6. Ash
Chapter 6
Ash
Nightmares and the throbbing in my leg woke me early in the morning before anybody else. Bedrolls dotted the earth floor of the meeting cabin, and the fire had burned to nothing. I slept next to the wall on the far side of the room, with Diesel and Jerek between me and the select few soldiers that got to sleep inside. Peters took the space right next to the fireplace to soak up all the heat. My opinion of the man only grew worse with every passing day.
I tiptoed through the room to the door where the still-awake guards kept vigil, and they let me out to use the bathroom. After I was through, I didn’t feel like going back into the stuffy cabin. The morning was a relief as the cold, misty air stung my face. I wandered down to the edge of the river and sat down on the frosty grass at the lip of the water. The soldiers didn’t stop me but rather followed and stood at my back, watching, waiting for me to make a wrong move.
The frost seeped through my pants and made my backside wet, but I didn’t particularly care. Remnants of fog swirled over the eddies in the water. The river rippled and flowed until it disappeared around the bend. I pulled my knees to my chest and wished I could disappear as suddenly as the water came and went.
Something about the woods made me feel alive—rugged, wild, and utterly untamed. The forest gave me a sense of freedom that I couldn’t find elsewhere. It called to the primal part of me that wanted to run wild with the rivers and animals that ran across the land. The longing to be free—to truly be free—made my aching heart feel like a flightless bird. That freedom was something that I didn’t know if I would ever have again. The serene water and tuffs of fog rising off the river would have once been enough of a sight to take my breath away, but not today. The sight made me yearn—yearn for something that would never be attainable again. A flash of white streaked through my peripheral vision across the river before it vanished again. Why hadn’t it attacked yet? It was just following us day in and day out. I knew the wolf hovered, never far away.
Footfalls approached from behind before heavy boots landed next to me and plopped down into the grass by my side.
“What’re you doing out here all by yourself, sitting on the freezing-ass ground, Princess?” Jerek’s voice spoke from beside me. He shivered at the cold and tugged the collar of his black coat higher on his neck.
“Don’t call me that,” I mumbled into my knees without any real energy. My eyes still scanned the water before us and the forest beyond .
“What would you like me to call you then? Your majesty? My most noble lady? The fairest maiden in the land, perhaps?” He snorted.
I turned to him, and the humor in his striking face caught me off guard. His blue eyes screamed trouble, and I didn’t know what to make of him. No one should be that sharp and cheery this early in the morning. “On second thought, you can call me by my preferred title: Your most esteemed Majesty Princess Asha, the fairest maiden and most skilled hunter in all the land.” I didn’t believe it, not for one second; but if he had to call me that every time he addressed me, it would be worth it. Something about his face made me feel like laughing. It made me feel like all the humor hadn’t bled out of my body.
A wolfish grin covered his face, and his white teeth shone back at me. I giggled internally at the slight gap between his front teeth that I hadn’t noticed before. His near-perfect face had a flaw, after all. “I knew I liked you, Your most esteemed Majesty Princess Asha, the fairest maiden and most skilled hunter in all the land.”
He called me the title with a grin and a twinkle in his eye. I bit my lip to suppress the smile that tugged at corners of my mouth, the first smile that anybody had pulled out of me since that horrid day when I discovered my true identity. Who was this man? How did he and Diesel know each other? I could see how they could be friends. Secretly, I already started to like Jerek. No. I couldn’t. He was the enemy. A frown resumed its place on my face.
“Ah, back to the gloom, I see.” He stared at me with his head cocked to the side, seemingly trying to figure me out. My chin rested on my knees as I fiddled with a stem of grass in front of me.
“We grew up together, you know, Gabe and I,” he said after a short minute .
“Gabe?”
“Yeah… You know, your future husband.”
I snorted.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, I guess it’s better than Gabriel .“ The name sounded ridiculous, especially since all I’d ever known him as was Diesel.
“And what do you call him?”
“Diesel,” I murmured.
“Is that his middle name or something?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one that grew up with him, shouldn’t you know?” I pinned him with a stare.
“In all our sleepovers and pillow fights, it never came up, no.” He rolled his eyes.
“What kind of friend are you if you don’t even know his middle name?”
His smile faltered. “You’re right.”
Whoa. I didn’t expect that. He stunned me to silence again, and I resumed my position resting my chin on my knees and watching the river.
“We met in school when we were young. They have a school on the King’s estate for future soldiers, and all the boys in Hope are required to attend,” Jerek murmured.
What an awful thing for the King to require. What if the boys didn’t want to be a soldier?
“We met over wooden knives when we were around nine years old, been thick as thieves ever since. Well, that is until we parted ways five years ago.” He gave the river a contemplative look. “I do believe that he got the better end of the deal, though. I’ve been slumming it with the likes of these ogres, and he’s been with you.” He crooked his thumb over his shoulder and gestured to the guards at our backs. “If I had known what his special assignment was, I might have fought a little harder to take his place.“ What did that mean? Why would Jerek have been able to take his place?
“But I guess that’s what happens when your last name is Etan. He always was a self-righteous bastard. He was important, and he knew it.” I expected humor to grace his face again but was surprised when he narrowed his eyes at the river.
“And a cowardly liar,” I added. If we were going to be slinging insults at Diesel, I wanted in.
He moved a millimeter closer to me and his shoulder bumped into mine. “People are not always what they may seem.” The words came out as barely a whisper, and I had a hard time catching them. Jerek gave me a calculating look, and I wasn’t sure what to make of his words. Was he talking about Diesel or himself?
Our blue eyes warred in a battle of wills, him trying to convey a message that I could not grasp. I narrowed my eyes at him as they fell on the weapons strapped to his body. He was a soldier—he would always be my enemy. My hands twitched at the nearness of the guns; I could reach out and grab one and put an end to him right now. He noticed where my eyes had landed and shifted away from me ever so slightly.
“Gonna shoot me, Princess?” he drawled.
A nasty sneer fell onto my face. “That depends. Are you ready to go back to hell where you came from?”
The smile that grew on his lips made him impossibly more handsome, and I hated him for it. How could someone so evil be so good-looking?
I blanched at him, not the reaction I had hoped for. “ Don’t call me Princess .”
“Oh, excuse me, I forgot your title. What was it again? ”
“Mm, let me think. Kiss my ass.”
He chuckled. How could someone be so happy with all the insults I threw his way? Diesel would have throttled me by now. He was infuriating.
“You are our Princess, and I will do whatever is necessary to protect you.“ His face turned serious again without a drop of humor in it. What was he playing at?
“How about I get one of these useless soldiers to shoot at me and you can throw yourself in front of the bullet? That would solve a lot of my problems right now.”
He shook his head and chuckled under his breath. Talking to Jerek opened a trickle in my chest, the part of me that had died the day I found out who I was. It used to be like a river of feeling flowing through me, but it had dried up. Jerek made it feel a tiny bit alive again. I could never trust him, but talking to him wasn’t so bad. He nudged my shoulder with his own once more.
“We should be friends.”
“Go to hell,” I scoffed.
His smile widened, even larger than the last one.