6. Hale
Hale
Ishut the door behind us and stand in the corridor for a second.
Tobin takes three steps before he notices I’m not following. “What?” he asks, turning to me.
“It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“Her name… Asha’s name.”
He frowns and opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.
He breathes in deeply, pissed off as he comes to the same conclusion I do.
“We can’t remember it,” he says.
“I remember calling her something else. I remember everyone did. But the actual name has been ripped out.”
He looks back at the closed door. Silver current flashes over his fingers. “I changed the restriction.”
“But it was temporary. She is Asha again now.”
“She is going to flip her fucking lid,” Tobin comments and keeps walking.
“You think?” I mutter, joining him.
We head down the corridor towards the stairs. My body still carries the aftermath of Asha’s touch, but the satisfaction has taken a vicious hit.
“What exactly did you do?” I ask.
“I forced my magic into the restriction and created a temporary route through it.”
“You didn’t mention temporary.”
“I didn’t know.”
That pains him. He prides himself on knowing everything.
We reach the ground floor and push open the doors to the courtyard. Students are milling around, most heading toward the dining hall. We fall behind them in silence.
Asha. It’s the only name I know for her. The only name I can call her. The name she hates. The name she doesn’t deserve, that doesn’t belong to her.
“Grab some trays,” Tobin says as we enter the noisy dining hall.
It cuts through my thoughts. I grab a stack of trays and start loading them without paying attention to what I’m putting on them. My hands move on autopilot while my head stays stuck on that closed door upstairs and the word I can’t find anymore.
“You’re filling up with dessert,” Tobin says.
“I know. She’s going to need it. This is fucked.”
“Agreed.”
I glance at him. Calm as ever, solving three problems at once, but there’s a muscle ticking in his jaw that gives him away. He’s pissed. Tobin doesn’t get pissed easily, which makes it worse. He is going to try to fix this, and it’s not going to be pretty.
We finish loading the trays without saying much else. I add a sixth dessert because five feels insulting given the day she’s had, and Tobin doesn’t comment on it this time.
The walk back through the courtyard is quiet.
Rain has eased to a drizzle, and the few students still out don’t look our way twice, which is a mercy after the scene in the dining hall earlier.
I keep turning the problem over. A name gone.
Not hidden, not sealed. Gone from three minds that all heard it at the same time.
“Say something,” I tell him as we hit the stairs, balancing trays and dodging creatures as we go up.
“I’m thinking.”
“Think out loud.”
“The restriction isn’t just a ward on her voice,” he says. “It’s tied to memory retention. Whoever built it anticipated exactly this. Someone hears the name, they lose it fast enough that repetition becomes useless.”
“So her screaming at us won’t fix it.”
“No. She probably can’t say it again, anyway.”
“Then how does she get her own name back?”
Tobin doesn’t answer straight away, and that silence tells me more than a paragraph of theory would. We reach the top of the stairs, and he stops outside her door, balancing his tray on one arm while he stares at the wood.
“She needs her real body.”
I roll my eyes at that and push the door open. Asha sits up against the headboard, sheet pulled loosely around her, hair a wrecked golden mess from the last few hours. Leith’s stretched out beside her, one arm behind his head.
“Food,” she says, sitting up straighter. “Finally. I could eat an entire…” Her eyes narrow at me, then flick to Tobin. Calculation shifts in her face. “What?”
I set the trays down on the desk instead of answering right away, buying myself a second I don’t need because there’s no good way to say this.
“Say your name,” Tobin states.
“Excuse me?”
“Say it. The name you gave us earlier tonight.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
Nothing comes out.
I see the exact moment it hits her. Her face goes from irritated to blank to furious in under three seconds. Leith sits up beside her, his focus sharp.
She tries again. Her lips move around a shape, breath catching in her throat, and then just silence where the sound should be.
“What did you do?” she snarls.
“I forced open a temporary route through the restriction,” Tobin says, and to his credit, he doesn’t flinch from her stare. “Emphasis on the temporary.”
“Temporary?” She throws the sheet off and stands, entirely unbothered by her nakedness, entirely focused on murder. “You forced my own fucking name out of my throat and then let it get eaten.”
“I didn’t let anything happen.”
“Semantics.”
Leith swings his legs off the bed and gets to his feet, not concerned by the tension crackling off Asha. “It’s not semantics. He’s telling you what happened so you can decide what to do about it.”
“What to do about it,” she repeats, gaze boring into Tobin’s. “What I’d like to do about it is peel the skin off you. You made me remember what it’s like to have my real name. Or part of it.”
“Understandable,” Tobin says.
“Don’t agree with me right now. It’s infuriating.”
I step closer, though every instinct tells me to stay well clear of the blast radius. “We’ll get it back. Your full name that we all remember, and you can say.”
She turns her furious gaze on me, but it softens when she sees I’m trying to help. It’s a rare sight, and it makes me wonder what’s really going on in that head of hers when it comes to her and me.
The bond pings to life, and she feels it. She breathes in slowly through her nose and lets it settle instead of feeding it.
“Don’t,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. “Don’t do the eyes at me right now.”
“What eyes?”
“The ones that think you can fix everything by standing there looking wounded on my behalf.”
“I’m not allowed to be hurt because you’re hurt?”
“No. It’s annoying.”
I smirk at her, and she returns it before she flops back to the bed, pulling the sheet back around herself, some of the fury draining into something colder and more useful.
“Fine,” she says. “I will get my body back, and then you will all bow to me with my full name in your mouths or die a painful death. Get me food before I decide to bite something off.”
I hand her a plate loaded with everything Tobin and I grabbed, and she takes it without complaint.
Leith pulls his clothes back on and sits on the edge of the bed, watching her eat with that unreadable stillness he does so well. Tobin stays by the desk, arms folded, silver eyes fixed on her.
“Stop looking at me like I’m a puzzle,” she says around a mouthful of chicken that she chases with a steamed chocolate pudding and custard.
“You are a puzzle,” I point out. “And that combo…” I shudder.
She looks down. “Is there supposed to be some order to it?”
“Usually, you eat the sweet things afterwards,” I say, sitting next to her. “Didn’t you eat as a goddess?”
“Food? No. Souls? Hell yes.”
That should terrify me. Actually, it does terrify me, but in the way that makes my cock rock hard again.
“Really?” Leith drawls. “You ate souls?”
“Why do you sound so sceptical?” I ask. “She’s a battle goddess infused with chaos.”
She narrows her eyes at me as if she isn’t sure if I’m mocking her or not. She must see that I’m being genuine, so she smiles. “Exactly, thank you, Hale.”
“You’re welcome. But what exactly is a battle goddess infused with chaos?” I ask, shuffling closer.
“A goddess who wins wars by turning the battlefield against everyone on it,” she says. “Chaos isn’t random destruction. That’s what idiots call it when they can’t follow the design.”
“Sounds like random destruction with better branding.”
“I ended dynasties, broke divine armies and held StormGate for five centuries. My branding is flawless.”
“Who were the creatures who exiled you?” I ask, getting more and more invested in her as the seconds tick by. I knew I wanted her; the bond was adamant about claiming her, but I have to admit that we don’t really know much about her.
Asha slows her chewing. “Six lesser gods.”
“Lesser gods?”
She nods. “I’m unclear on how that works, even more so with the whole SilverGate and Yseld attachment, but they were beneath me. It’s why it took six of them to take me out.”
“How long were you in existence for before you became a goddess? Or was it what you’ve always known?”
She purses her lips. “What’s with the questions, princey?”
I smile at the nickname. “Sue me for wanting to know all about you.”
Her suspicion eases a fraction. She takes another bite, considering whether I deserve an answer.
She sighs and gives me the plate, apparently done eating.
“My earliest memory is waking on a battlefield under three dead warriors. I didn’t know who they were or who had killed them or where I’d come from. ”
The casual way she says it jolts through my system. She was born a goddess out of blood and battle.
“And that was five hundred years ago?” I say cautiously. I don’t want her to stop talking. I want to know more. Everything.
“Yes, but I didn’t rule at that moment.”
“When did the rule start?” Tobin asks, sitting on the end of the bed.
“About five seconds after I woke up,” she says with a slow smile. “I rose and ripped the crown off the head of the god crowing over the battlefield, with his head still attached.”
“Nice,” Leith murmurs.
Asha gives him an approving look. “Finally, someone appreciates decisive leadership.”
“You woke under corpses and immediately decapitated a god,” Tobin says. “How did you know you could?”
“Correction,” I state, my gaze never leaving hers. “She was born under the corpses.”
She takes her plate back from me and digs into another pudding. “Damn right.”
“You didn’t know whether you could kill him, though?” Tobin presses.
“I didn’t know anything. I woke up. He was laughing while thousands died around him, so I climbed the mound of bodies, grabbed his crown and pulled until his head came off.”
“Violent instinct,” Leith murmurs. “Useful.”
“After that, everyone stopped fighting.”
“Because you killed their god,” I say.
“Because I told them to.”
I stare at her.
She lifts the spoon to her lips and pauses. “What?”
“You were born, killed the ruler, and took command of two armies in five seconds.”
“More or less.”
“And you think chaos gave you that?” Tobin asks.
Her expression cools. “I think I am chaos.”
My blood heats up at that statement. “You’re perfect,” I murmur.