Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) (2 page)

But last night, she’d tried to
confess her feelings to him.

Ashlyn still wasn’t sure what
she’d expected from Drake. He was a ridiculously old, frustratingly square
vampire who spent more time wallowing in his own angst than developing
meaningful relationships with other people. Not exactly boyfriend material.

Vargo, the red-haired Spartan,
had swept in the moment Drake was gone. He’d heard everything.

Ashlyn pursed her lips beneath
her mask, remembering the feel of Vargo’s mouth on hers. Their first kiss had
been about a week ago, in the village of Industry. That first time, she’d only
kissed him as a distraction so she could get close enough to knock him
unconscious. Last night’s kiss was a different story. What she felt for Vargo
wasn’t the same as the yearning she was experiencing for Drake, but the
electricity in Vargo’s touch was undeniable.

If anyone felt responsible for
her departure from Toryn, Ashlyn hoped that it was not Vargo. She wasn’t
entirely over her initial dislike for him- they had been enemies for so long,
after all- but he didn’t deserve to feel guilty.

Drake, on the other hand…

Ashlyn grimaced, still running,
and followed the glittering orange path as it snaked around a single tree in
the middle of the beach. She was getting closer to the forest now. Trees were
popping up sporadically, a welcome change from the bare terrain she’d been
seeing for the past several miles.

No, in all honesty, she didn’t
want Drake to wonder if she had left because of him, either. This was something
she had to do on her own. She couldn’t stomach the thought of Skye, their
former leader, one of her closest friends and the man who had defeated Lord
Angelo when it seemed all but impossible, challenging her dad in combat. She
absolutely had to face Lord Li alone. If she didn’t, she would never forgive
herself, and in her heart she truly hoped that Skye would understand that.

Skye had been angry before, when
she’d left Cosmea with Kou, intending to confront Lord Devlyn and try to reason
with him. After her plan had completely backfired and she’d discovered that Kou
was, in fact, Lord Devlyn in disguise, Ashlyn had felt more than a little
stupid. But like most of her hair-brained schemes, things had worked themselves
out in the end. She could only hope that what she was doing right now would
achieve the same results, and anyway, she had no doubt that Skye would come
after her once he realized she was gone. Her intention was to somehow locate
her father before Skye found her.

Ashlyn ducked under a low-hanging
branch, noting that she was in the outskirts of the forest now. She slowed to a
walk, her thin-soled boots making no sound on the leaf-strewn forest floor. She
must be close now, close to the
shift
army,
close to…

…Her father.

As if her fear over Skye’s
reaction and the confusing situation with Drake and Vargo weren’t enough, she
still had yet to come to terms with the fact that her father was leading the
shift
army. She wondered if Kou had been
reporting back to Lord Li. Her throat tightened at the thought. She hadn’t seen
her father in more than three years, and although her heartstrings weren’t exactly
wrapped around his memory as tightly as they had once been, he was still her
father, and she loved him. The thought that she might have to fight him or- or
worse,
kill
him- wasn’t anything she
wanted to contemplate right now.

You’d
better start contemplating,
she
told herself harshly, trying to drudge up some good old-fashioned rage,
because you’re going to have to deal with it
sooner or later, and hesitating at the wrong moment could mean a very sad end for
you.

There was a rustling to her
right, and Ashlyn started, thoughts scattering as she crouched low and
whispered a word to dissipate the
reveal
magic’s
trail. In the darkness, she could barely see a faint outline of another person,
moving towards her carefully, not bothering to use any of the trees for cover.
Relying on the darkness, perhaps? Ashlyn frowned. His movements were
calculated. Deliberately slow.

He was trying to distract her.

The hairs on the back of her neck
stood on end, and she launched herself forward, yanking the shuriken off her
back as she rolled and came up on her feet. Behind her, where she had been
crouching only a moment before, there was a
shhhhink
as a katana blade sliced through the air and hit the ground. Ashlyn whirled
and took one step towards the swordsman, lashing out with her shuriken and
landing a cut across the other ninja’s throat. He went down instantly. As she
stepped back, turning, a throwing star caught her in the right shoulder. Ashlyn
grunted with the pain and dropped to all fours as several more throwing stars,
all smaller versions of her oversized hira shuriken, went flying overhead.

Reaching up with her left hand,
Ashlyn yanked the star out, wincing as the jagged edge cut deeply. She rolled
to the side and climbed unsteadily to her feet, using a broad tree trunk for
cover. They’d caught her by surprise- she’d been too absorbed in her own
thoughts to avoid walking into a trap.

Ashlyn clenched her shuriken in
one hand, the throwing star in the other, and took a deep breath, then spun out
from behind the tree, the hand holding her shuriken outstretched as the
ice
stane glowed blue within it. A
translucent wall of ice materialized before her, and as she’d predicted, there
was a flash of several more throwing stars that quickly embedded in the
makeshift shield. Ashlyn sidestepped around the ice and flung the single star with
easy expertise, aiming for the patch of blackness where her adversary had
revealed his location. Sprinting across the dark forest, she reached the ninja
moments after the throwing star reached its target. He was dead before he hit
the ground.

Leaves crunched to her right, and
once again Ashlyn ducked behind a tree. There was another rustling, this time
to her left, and once more in front of her. Her heart sank as she realized that
she was probably surrounded.

For a long moment, she stood
pressed against the trunk of the tree, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Ashlyn raised her uninjured arm, clutching her shuriken tightly, and breathed a
single word.

The
fire
stane in her shuriken sparked to life, casting a bright red
hue on her surroundings and illuminating five ninjas, all of whom were wearing
the sign of Toryn on their masks.

Ashlyn’s eyes narrowed, muscles
tensing.

The first ninja charged, and she
reeled off the tree trunk, reversing in mid-motion to slash backwards with the
shuriken. It sliced cleanly in a diagonal motion across his back. One down. She
ducked under the swing of another katana and spun in a leg sweep, flipping over
his prone body, stabbing downwards with the shuriken as she somersaulted. Two.

The next ninja came at her with
his fists. She ducked the first punch and blocked the second one, but somehow
missed the third one and stumbled backwards as he connected with the right side
of her jaw. Ashlyn shook her head, trying to collect herself, and blocked
another punch from her right. No time to think- she grabbed the arm and moved
aside, twisting hard enough that he had no choice but to fall forward. She
swung downward with her shuriken, aiming the flat side of the weapon for the
base of his skull.

A sudden eruption of hisses and
growls came from her left- and Ashlyn realized that they had the
shift
magic, or at least one of them
did. She had barely turned to face the beast before it was on her, biting and
roaring. It was one of the cats, the weakest of the
shift
monsters, but that didn’t make it any less deadly. Its jaws
clamped down on Ashlyn’s right arm, and she yelped in pain.

 
There was no time to react- she gasped out a
few words, and fire roiled around the big cat, singeing Ashlyn’s arms as she
punched the beast, finally managing to knock it off with an elbow to the eye.
Ashlyn scrambled wildly to her feet, clutching at her bleeding arm, her injured
shoulder aching.

There were two cats; the one
she’d hit was shaking its head as it extricated itself from the pile of leaves
where it had landed. Ashlyn glanced to her left, at the closest cat. She’d have
to make this quick.

Shouting her spell, she threw out
her hand, and used the
fire
stane
once more, flames exploding from the ground and consuming the poor animal. The
cat screamed, but Ashlyn didn’t have time to see what happened next- she was
already off and running. She ran by the burning beast, but had barely cleared
the fire before she was knocked to the ground by the second cat. The shuriken
flew out of her hands and slid across the leaf-strewn ground, the light from
the stane extinguished the moment it left her grip.

Ashlyn quickly rolled before the
animal could get a chance to pin her down, but the cat’s claws dug into her
shoulders and it rolled with her. Ashlyn landed on her belly again, and threw
her head back, connecting with the creature’s face and momentarily stunning
them both with the impact. Stars sparked before Ashlyn’s eyes.
Panthers have hard heads,
she thought
stupidly.
Who knew?
Gasping with the
pain of the claws on her shoulders, she tried to remember which stanes she had
in her armlet. Which one could she use to get out of this? All that she had
were
heal
…and
shift.

She twisted, trying to elbow the
creature behind her, but the cat snarled and momentarily let go of her shoulder
to take another swipe, gashing Ashlyn’s upper arm with its claws.

She knew then that she didn’t
have any other choice.

Writhing and twisting, trying to
at least make it difficult for the beast to get a death grip, Ashlyn cried out
for help, the
shift
stane in her
mind’s eye, desperately hoping that it would assist her in her time of need.

The change was immediate.

There was none of the agony that
she had seen in Tag’s transformation, none of the gruesome rearranging of bones
and shifting of tendons. Ashlyn had no reason to scream because there was no
pain. It was instantaneous. One moment, she was in her human form, pinned to
the ground and completely helpless against her attacker, and the next moment, a
sense of clarity settled over her as she shifted into a panther. Every sense
was heightened, her body humming with energy and anger. Ashlyn twisted and
lunged upwards, sinking her claws into the other cat’s neck and dragging the
creature beneath her own body. She ripped and tore at her adversary, tasting
blood but too furious to stop.

At last the big cat lay still
beneath her, and it was only then that Ashlyn took a breath, the air feeling
strangely pungent in her lungs. She backed off the other cat, slowly, adjusting
to the fluid movements of her own limbs. After a moment, she realized that the
darkness was no longer darkness. As a cat, she could see in the dark. She
wondered briefly what daylight looked like through these cat eyes.

Hesitantly, she tried to form
words, something to stop the magic, but all that came out were a few growling
noises. It worked despite its simplicity, and in another heartbeat Ashlyn was
herself again, sore and bleeding- and
naked
-
but alive.

She propped herself up gingerly against
a tree trunk, shivering, murmuring the words to mend her wounds as the
heal
stane glowed sweetly in her armlet.

She allowed herself a moment to
contemplate what had just taken place. She had taken on the shape of a panther,
but the soldier she’d taken this particular
shift
stane from had been a bear. Was it possible that each person shape-shifted
into a different animal? Or could you control the animal you shape-shifted into
once you were more experienced with the magic?

Also, by no means did she feel
like a master of the magic, but Kou had previously told her that the
shift
magic was dangerously addictive.
Yet she felt no different. There was no pull from the
shift
stane. There was no lingering pain from the shape-shift,
which had certainly been almost anticlimactic in comparison to Tag’s awful and
agonizing transformation that she had witnessed in the basement of her home.

Perhaps the unnaturalness of his
shape-shift was because he did not truly belong to the Li bloodline? Perhaps
true Li heirs were able to transform without the pain?

She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t
really want to find out.

With some effort, Ashlyn managed
to pull herself upright, and made her way towards where her shuriken was lying
on the ground. She eyed the fallen ninja closest to her, wondering if his
clothes would fit her.

The first strains of dawn were
filtering through the trees.

If FLD hadn’t already discovered
that she was gone, they would soon.

Chapter 2

Like a Wild
Animal

The tents were a dull gray, not
so dark as the gray that Toryn ninjas wore, but bland enough to fade into almost
any landscape. In the wintry forest they blended in quite well, so well, in
fact, that Ashlyn had almost missed them at first.

On the southern half of the
island, which was at a higher elevation than the city, the first snowfall had
already occurred, though most of it had melted in the first few hours of
morning. Ashlyn shivered at the frost seeping through her clothes as she inched
forward on her belly, trying to get a better glimpse of the encampment from her
position on the edge of the cliff above.