but she went limp before he could.
Your men must love you if you treat them half as well as you treat me.
Guilt and shame burrowed into his heart. Rorax deserved better than him. Deserved a protectorate who wasn’t so torn about her, who wasn’t keeping so many secrets from her.
He hated this feeling. The slick, oily feeling of his lies.
Ayres hiked down until they met Lamonte who was waiting for them at the trailhead at the top of stairs of the Oracle.
Lamonte looked over Rorax’s body with concern. “Is she okay? What happened?”
“We don’t know,” Milla answered. She looked around to make sure she was out of ear shot of all Lamonte’s men before she lowered her voice. “One of the Oracle’s Shadows dragged her to the mouth of the cave and told us she was banned from the mountain.”
Lamonte’s green eyes went wide with astonishment. “What?”
“They knocked her unconscious, so we need to get her to a healer,” Ayres said, stepping around a wide-eyed Lamonte. He started down the stone steps of the mountain.
As Ayres descended, he wondered how she would react if she ever found out that he was the prince, that he was the Death Harbinger. The decision to pass himself off as nothing more than an army man meant he could hide his identity and his ability.
The legends stated Death Harbingers were some of the most powerful and terrifying beings in the Realms, and they could rip the life out of any living soul.
His identity and ability were closely guarded by his family. Anyone who remembered the lore about the Harbingers knew that the Sumavaris had been the Death Harbingers for nearly 15,000 years. By claiming that Ayres was nothing more than a soldier, no one ever looked at him suspiciously or noticed his power went beyond brute strength and lucky genes. No one ever put the pieces together.
Living his life as an ordinary man had once felt so freeing. He’d cherished his freedom and anonymity and protected it for over 600 years.
Now it was slowly poisoning him.
He felt like the pillars of his character that he had devoted his whole life meticulously building were slowly eroding away. Loyalty, honesty, strength, family, and sacrifice.
Ayres let out a powerful sigh and tried to unclench his jaw.
Just a couple more months, and this whole thing would be over. For better or worse.
“Thank the gods,” Ayres mumbled to himself, rubbing his thumbs in small circles over the soft spot in her knee.
He still wasn’t sure if he wanted Rorax as the future Guardian of the North, or if he would rather have Enna. He hadn’t made up his mind, but until he was forced to decide Ayres was on Rorax’s team. He was her Protectorate. Rorax had put her life on the line for him and his friends more times than he cared to remember, and she’d helped him get one of the Books of Sumavari back. She deserved everything he could give her.
Rorax unconsciously adjusted herself in his arms and snuggled closer, pressing her lips against the skin on the side of his neck.
He hummed in pleasure at the touch before he could stop himself. Fuck, that felt good.
But she was his Contestar. His champion. His . . . friend.
So, beyond the things she had done to his people, whatever this thing was that was blooming to life between them, it had to stop. These feelings for her needed to die; they needed to float away like smoke in the air.
Ayres needed to force their relationship back into a tentative friendship.
Friendship was easier, less volatile. He would be able to maintain a friendship with her. He could control her influxes safely without fucking her every time.
Ayres didn’t know what it meant that those words felt like a lie in his own mind.
Ayres carried Rorax all the way to the bottom of the Steps of the Oracle then carried her straight to the healer’s tent. Thankfully, it was one of Tressa’s healers and not Tressa herself. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with her today.
As soon as he laid Rorax out on a cot, the healer went to work.
“How bad is it?” Ayres asked, as the healer’s fingers emitted a soft glow, brushing over the bruise on Rorax’s temple.
“It’s not bad, sir. Mostly superficial. She doesn’t have any magick in her, but I will give her a flush to help.” As the healer worked, the bruise under Rorax’s skin disappeared and the split on her lip sealed closed.
“She’ll wake in just a moment,” said the woman. “I’ll go fetch some more water.”
After only a few minutes, Rorax blinked those pretty, sparkling, colorless eyes up at him.
“Hey,” Ayres murmured as Rorax pushed herself up to a sitting position.
Rorax swiped the stray hairs away from her face and looked around the tent, confused. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me what happened, Little Crow. One of the Oracle’s shadows informed us that you have been banned from her mountain.”
Rorax rolled her eyes and leaned back on her wrists. “That dramatic old coot.”
Ayres bit back a smile and squatted down so that they were at the same eye level. “Ror, what happened?”
Rorax poked the inside of her cheek with her tongue and eyed him coolly before she decided to answer. “It tried to kill me.”
“What?” Ayres’s breath caught in his throat, but Rorax just lifted a hand to inspect her nail beds.
“It was like when Tressa tried to find her way inside my head, but it couldn’t find a way in. I eventually found a way to open my mind to it, but then . . . I trapped it. I closed the door on it and told it I wouldn’t let it out without a Blood Oath that promised me safe passage home.”
“You trapped the Oracle in your mind?” Ayres choked.
Rorax looked away from her nails and smirked at him. “Cool trick, eh?”
He just stared at her.
The Oracle was one of the most ancient and powerful creatures in all the Realms, one of the only creatures in the world with a direct line to the Scribbler, the weaver of fate in the Realms. “Did it say anything when it tried to kill you?”
The grin faded from her face, and she swallowed hard. “It showed me my past. Showed me all my mistakes. It reminded me why I would never be fit to become the Guardian.”
Rorax looked to the ground and reached up to tug her hair out of its braid. It fell between them like a thick curtain so Ayres could barely see her face.
“It gave me a clue to where Darras is, and . . . it said that I would be denied the opportunity to rip myself free of the Choosing.”
Silence fell between them, heavy and so painful. Ayres sighed. “I’m sorry, Rorax, for what I said after the last influx.”
She tucked a long strand of hair behind her ears, a small, sad smile on her lips. She still didn’t meet Ayres’s eyes, and he wanted to reach out and tilt her face up to his so he could see exactly what she was thinking.
“I understand, Lieutenant. I understand how this attraction between us must be . . . conflicting for you.” Rorax fingered the frays on the edge of the blanket for a moment before her beautiful eyes finally met his. “I know it’s unsavory for you, but I—I’m asking you to continue. If I am going through an influx I’d much rather have it with you than fighting or killing anyone else.” Her gaze dropped back to the blanket. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, or if the idea makes you sick. I’ll ask someone else.”
The last sentence out of her mouth made Ayres’s head rear back, as an ugly, foreign emotion filled his throat.
Someone else? She would find someone else to help her with the influxes?
His jaw tightened. The thought of someone else’s hands on Rorax made him sick, but would demanding that no other man touch her put a romantic claim on her he didn’t want?
Rorax must have seen the indecision in Ayres’s face. “We’d remain as . . . friends. I’d never ask you for something that you could not give, Lieutenant. The situation would only last until the end of the Choosing. When I free myself or when I die.”
Marras save him, he hated it when she called him Lieutenant. He hated it even more when she casually talked about her death.
Ayres stared at her for a long moment, proud that his eyes only dropped to her unbelievably perfect mouth once as he made his decision.
He rolled his jaw and nodded his consent. “Okay. Friends. And I will continue to help you with your influxes as you have them.”
Rorax blew out a relieved breath. “Thank you. I would ask someone else, since I . . . you made it clear how I make you feel. But I’m not sure anyone else would survive it. Survive me.”
Rorax seemed to curl in on herself, and at that moment, she looked so small sitting there. She looked defeated, alone, and so vulnerable that his heart cracked.
“Rorax . . .” Ayres wanted to reach out an arm to wrap it around her shoulders, to seep his strength into her. He wanted to bring her back. He wanted to bring back the Rorax that would never yield, the Rorax with fire in her blood and venom on her tongue.
But before he could, she pushed herself up off the cot and moved away from him. “I am going to see if a dragon is ready to fly us home.”