03 - Sworn (36 page)

Except that I did. We’d been avoiding trouble, but when an enemy appeared I found myself eager to meet the challenge. Three men, and likely not one of them with magic, but better armed than we were. I stepped out from behind the cart and walked forward.

At the sound of my voice, they all looked at me. The one on the left was already focused on Rowan, and I didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him. His distraction left him open, and I reached into his mind and snapped it. No false memories, no gentle dissuasions or attempts to convince him he had business elsewhere. He screamed, dropped his sword, and raced into the woods, running head-first into an oak trunk. He lay at the base, twitching and moaning.

The fellow on the right watched him go. He tried to guard his mind—they’d been warned about me at some point, perhaps back when Rowan had been in Ardare. He couldn’t do it. His thoughts rushed out, and I grabbed them and twisted, sending his mind into a cyclone of confusion. It wasn’t something I’d tried before, but it came naturally enough. Magic flowed through me and outward, depleting my stores. The man’s face went blank, and he dropped to his knees. A trickle of blood ran from his nose.

In just moments, I’d destroyed the minds of two enemies. My heart raced, and a mad grin came over my face.

I kept moving forward. The one remaining, the ringleader, was ready for me. Fear pulsed from him, but he was better prepared. I’d been wrong in my assumptions about him. He may not have been aware of it—and certainly his superiors didn’t know—but his mind hummed with a trace of magic that made my job more difficult than I’d anticipated. I struggled to push my way into his mind, but it resisted. He grinned, thinking he was thwarting me all on his own.

He raised his daggers and crouched, ready for a fight.

Very well.

He flinched as I disappeared, stumbled back as I reappeared in eagle form and launched myself at him. I’d have had a hard time getting past those knives if I hadn’t had the element of surprise on my side. As it was, his confusion made him drop his guard. Only for a moment, but it was enough. I relished the strength in my wings as they battered about his head, further confusing him. He slashed at the air with his knives, but his aim was off, his movements suddenly stiff and slow.

One more moment and I’d have his throat out.

He dropped the knives and grabbed me, taking fistfuls of body feathers and one wing. My bones strained under the pressure, and I screamed in his ear. He dropped to his knees, tucked his chin down, and kept squeezing.

I had only moments to make my decision. Would I change back, break his grip, and fight as a stronger-boned but decidedly unclothed human? Or keep trying this?

He ripped a fistful of flight feathers from my wing and reared his head back with a roar. Searing pain ripped through my body, blinding me with a flash of white light. Rowan yelled behind me, the sound followed closely by a thump and a series of crashes. Something whistled by me, and a moment later the man’s terrible grip released. He pitched over and landed next to his broken-minded comrade. When my vision cleared, I saw the red-fletched arrow protruding from his eye. I turned.

Rowan lowered the bow and set it back in the cart. Baskets and pots littered the ground at her feet.

“Sorry,” she muttered, and wiped her brow with her jacket sleeve. “Someone packed this under a lot of other stuff.” She looked down at the ground. “I tried to draw his water, but I…” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry.”

Had I been able to speak, I’d have told her not to apologize, pointed out that I was alive. She’d slowed him, at least.

A fresh wave of pain from my wing cut off those thoughts, and I opened my beak to breathe through it and clear my head.

Rowan’s family stood by, faces as expressionless and shocked as the only one of our attackers who remained semi-conscious.

“So that’s magic, is it?” Ches demanded. “That’s how it’s done in Tyrea?”

“They would have killed us, Ches,” Victoria said. She stepped toward me. “Are you all right?”

Blood dripped from torn skin on the back of my wing. I honestly didn’t know whether I was all right or not. I grew light-headed from the pain, and angry from the feeling that this body had betrayed me.
I should have won.

“I’ll take care of that,” Rowan said, and reached for her pack. “Aren, come with me. Everyone else can clean up.” She grabbed my clothes as she passed.

I hobbled after her into the woods, trying not to bump my wing on the ground but finding it hard to hold it up. We reached a clear spot out of sight of the rest of the group, and she set my things down.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and took a shaky breath, then turned to me. “Are you going to change, or do you want me to bandage you like this?”

I’d expected her voice to be flat. Instead, there was a brittle edge to it.

I transformed, and found my muscles still trembling from the exertion and continued pain.

“You seem angry,” I said quietly. “Should I have tried harder to negotiate?”

“Damn it, Aren.” She took my injured right arm in her hands. “I mean, at least it’s the other side this time, but look at this.”

The skin had been ripped away, leaving a deep, bloody wound surrounded by red marks that covered the remaining skin to my shoulder. I looked away.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said more softly. “I just wish you’d have waited for help. The rest of us didn’t even have time to react. You broke those first two before I realized what was happening.”

“Before they did, too. It’s better that way.”

“I know, but I was scared. I didn’t know how to help.” She smoothed ointment onto my arm, and I let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a whimper. The stuff burned as it entered the open flesh of my arm, and the pain radiated out from there. “I’m not
that
good an archer. I could have shot you just as easily as I did him, but I didn’t know what else to do.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I started drawing his water. He slowed down, and it seemed to be working, and I just froze. It wasn’t like calling water at the well, where it was peaceful. This was battle, and killing, and… and he got away from me. I couldn’t let my fear get you killed, so I grabbed the bow instead.” She rubbed her forehead with one hand. “I’m a coward.”

“No, you’re human. You did fine. You thought quickly and saved my life.” She didn’t say anything. “Are you okay with what you did there?”

“Yes,” she said, with only slight hesitation. “I mean, I hate it. But he would have killed you.”

“So how is that different from using magic to do it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Because it seems like an unfair advantage? Because I still feel guilty about it? Especially with my family there, maybe. I don’t even know. But you’re right. I’ll try to remember that.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I almost let him kill you.”

“But you didn’t.” She looked up, and I caught her eye. “Maybe the arrow was a good idea,” I said. “At least if you’d hit me you’d have ended my pain.”

I smiled to show her that I was only teasing, but she wasn’t having it. She stepped back and smacked me in the ribs. Tears filled her eyes. “That’s not funny.” She wrapped her arms around me and rested her face against my chest.

“I...” The words didn’t come easily for me. “Rowan, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t joke. Kel was right, though. It does help a little.”

“You can joke when I stop having nightmares about it.” She bandaged my arm, though the ointment had already slowed the bleeding. “That’s the last of the bandages, and of that stuff Nox gave you. Be careful. You’re on your own now.” She waited for me to dress, and we re-joined the group.

“Two are dead,” Ashe said. “What do we do with the other?”

I observed the third, who remained on his knees off to the side of the path, dazed. “He’ll be fine,” I lied. “Leave him. Let him find his way back. Unless you have a better idea of what to do with him?”

“No, I can live with that,” Ashe said. “Will we have time to get away before he sends people after us?”

The man reached up to touch his face, and stared in blank wonder at the blood on his fingers.

“I’d say we’ll have time, yes.” I re-mounted Jigger, who someone had already released from the cart, and Rowan climbed up behind me. “But we should move on.”

I couldn’t force myself to feel guilty about leaving him there. Every one of those men would happily have done the same to all of us. A part of me wished the last to go down had lived long enough to find out about his tiny power and suffer with the knowledge, but that didn’t matter now.

Nothing in this gods-forsaken country did. All that mattered was getting to Tyrea and meeting up with the others. I wasn’t entirely sure the family would follow when Rowan and I rode on down the path, but they did. Victoria and Ches had a hushed argument in the front of the cart while Lucilla rode in the back, but I didn’t try to listen in. Whatever it was would work itself out, or not.

We crossed the border without further incident and reached a familiar town that evening. If not for the spring buds on the flowers instead of orange leaves on the trees, it could have been only a few days since Rowan and I had last visited. I led the way down a side street to the white inn and dismounted. I’d never expected to return here, and certainly not with Rowan.

“You should see about rooms,” I told Ches. “I don’t know whether they’ll take your treasure here or not, but this will be a good place for you to stay while you decide what to do next.”

He nodded and went in through the front door without another word, with Victoria following. Ashe hugged Rowan somewhat less enthusiastically than I’d seen him do before, and followed.

“We’re not ready to be on our own here yet,” Lucilla said. “Rowan, if you could just stay with us for a while. Help us get to know the customs and find a place to live. You belong with us. Please.”

A look of intense sorrow came over Rowan’s eyes as she looked at me. “Aren.”

“It’s fine.” I made myself smile at both of them, though my heart felt as though it were trying to detach itself from my body. “You stay. I’ll get back to my father. It’s probably best if you help them get settled, stay out of Ulric’s way until I smooth things over…” I trailed off. There was no point lying. I wanted her with me.

Rowan chewed her lower lip. “I need to speak to my family alone, if you don’t mind.”

My chest tightened.
This is the end.
“Of course.”

I walked to the corner of the building and was surprised to find Victoria waiting there.

“I’m coming with you,” she said. “Ches isn’t happy about it, and Lucilla won’t be when he tells her, but this is my decision.”

I smiled. At least something was going right. “Fine by me. But why?”

She set her hands on her hips. “I feel like it’s the right thing. Maybe it’s because I owe it to Rowan after being absent for so long when she needed me. Maybe it’s because it makes no sense for me to have come back to life as I have, only to waste whatever gifts I have here when I could be with your people, learning how to use them better.” Her voice dropped. “Maybe it’s because Ches won’t fully accept who and what I am until he’s had some time to adjust to life in this country, and I don’t want to be around for his growing pains. Or Lucilla’s, for that matter.”

I couldn’t help smiling at that. “I don’t imagine it will be pretty. You are, of course, welcome. We’ll leave right away, meet up with our friends, and then we’ll make our way east.”

Her smile turned nervous. “I’ll just need to get my things. Are we going to meet your father, then? The king?”

My own smile disappeared. “We are.”

“I see. Be right back.” She hurried into the inn.

Rowan appeared from the shadows, carrying what had been Ashe’s pack and bedroll. “So that’s good news.”

My heart leapt at the sight of her bringing her things. “It is. Not as good as having you with me.”

She turned her chin up and gave me a surprised look. “You thought I’d abandon you?”

“I wouldn’t have thought of it that way.” I sat down on a bench, and motioned for her to do the same. We had a lot of walking ahead of us that night. “You should do what’s best for you. I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get back. My father’s not going to be pleased with either of us, but at least he acknowledges that he needs me around. Unless Nox has fixed everything, he can’t get the throne back without me. But you... he might send you away. Or worse.”

“He might not.”

“Even if he doesn’t, he won’t let us be together. Much as I hate it, the law is the law. I don’t think I can pretend it doesn’t affect me anymore. I need to grow up and accept my responsibilities.” The word tasted bitter in my mouth.

“I know.” She pulled her feet up onto the seat of the bench and rested her arms on her knees. She didn’t speak for a moment. “I think this is where it ends.”

Numbness spread through me. “When all of this business is over—”

She took my hand in one of hers. “Is it ever going to be over, though?”

I swallowed down the tightness in my throat. “No. Not for me.”

She nodded. Not agreement. Confirmation. “I don’t want to lose you, but maybe us being together isn’t what the world needs.” Her voice wavered, but she pressed on. “I can’t be selfish. I can’t let Tyrea fall apart because I love you. You have a bigger purpose right now, and it doesn’t look like it includes me. At least, not as I imagined it would. Even after Severn is defeated...” She took a shuddering breath and wiped the back of one hand over her eyes. “I guess we never really made sense together, did we? I love you in a way I thought was only possible in books and fairy tales. More than anything I’ve ever known. But we can’t be together if you’re going to be king some day, and I won’t let you give that up for me. You have a great destiny that you can’t ignore for one person.”

I rested my face in my hands and willed myself to think clearly. She was doing what I should have, and I felt like a coward for not being able to make the right decision myself. Even when I could speak, I found I couldn’t look directly at her. Sorrow closed around my heart and squeezed until I had to fight for breath.