Chapter twenty Ash
Chapter twenty
Ash
This stumbling, angry, nervous woman who star tled at every little sound was a blight on my sense of peace.
But I could withstand it. I glared into the sky through the tree canopy as if the one who cursed me was there in the stars watching.
My revenge waited on the other side of the curse, a siren song it hurt to hear but was impossible to ignore or answer.
I observed Fallyn as she stumbled over a root and caught herself with a foul curse that had me stifling a dry laugh, a feat that became harder when she turned to me, her green eyes narrowed in a glare.
She was alive in the most irritating way possible.
Like she loved life but feared it simultaneously.
Like she hadn't quite decided whether the world was something to be live or endure.
Even more irritating was that beneath the rage, beneath the curse, beneath the grind of inevitability and the retribution that will be mine when the curse breaks at last was something quieter. Something unwanted, unwarranted, and uninvited.
Intrigue.
I ignored it, brushing past it deliberately and placing her where she belonged in my mind—an annoyance that I would endure. I had to. If I wanted to spring myself free from the shackles of this curse, to see my home again, to see it restored, then endure, I will.
And when I am free, I will be the consequence I have no doubt nobody expected to pay.
I promised the little shadow that I would use her mercilessly.
And I always keep my promises. She will be the instrument to carve my way back home.
Fallyn
True to his word, Ash escorted me back to Este Valnor.
I walked with him with the same caution and awareness one uses when walking around a bonfire.
His presence made my skin tingle, a dark energy thrumming between us, even now.
I was convinced I could feel him, his aura, a certain magnetism I could pinpoint even with a blindfold on.
The weight of his attention was blunt as it barreled into me.
Every step felt heavy with dread as it dragged at me, while my chest was so tight it forced my heart into my throat.
Desperate to keep my addled mind occupied off my father, off Ash, off my worry for my friends, I examined the forest floor, seeing so much natural debris, it was no wonder I was nearly splayed out on the ground during my run for my life.
Vines, branches, large rocks that threatened to twist your ankle, thorns, all vying to be what brought me down.
“I never asked how you found me.” I nearly leapt out of my skin when he spoke, breaking the crackling tension. “Nervous, little shadow?” The grin in his voice made my palm itch to smack him.
“I’d ask how you ended up with a dagger in your heart, but two seconds in your company has me understanding that impulse entirely,” I responded curtly.
His barked laugh that he didn’t even try to smother had my nerves grating. I upped my pace, trying desperately to hide how taxed my breathing was that when a vine snagged my foot, I didn’t notice until I tumbled forward with a breathless shriek.
But I didn’t hit the ground.
Ash’s arm banded around my waist, steadying me with another chuckle before I fell unceremoniously to the forest floor. I huffed, ignoring my blood rushing in my ears and stepped out of his hold with a hard look. “Don’t expect me to thank you.”
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Noted. Next time I’ll let you fall. I can always use some new entertainment.”
My lips pushed together to keep a strongly worded insult behind them. Ash crossed his corded arms, tossing a grin my way, and returned to hiking the stretch back to Este Valnor. I gave him a few steps ahead before falling in to follow him, stepping where he stepped.
“I was running blindly for my life,” I said in a controlled tone.
On the fringes of my mind, I remembered my feet pounding through the dirt, jumping over branches.
The same terror came back to greet me by way of sweaty palms and a racing pulse.
I fidgeted as I spoke, winging my hands as we walked.
“I had no idea you were there.” I dropped my gaze, refusing to meet his eye.
I had to bite back a rush of sympathy for him, coming up like the unwelcome rise of nausea, “I don’t think anyone did. ”
He was forgotten for years. Decades, with a enchanted dagger in his chest. But why did he stir at my presence?
Or would he have awoken with anyone in proximity?
That thought alone would explain the hardness of his eyes, the tightness of his grin—I wouldn’t call it a smile, I didn’t think I’d seen him happy.
Gleeful, gloating, amused, victorious, and smug, yes.
But I’d yet to see anything other than anger lurking just beneath those starry depths.
I clamped the leash back on my emotions.
Sympathy for him would do me no good. I focused on my father.
We had to hurry. At sundown, they’d light the funeral pyre, and I’d be damned if I missed it.
Odessa, Rowena, and Thaddeus too. I needed to see them.
I needed to know they were safe. Those monsters would have run awash the walls, like water around a cliff’s edge.
I could feel the iron gates as though they were still beneath my beating fist. The city had left Father and me to die.
To save themselves. They absolutely could have saved us, but they chose not to.
Disdain coated my insides like a poison.
Was it because of my betrothal? That was the only thing that fit even a little bit.
The thought was oily and repulsive, my mind shoving it to the side immediately.
Fallyn, I love you.
Run.
I turned away from the memory even as my eyes threatened to mist over.
“What awaits you in your city?” Ash’s voice was harder this time. More distant, but it dragged me from my reverie, nonetheless.
“My father’s funeral pyre.” I choked on the lump instantly forming in my throat, reliving those final moments again.
Father’s last words, the blood spraying, his garbled, choking scream.
“And I have to make sure my friends are okay.” I gave Ash a hard look, that without my intention, turned to something akin to pleading.
“I will go nowhere willingly with you until I know they are safe. Until they know I am as well.”
Ash didn’t respond. Not with words. A solemn nod was his only indication that he heard me.
Over the last stretch of mossy ground, we didn’t speak again.
Even as the trees began to thin and my city that was carved into the mountain itself came into view between them.
The telltale black towering spires rising to meet with the cloud covered sky, but coming just short.
A hand caught my shoulder, stopping me in place and turning me to face my captor.
Ash’s face was grim but not unsympathetic.
He showed no pity, only quiet understanding, a fact that wrenched a sob from me, a sob I hadn’t expected.
Both his hands came to rest upon my shoulders, their firm grasp tethering me in my sea of turbulent emotions.
It wasn’t an intimate gesture by a long shot, not dissimilar to how I would comfort someone in need, something I felt the need to remind myself a few times in rapid succession.
“Hey,” he whispered softly, bidding my gaze to his.
His voice was quiet, reassuring. “The Underworld isn’t as scary as one would think.
Hades isn’t unkind to the souls there. He’s fair.
” I blinked. I wanted to ask him how he knew, but I wanted his words to be true.
That my father was resting happily, comfortably, in the Underworld.
Ash continued, “If your father likes dogs, Cerberus will only be too happy to solicit attention from him.”
The idea of my father giving a belly rub to the terrifying three-headed guardian of the Underworld was so utterly ridiculous that a sputtered, surprised laugh blended on a sniffle.
I shook my head, stepping unsteadily forward toward my home, unsure of what awaited me there.
I could feel Ash’s steady gaze on my back.
He said nothing, quietly stepping up next to me.
My knees shook, and my stomach soured as I paced forward, calling to mind Father’s favorite adage: Standing still will get you killed.
The gate of the city was heavy, oddly unguarded—
—and swinging on its hinges. The only noise other than the distant crackle of flame from inside the gate.
I had assumed the smell of coal and flame was from the pyres, that perhaps I’d been too late to say goodbye to my father.
But seeing no column of smoke from the area of the pyres, seeing the gate propped open, so easily accessible, made dread take up residence in my chest. I no longer hesitated.
I rammed my shoulder into the gate, seeing the flames licking over the vestibules of the Gateside Market.
The only things not altered were the wrought iron barricades, which were slowly turning from black to red in the swelter that ravaged the courtyard.
I hastened away from the fire into the cobblestone streets.
One minute I was dry-eyed, the next, silent tears flowed for my city.
More monsters must have bled from the chasm like an infection from a wound after I’d fled for my life.
That was the only explanation for the death that lay before me.
The only sounds were the crackling flames behind me.
The coppery scent of blood was so strong that copper exploded on my tongue, making me gag.
My leading it away hadn’t saved anyone, and that thought tasted every bit as bitter.
“What happened?” Ash asked as he looked around. He was on high alert, his blade drawn, his steps quieting into nothing as he stepped lightly through my doomed city.
“That thing that you killed,” I said numbly. Tears mixed with soot on my cheeks. “It must have brought friends.”
Thaddeus. Rowena. Odessa. I had to find them. I would not leave this city until they were found. Alive or—I swallowed thickly—dead.
As if on cue, a familiar shriek of something triumphant pierced the still air. Ash’s stern gaze narrowed on mine. “We have to go.” At my shaking head, he continued, “It’s not remotely safe, shadow. We must leave. Now.”
“I’m not leaving. Not until I find my friends. And my father has an arsenal. Full of weapons and armor he’s forged, some of which are imbued with magic. They can help us.”
“Fallyn—”
I didn’t give him the chance to finish his thought.
Because whatever he was about to say, I knew I would be very uninterested in it.
I bolted, turning and running into the blood-slicked streets that gently sloped and spiraled upwards.
More than once I lost my footing, the blood and gore slickening the streets too much for my feet to find purchase on the usually rough surface.
It was the uneven stones that gave me something to push off of, but also posed a risk for tripping.
Usually these raised sections of rock irked me beyond measure, and here they were, my savior. I grunted as I moved through the city, my eyes darting to and fro as I dashed to the nearest home—Dess’s.
The door was barricaded. It wouldn’t budge. It was dark and silent within. One glance to the window revealed why.
Shattered glass littered the ground inside the black-bricked home. Whatever attacked, had gone through to get in. I glimpsed inside, ears straining hard for signs of life.
“Hello!” I whispered into the home, not wanting to yell in case whatever did this was still around. “Dess!” Drawing my dagger, I hoisted myself carefully through the window as Ash caught up with me.
“Are you completely insane?” he chided me. “Whatever is crawling these streets is definitely still here.”
“Then consider this getting us cover.”
He didn’t get a chance to stop me before I was inside. He cursed again before following.
The scent of death was so eerily specific and rotten and now burned into my brain. Diem, Dess’s mother, lay by the hearth. My next steps revealed that her bottom half was missing.
She’d been torn to pieces. Her dull eyes were half-lidded, like she could still wake.
No.
Desperation clawed at my insides, spurring me on.
I refused to believe my friends suffered the same fate.
They were strong, and Thaddeus could fight if he must. Images came to me of Rowena being skewered by those blade-like legs of the demon from yesterday, of Dess being devoured alive, melting before her beloved’s eyes as they both sobbed.
Of Thaddeus not being able to help before he too suffered the same grisly fate.
I turned to Ash for the first time since we left his estate.
“I can’t leave them.” My words left me in broken sobs. “They and my father were all I had. I won’t. I will go with you, to whatever end of the realm you need willingly and without complaint, if you help me find them.”
Ash didn’t move at first. A long breath released from him as he prowled towards the hearth.
I had to look up at the ceiling now, eyes blurry with tears.
The blood spatter was horrid, but better than seeing what was left of sweet Diem.
The sound of metal sliding against metal flicked my narrowed gaze to Ash, who strode forward with something held out to me.
A sword.
A very sharp sword. I recognized it as one my father forged himself.
He took great care in maintaining his work for those who ordered from him.
I knew this blade. Far had it been from violence, not like the one at Ash’s side.
The leather on the handle was frayed, flecks of blood remained near the hilt.
I didn’t have to be a blacksmith’s daughter to know that his sword had taken swaths of lives.
“At least arm yourself properly until we get to your home.” Ash’s words were an unyielding command.
Flinching, I took the sword. Ash’s features softened slightly.
And this time when he spoke, the biting tone was all but gone.
“I can’t have you dying on me. Just please tell me you have at least some idea how to use it. ”
My mouth set in a grim line to match his. “The pointy end goes in the other guy.”
A screech wrecked the moment, from far too close for comfort. It sounded just outside the door in the street. He rose an eyebrow at me before dropping his voice into a whisper. “Sounds like you’re going to get to show me some moves before long, little shadow.”
Fuck.
I clutched the sword in my hands, trying to relax my white-knuckled grip on it.
Dread struggled to drag at my resolve, but I shoved it away, locking it in the darkest reaches of my mind.
A shared look of trepidation between us was all we had time for before the monster snarled at the already shattered window and burst through, bringing some of the wall with it.