Chapter 5 Declan #2
“Second, that was a terrible analogy. I mean, it was truly awful. What are you supposed to be, some kind of fish with legs and feet? Do you have little webbed toes, too? Maybe a fin on your back I haven’t seen yet? That must be why you wouldn’t take your shirt off before!”
His eyes widened.
Then his frown twisted into a smile.
“It was bad, was it not?”
“Not bad, awful.” I shook my head. “Wait. Let me guess. Your mother is a porpoise, and your father is a salamander? What would that make you? A porpimander? A salipus? That’s it! Salipus. That fits you perfectly. I hereby dub you Lord Salipus.”
My shoulders heaved as tears pooled. Through watery eyes, I watched as Ayden lost his battle to remain stoic and joined in my merriment.
“You will not call me a salipus—or Lord Salipus—in front of others. As you have said, I am a lordling, and I command you to forget that name.”
“Or what?” I gasped.
“I will beat you until you stop, and at this point you know I could.” His face smoothed as he tried to appear fierce, only driving me into another wave of uncontrolled amusement.
A moment later, after the laughter subsided, I straightened and wiped my cheeks and eyes. He stared, looking wary of what might come next.
“You probably could beat me pretty bad,” I reluctantly admitted. “Where did you learn to do that kick thing? That was . . . incredible.”
I hadn’t meant for wonder to enter my voice, especially related to anything Ayden had done, but his flying, spinning kick was impressive.
He lifted his chin. “One of the advantages to being raised in a noble house is the training.”
“Huh. Okay.”
He lowered himself to the ground and sat opposite me with his legs crossed.
“I know you think any son of a lord is soft or weak, and that may be true of most, but I am not that son of a lord. I received training from the very best tutors . . . from all over the world.”
If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn there was resentment mixed with the pride in his voice. He’d been so careful to be polite, even as I shat all over him, that I’d begun to wonder if he had any other emotion inside his chest.
“All over the world? Really?” Judging his words had become such a habit that I couldn’t resist the jab.
He simply nodded. “The Triad’s historian was my tutor for geography and history. I began studying with him when I was five.”
“The Triad’s own?” I whistled. As the son of one of the most prominent men in the country, I knew Ayden would receive the best tutoring, but to have the ruling council’s own historian as his teacher was beyond any privilege I could’ve imagined.
And to begin at five years old? Such an early start was rare outside of the Academies, and those vaunted institutions took only a handful of students each year.
“I began learning basic forms with the Armsmaster for the Melucian Guard when I was seven. My father hosted a Master in hand-to-hand combat from the isle of Vint—”
“Wait. Seriously? Vint? Nobody but pirates sails near that island. Even the Kingdom avoids it, and it’s only a hundred miles to their south.”
He nodded. “Yes, that Vint. It is a large island with villages the pirates respect. The Masters from that land teach fighting unlike anything we have here on the mainland.”
“I saw that,” I said, trying to reconstruct his spinning kick in my mind. “What about swordsmanship?”
“My teacher was the Swordmaster of the Melucian Army.”
“Spirits, Ayden.”
He shrugged. “You said I was privileged. Is this not what you meant?”
“I meant you were rich. This is a whole other level of privilege.”
“Perhaps.” He grinned. “And now, my privilege is yours.”
That furrowed my brow. “How do you figure?”
“We are partners, at least in this Trial. You are a better tracker and mountain man, or whatever you call it. I am smarter and a better fighter.”
“Whoa, easy there. Nobody said you were smarter than a stump. You only said you had really smart tutors. There’s a difference.”
Ayden grinned. “Fine. I will concede that, though I would give any stump you find a run for its money.”
“You don’t need its money, remember?”
“True.” He chuckled. “And yourself?”
“What about me?”
“I have seen you train others but have yet to see you shoot or fight yourself.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” I said, slowly standing to test my balance. “I had to be when it became clear no Gift would have me.”
Ayden stared, and something in his gaze softened as he fingered his barren collar.
“I know something of that.”
“I suppose you do.”
He stood, mirroring my deliberate movement. Neither of us wobbled badly.
“Why don’t we finish clearing the site,” I suggested. “We lost a few hours of morning light thanks to our visitors. We need to do some serious tracking today.”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
I stared a moment longer than I probably should have, but something in his eyes held my gaze.
This time, it wasn’t simply the depth swirling about that drew me in.
It was something else. The square set of his jaw, and how the rusty stubble formed so perfectly around it?
His lips, and how they curled just so at the corners, even when he tried to be serious?
Perhaps it was the way he looked at me, as though searching inside my soul for something . . .
I jerked away.I was being ridiculous, seeing more than was there. I was probably still a little lightheaded. That had to be it.
I kneeled and rolled my blanket, but the feeling of his eyes followed me, and I knew, without turning, that his examination continued.
Was it odd for such a stare to be both disconcerting and comforting?
Ayden had packed up before trekking off through the woods, so he leaned against a tree and waited. I glanced back a couple of times, catching him watching me. His eyes darted away, which made me smile, as though I’d won a minor victory in chasing him off.
It never occurred to me to wonder why he was staring.
I was so na?ve.
“We should go another mile or two north,” I said, turning toward him as I slung my pack across my shoulders. “But not too far. We need to stay close enough to make it back before the deadline.”
He pushed off the tree, picked up his own pack, and stepped to my side as I picked my way through the foliage. “It’s just day two. We have plenty of time.”
“Maybe. There are a lot of deer up here, and only ten have the mark we’re after. If we can’t snag one today, we’ll be pressed for time tomorrow. We can’t forget to factor in the return trip. It would be a shame to find a ribbon but not make it back by the bell.”
He grunted. “That’s for sure. We’d be repeating year two without having done something honorable about that woman.”