Chapter 26 #2
The laughter faded between them until they were both staring at each other–their first real moment of peace since they arrived in Judla.
So many questions, so many words that hadn’t been said swirled between them.
She still hadn’t told him about the dreamwalker, Ima, and how she led Airess to Taryn.
Could she tell him now after how close they had grown, after all they’d been through?
Her gaze slid down to his lips.
The kiss.
Airess couldn’t believe it really happened.
She was still drunk on it, forever haunted by the ghost of his touch after his mouth left hers.
Taryn had tried to bring it up, but she had brushed him off.
She had never been so emotionally involved with anyone in her life.
The vulnerability terrified her. She knew it made her a coward.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, eyes darkening.
“Like what?”
“Like you think I’m a good person. Like you want to kiss me. Like I deserve you.”
She straightened her back at his words, at the acknowledgement of what happened between them. She willed herself to be bold, to live unapologetically, and took a step forward.
“And what’s so wrong with that?” Airess asked. “You seemed to have no problem kissing me at the Inn.”
There it was.
Taryn’s eyes fluttered closed briefly. His jaw ticked, and when he met her gaze again, there was a longing she hadn’t seen before. Her heart twisted with so many emotions, her head began to spin.
“You deserve better than me.”
“What?” Airess said breathlessly, not expecting his response.
“Airess, you don’t know what I’ve done in my life,” Taryn said, lifting a hand to touch her face before yanking it back, “I’m not the male you think I am.”
Airess thought back to when she dreamwalked into one of his older memories.
Back when Taryn was fourteen and had freshly joined the Guild, forced to kill another man in his home to become initiated.
She knew that could have only been the beginning of his troubled past, and she had no doubt Taryn was ruthless enough to commit other crimes.
But she didn’t care. She wanted to know what he had done.
Airess wanted to accept every dark corner she hadn’t explored yet, so she could see him for who he truly was.
In order to do that, she needed to be honest with him. She needed to tell him the truth about Ima.
“There’s something I need to tell you–”
Taryn jolted forward, gripping the railing as his knees buckled. He hissed in pain as he fell to the floor.
“Taryn!” Airess exclaimed as she knelt down with him. He cried out in pain, gripping the dragon tattoo that was his Oathmark.
“What’s going on? What is hurting you?”
She scanned his face, frantically trying to make sense of what was going on. Airess gripped his shoulders to hold him upright. When Taryn gathered his breath, he turned his head to look at her slowly. “I meant it when I said I wasn’t going to make it.”
She unraveled the wrapping on his abdomen, delightfully surprised.
“The bleeding has stopped. I don’t understand.”
“It’s not from the wound.” Taryn tapped two fingers on the dragon tattooed on his shoulder. “It has something to do with the Oathmark. I feel…tired. Just give me a few minutes and we can keep going.”
“No, we won’t keep going. You need to rest, that’s final.”
Taryn looked like he was about to argue, but he held his head low in defeat. They both slumped against the boat railing and sat together in silence, the sun blaring down on them as they drifted through the middle of the ocean.
The boat swaying forcefully from side to side woke Airess out of a dreamless slumber she hadn’t realized she had sunk into. She sat up quickly, eyes wide. She glanced at Taryn still asleep and shook his shoulders.
He didn’t wake up.
Her heart dropped.
Airess shook him harder. “Taryn, wake up,” she whispered frantically. “Wake up!”
His limp body made no movements. Airess pressed her fingers to the pulse on his neck, utterly relieved to feel life still pulsing beneath his skin. After several attempts to wake him, Airess realized something was very wrong.
The boat jolted again, harder this time. At once, the boat stopped moving entirely, as if they were being stopped mid-float. She scrambled to her feet and gaped at what she saw.
Land!
They had finally reached land! Airess took in the white stucco buildings perched upon the shore. Every structure had orange clay tiling and circular windows. Her eyes trailed upwards to the castle, made in the same materials as the buildings below.
But then she turned. A massive ship stood before their boat, soldiers atop it with their arrows drawn–all pointing right at her.
A massive wave surfaced out of the ocean from her right.
Three Fae wielders rode the wave until they landed perfectly onto their boat.
Airess instinctively moved in front of Taryn’s unconscious body to protect him and faced the soldiers, drawing one of the broadswords out of his sheath.
Three Fae stood before her. Two males and a female had their blades drawn cautiously as they took her and Taryn in. They weren’t armed with heavy armor like the guards in Luciena.
The soldiers wore metal chest plates to protect their heart, but other than that, the clothes looked quite comfortable for a soldier.
They wore flowing pants that cuffed at the ankles with a matching tunic the color of dark orange.
Various weapons were strapped onto their bodies, but Airess knew they were all wielders and could kill her without drawing a weapon.
The guard shouted at her to lower her sword. She did, but did not let go of it.
“State your business here,” said a guard in Runean.
Airess scrambled to find the words in her head. She was still learning the language, and could understand far better than she could speak it. “We have escaped from Luciena,” she said, the words she had rehearsed with Taryn fresh in her mind. “We mean no harm.”
“Yet you wield a blade?” one of the females retorted, eyeing her suspiciously.
Slowly, Airess knelt down and placed the blade on the ground. Everyone stilled. Finally, a soldier in the middle spoke up. “Seize them!”
A blast of water hit Airess, knocking her down. She felt water encase her hands, hardening into ice cuffs that bound her hands together. The guards hoisted her up and dragged her away from Taryn.
“We mean no harm!” Airess exclaimed.
She fought back, her limbs thrashing as she struggled against their grip. They forced her down, but she kicked and bucked, trying to break free.
“Please!” she begged, her voice breaking as she screamed. “Listen, we mean no harm! He–” but she forgot the words in Runean in her panicked state. “Healer! Need healer!”
They paid her no heed as she was tackled to the ground, her face pressed into the wood of the deck, the Runean soldiers binding her limbs with rope.