2. Ash
Chapter 2
Ash
The next morning, we set off for Hope. Peters produced horses for us to ride and I stared at the great beasts as they approached. I’d never ridden a horse before, besides the days I was half-lucid, when I was sure that I rode in front of Waylon. The thought made me shudder.
The saddle atop the black mare wore at the edges, and the designs faded to almost nothing. I glared at the contraption, wondering how on earth I would climb aboard. The soldier holding my mount gave me the side eye, so I shot him a crude gesture.
“Here, let me help you up,” Diesel spoke from behind me.
I whipped around to face him with a clenched jaw. “Don’t touch me. I can handle it.” If his hands landed anywhere on my body, I wasn’t sure how I would react .
“Fine, figure it out yourself,” he grumbled as he stomped away to his own horse.
“Put your foot there.” The soldier holding my horse pointed to the stirrup. “Grab the horn and swing yourself up.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled. I killed a cougar—I think I could get on a horse by myself.
I placed my foot in the stirrup while Peters sat on his horse, picking at his nails, unamused by the situation. Diesel looked at me with raised eyebrows until I clambered onto the horse myself, with my backside firmly planted in the saddle.
Diesel, Peters, Carter, and myself sat atop mounts, leaving the rest of our company trailing in front and behind us. Diesel donned a pair of pistols like the higher-ranking soldiers or captains, from what I had gathered. It made him look even more menacing than before—the constant scowl on his face didn’t help matters, either.
Assessing my situation, I realized they’d made a vital mistake. Putting me on a horse that could surely outrun all the guards. I waited until the rest of the group on horseback turned to leave and pulled my legs out to spur my horse into action and away from these people. Just as I attempted my escape, a soldier snapped a clip onto the horse’s bridle—giving him a lead line to hold on to with no possibility of escape. My spirit plummeted to the depths of the earth once again. Escaping my fate and our journey to Hope floated away like leaves in the wind. It really should be named the city of doom. There was little hope for me or any blonde that found themself there.
The horse moved beneath me, and it took some getting used to before I could adjust to the mare’s lengthy strides. My feet rested in the stirrups, but every time I put weight on my bad leg, it hurt from the awkward angle. Horse riding was a new experience for me, and my leg wasn’t used to it. After the mountain lion attacked and the bounty hunters took me, when we finally made it home to Cedar Hill, Diesel had made me sit and rest my leg for too many long days. My body wasn’t prepared for a journey on horseback, but showing weakness never had come easy to me. I gritted my teeth and bore the uncomfortable ride with an aching nag jostling through my shin at every stride.
We walked. We walked for hours on end. The changing leaves on the quaking aspen trees and the evergreen pines decorated our journey with beautiful shades of orange, red, yellow, and green. How was it that some trees remained steadfast and unchanging throughout the seasons and others turned the color of blood, like they cried out for help before the coldest seasons of their lives?
The lovely sights contradicted the feeling churning inside my gut. The anger I felt for the surrounding men consumed me. Tucked into the center of a cocoon of soldiers, our company only grew larger and larger as more joined us on our journey south. I watched the soldiers—their movements, their faces—looking for a thread of weakness that I could tug at. They all seemed like emotionless drones of Novum. All wearing dark clothing, hats, and blue armbands. All with short-cropped hair and a different variety of facial hair. Every one of them covered in thick cords of muscle that matched Diesel’s and I didn’t know how I missed it before. I made eye contact with them every chance I got, in search of a sliver of humanity in them. The complete opposite of the man who continually rode his horse by my side. No matter what he tried or said, I wouldn’t meet his eyes. How could he have done something like that to someone he claimed to love?
My chances of escaping were slim to none. I wasn’t restrained in any way, but getting through the wall of soldiers always around us was impossible, especially with Diesel’s and Peters’s eyes always on me. Even at night, when I was tucked into a bedroll, soldiers stayed up to keep guard.
I fumed the whole way. It felt like my insides boiled. Everything I thought was real had been a lie. It shattered all the trust I put into this man like glass. We were going directly to the King and Diesel’s new kingdom, but it would never be mine. My thoughts kept falling on the one thing that I was the most anxious about—the reunion with my grandfather. He knew about me the whole time and didn’t want to see me until now. He wanted me dead. The King played some sort of game, but what kind?
One person was missing from our parade. I searched through the faces for the one man with gray eyes that I hated the most. Kane vanished after Peters showed up and everything fell apart in Cedar Hill, but his face had been noticeably absent since then.
A few days into our journey to Hope, we settled down for the night. Firelight danced through the shadows of the trees that we camped in, and the horses shuffled from where they stood, tied to the trees. Several fires dotted the ground, with soldiers huddled around them for warmth. Thirty soldiers surrounded us now, by my count.
I rested by a fire, trying to warm my hands. The chill in the fall air grew colder with every passing day. My mind wandered to the things I would have been doing if I were home with Nan at this time of year, and sadness welled up in my eyes. I would never be able to go back and do those things with her.
“Ash.” Diesel’s gentle voice came from my side where he settled in, and I actively ignored him. Diesel and I sat alone by the fire, the first time that I had been somewhat alone with him in days .
“Are you okay, Spitfire? Please talk to me.” He spoke as calmly as the distant frogs croaking in the night.
My bottom lip and shoulders trembled with anger or cold; the true culprit—I didn’t know. Diesel stood and picked up a blanket from the supply pile by a tree. He stepped back over and wrapped it around my shoulders, and his hands stayed on my back, thumbs rubbing circles. I hated how much I missed his touch. I leaned forward, away from his hands, and he sighed, sitting back down next to me.
“How’s your leg? Does it hurt?” he asked.
All the things that we could talk about, and he asked about my leg. My nostrils flared in disgust.
“Why? Why did you do it?” My voice filled with wrath, and I continued to gaze at the fire with hard eyes instead of at him.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? You? Miles? The King? From what? Because from where I stand, you are the one that betrayed me and made all my worst nightmares come to life.” I finally looked at him, and his green eyes overflowed with sadness and heartbreak that matched my own.
“It was better for you not to know. I was under orders to never tell you the truth, but I was going to anyway. I just didn’t get the chance.”
“That’s what you were going to talk to me about the night of your birthday? What about the five years before that?” I spat.
“Yes. I was going to tell you everything. I thought I had more time. I couldn’t live with myself any longer. Dammit, I love you . I thought that it would be safer if you didn’t know.”
The conviction in his voice had my anger wavering.
“Why would it be safer if I didn’t know?” I asked .
“What would you have done if you knew, Ash?”
I hadn’t thought about that yet, only the fact that I deserved to know the truth. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. “I don’t know. I probably would have gone looking for my parents.”
“Exactly. Ash…your dad’s a traitor to Novum and an awful human being. He…cheated on then essentially killed his own wife and ran away.”
My mouth parted in slight shock. In the last few days, since reading the letter from Pop, I had painted a picture in my head of my father. Pop said he was afraid and sad to give me away. It made me feel wanted, like maybe he hadn’t cast me away at the first possible opportunity, but this new information from Diesel…another lie perhaps? “What? No…no, he wouldn’t have done that. He was afraid for me. He gave me to Pop to keep me safe from the King. That isn’t right.” My head hurt from trying to untangle the web of lies I had found myself in. I refused to believe my dad to be a bad person. King Maximus remained the enemy.
“How do you know that?” he asked with furrowed brows.
“Pop.”
“He told you? You knew this whole time and you’re blaming me for not telling you?” His voice raised slightly.
I glared at him. “No, Nan found a letter from him that was in an old book on the day of your birthday. He lied to me my whole life, too.”
The words tasted like poison in my mouth. Comparing the two men in my life that I cared about the most and the secrets that they kept from me left a gaping hole in my heart.
“What else did it say?”
“I think I’ve already said too much. Where’s your paper, Diesel? I’m surprised you’re not taking notes to send back to my grandfather.” I spat the words at him like a curse. “Tell me… Did you enjoy telling him every little detail of what we did during the last month?” A caustic laugh fell out of my mouth.
His face morphed into something darker, and he leaned in close to me. I refused to back down from the challenge, staying still until his angry eyes were inches from mine.
“If you think I told him anything about you in the last month, you’re severely mistaken. The only thing I sent him were letters trying to convince him that you were better off alive. No one ever gets to know what happens between you and me.”
His hand came up and snaked through the hair at the base of my head. He tugged on it just enough for my head to tilt back, and his lips moved close to my ear.
“You are mine. No one ever gets to see or touch you but me.” I breathed hard at his words and his nearness. I swallowed down the emotion that threatened to spill out of me.
“Not anymore… I’m no one’s possession. Especially not yours.” The malice in my tone made his face harden once more. “You were supposed to kill me,” I raged.
His eyes widened, and he leaned back.
“You tried, didn’t you? I’ve been thinking about it. The night you showed up at the lake reeking of alcohol after Declan hit me. You fidgeted with your knife like you weren’t sure what to do with it. Or the night we stayed at the cottage in Sage Hen, when I woke up and you were sitting there with the knife in your hand. You were going to kill me, weren’t you?”
Terror filtered across his face, but his hold remained steady.
“Was there more than that, D? Did you have your bow pulled back on me and I didn’t know it? Did you have a knife to my throat while I slept?” I snarled, so close that I could bite his lip if I wanted. “Why did you even save me in Rollins? Why not let me go? The job could have been done for you,” I sneered.
“Etan,” Peters called from a nearby fire.
“Your master is calling you,” I scoffed and shoved him away from me. What did he think was going to happen? That he could betray me like he had and I’d come running back to him like a sad, kicked puppy after a few pretty words and explanations. I loathed Diesel, but in that moment I hated myself more because I had acted like a lovesick puppy with him. Why would he think any differently of me? He’d kicked me plenty of times before, and I ran back to him again and again. Never again. I swore to myself. I wasn’t that girl. Desperate for attention and belonging—no. Now I was the woman alight with rage and a penchant for revenge.
Diesel released his grip and leaned away with a pained expression. He gave me a long look before standing and walking over to where Peters beckoned him. I lay down on my bedroll by the fire after he left to try to quiet the pounding in my head and the aching in my leg. I lay staring up at the stars, praying for the heavens to take me back to simpler times in the cabin with Nan. The twinkling lights didn’t bless me with such a gift, but reminded me of how big the world really was. I tossed and turned for hours, my body refusing to succumb to sleep. Even when Diesel settled down on his bedroll across the fire, I still couldn’t sleep.
My heart raced and my breaths grew more frantic the longer I lay there. Something was wrong—I could feel it. I sat up and peered around the campsite. Sleeping forms dusted the ground and four soldiers, still awake, stood guard not far away. They noticed when I sat up and stood straighter, moving closer to me. The wariness on their faces was plainly evident, even in the murky darkness. My eyes connected with one of them, and his mouth dropped slightly in shock. He nudged the shoulder of the man next to him, and they both stared at my eyes with slightly parted mouths. Stupid, glowing eyes. I shifted them away, taking in the rest of the camp. Everything appeared fine, or as fine as it could be for the situation.
My mind whirled with thoughts of my mother, who Diesel said was dead, killed by my father. Could it have been true? The crack inside my chest grew wider with every passing thought. I was spiraling again and getting my body back under control was like grasping at the twinkling stars mocking me from the heavens—no matter what I tried it was impossible to reach.
The sleeping bag was too tight around me, caging me in with all my swirling thoughts. I jerked it off, letting the chilly breeze blast my body with its icy fingers. The cold brought my body back to reality and I finally caught my breath, but a sense of wrongness still swirled in the pit of my stomach.
I wanted to run, to carry wood, to dig a pit in the earth. Anything to get my body to the point of exhaustion and stop the intrusive thoughts. The surrounding guards were the cause, along with my leg that felt like someone had jabbed it with a hot knife.
As I sat and worked on my breathing, the night became eerily silent. The breeze stopped rustling in the trees and the darkness ached with stillness. The nocturnal birds ceased their calls and the world waited for something. I had heard this kind of silence before, but only when the predators that roamed the woods came too close. The horses became agitated and stirred impatiently at their leads. Something was out there.
A small light streaked across the sky before fracturing into nothing. The stars shone brighter than I had ever seen, the falling star devouring all the light it could before fading into blackness. The quiet and stillness crept into my bones like a cursed shadow, waiting for what was to come.
A low moan broke the silence, loud enough that it couldn’t be more than a short walk away. The howl grew and grew, causing chills to break out over my skin, and the eerie calm echoed into the night. No other howls joined, only a chorus of a lone wolf mourning something that I couldn’t understand. The cool night and the unnatural stillness, other than the wolf call, caused my body to break out in a round of shivers.
The wolf ceased its mournful song, and movement broke out across the camp. Whispers of wolves had everyone on edge and grabbing for their weapons and bringing the horses in closer to the fires. I sat on the hard ground shivering and mourning for something that was lost, but I couldn’t understand. I felt the wolf’s call down to my core. The sounds filled the anxiety that gnawed at my gut, taking a piece of something with it. A piece that could never be replaced. Something had gone from the world and only the wolf knew what it was.