Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (35 page)

Maybe she
would have made peace with her dad, stopped him from growing so close to Kou. Kou…who seemed eager, almost desperate to get close to her. Making up for lost time, maybe. He'd followed her up this mountain path the first couple times, but he didn't seem to understand that she wanted to be alone.

Was it really so hard to figure out
how she was feeling? Even Kou should understand why Ashlyn was in a funk. In a matter of days, her entire world had crumbled around her. Everything she'd thought would be safe and secure whenever she came back to it was now turned completely upside-down.

Frowning,
Ashlyn stood, brushing grit from her pants. Most emotions seemed to ease with time, but this confusion and frustration over her dad had only gotten worse. Could she challenge him? Could she kill him, if necessary? That scared her more than anything. Ashlyn had never battled (in a real fight, anyway) a foe that she wouldn't have been able to kill, if she had to. But she wasn't sure if she could actually kill her father.

Skye
was waiting for her when she got to the bottom of the mountain path, leaning up against a tree, ankles crossed, arms folded across his chest.

"Couldn't wait to see me all hot and sweaty, huh,"
Ashlyn said, without feeling.

He ignored her
half-hearted flirtation. "Sara has something," he said. "With the samples she took from Soryl."

"Oh, lovely.
That's exactly how I want to spend my morning."

The corner of his mouth turned up, and he put his hand on her back
briefly as he moved to walk beside her, guiding her in the right direction.

Little things like that- comforting her without using any words or any significant gestures- probably would have made
Ashlyn's crush flare up all over again a week ago. But right now she was just grateful that Skye understood, on some level.

"Did Sara
say anything about what she found?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "She just said to get you."

"Fun." Ashlyn lengthened her stride to match Skye's, but came up a little short- her legs just weren't long enough. She furrowed her brow, exasperated.

He noticed, and glanced at her.
"Something on your mind?"

"Lots of somethings," she said, and shortened her stride again so that she took two steps to his one. "I was just thinking about- about you and me. I
mean, our relationship. I mean-" That sounded horrifying- "gods, not a relationship, but this mentorship thing we’ve got going. You were the leader before, and now you're trying so hard to help me be the leader, but I'm just no good at it. Square peg, round hole. You must be frustrated out of your friggin' mind."

"
No," he said immediately. "I was there too. It hasn't been that long."

"I feel so heavy all the time,"
Ashlyn said. "It's like I can't breathe sometimes. Like I can't even move."

"Weight of the world
," Skye replied. "It's a burden all leaders have to deal with."

"I'm not a natural-born leader."

"Leaders aren't born, Ash. They're made." He shook his head when she spoke again, stopping her mid-sentence with the gesture. "I wasn't a leader. I was just following Jax around, trying to help out where I could. And after he was…gone…I knew I couldn't be the hero. I tried to forget who I was, tried to fool everyone because I knew that I, just me without DEMON or Jax…I knew that I wouldn't be enough of a hero."

He stopped halfway across the bridge to the lab, and leaned against the railing, his expression grave.
Ashlyn turned to face him and mimicked his relaxed pose, trying to look nonchalant.

Skye
turned his face towards the rising sun, the first rays lighting his handsome, tormented features with a strange beauty that reminded Ashlyn a little of Drake and his private demons. The illumination lasted for only a moment before clouds obscured the sunrise, and they were plunged into grayness again.

"The burden of saving the sun
was bad enough," Skye said slowly, "but then to be pretending to be something I wasn't, constantly worried that people would find out I had no idea what I was doing…I almost snapped a couple of times. Stuck inside my mind and trapped by my own lies and insecurities."

Ashlyn
stayed silent as it began to rain. Skye pushed away from the railing and started walking, and she followed quietly. In the back of her mind a little voice was asking why, what with Drake's speech and Restlyn's epiphany and Skye's current revelation, she wasn't having any clarifying moments of her own. Life just wasn't fair sometimes.

Aik
raised his head and nodded once to them as they walked up to the lab entrance. He was curled up in a fuzzy gray ball underneath the tile awning that spanned the length of the laboratory, his hair standing nearly on end from the humidity. Clearly not his favorite type of weather.

Ashlyn
smiled apologetically at the wolf as she pulled open the door and stepped inside. She was greeted by a rush of cool air, and shivered again, shutting the door behind her. Skye remained outside, taking his role as sidekick way too seriously.

"
Ash," Sara greeted her informally from behind a pair of bottle-thick lenses. She was beautiful in a nerdy kind of way, but blinder than a bat without her glasses- which Ashlyn found slightly amusing. Sara wasn't known for being particularly social, either. Ashlyn bowed low, grateful for once that she didn't need to make small talk.

"What did you figure out?" she asked, straightening up.

Sara picked up a folder and flipped it open, scattering photos across the metal counter top as she did so. They were pictures of Soryl's arm, the strange, snaking lines that Ashlyn had noticed days earlier.

"These are what we call
urme de injectare,
" Sara said. "Simply translated- track marks, from intravenous drug use. A result of the use of blunt injecting equipment, like a re-usable syringe with a dulled needle. After a while, the veins start to darken from the scarring, and occasionally the build-up of toxins contributes to the tracks."

"Soryl
was a junkie?" Ashlyn said, frowning. She'd heard of drug use, but certainly not in Toryn- it was far more prevalent in coastal cities such as January Harbor, where the trade industry was thriving and dealers had easy access to their product. "I've seen pictures of track marks before though, and they didn't really look like what was on Soryl's arm."

"Well, the appearance of track marks depends on what is being injected into the vein. If the expients found in an illicit substance are water soluble, track marks usually won't show at all. Expients that aren't water soluble- paregoric, for example- cause intense sclerotic reaction."

"Seriously," Ashlyn said, rolling her eyes. "Dumb it down for us mere mortals, please."

"I ran a few tests-" Sara
began flipping through the folder, running her finger down lists of what Ashlyn assumed were test results- "and they came back negative for all known illegal substances. As far as I can tell, Soryl was clean."

"Hmm."
Ashlyn picked up a photo, eyes tracing the winding lines on Soryl's charred skin. "I don't get it."

"Neither did
I- until I tried to identify his blood type." Sara slapped a paper down in front of her and pointed to a smudged column of numbers. "See that?"

"Um...no."
Math...or any kind of academics, really...totally not Ashlyn's strong suit.

"Soryl
's blood type is O. But he had something else- somebody
else's blood-
in his veins when he died. Somebody whose blood type was A."

"Ooh. Oh...
oh, ew! How the hell did that happen?"

"He's been injecting w
ith someone else's blood," Sara explained patiently. "From the looks of those track marks, he's been doing it for some time. And that's not the most interesting part."

"There’s something grosser?
" Ashlyn said, sinking into a stool in front of the counter.

"This
is even better." Sara slapped another paper down next to the first one. "I ran the alien blood against every sample we've got in the lab- pretty much everyone who's ever been treated in Toryn, to include you and your friends. This," she said, indicating one column of numbers, "is the blood that Soryl was injecting with. And this-" she moved her finger to the other page- "is your blood."

Ashlyn
stared hard, trying to find a pattern. "Okay, they're similar, there's a lot of the same numbers. Wouldn't that make sense, since technically only the Li bloodline is able to use..." She trailed off, not sure if she should say anything in front of the scientist about the
shift
stanes.

"They are the same,
Ash- or at least similar enough that I can tell your blood is related to this sample." Sara nudged a third paper over the top of the second sheet. "This is your father's blood sample."

Ashlyn
scanned the numbers, eyes widening. "They're the same," she whispered. "Soryl was injecting my
father's
blood?"

Sara
nodded. "I can't imagine why- it's so extremely dangerous to inject a foreign blood type into your body. Potentially lethal."

Oh Drago
- suddenly it was all making sense.

Kou
's words came rushing back to her, clear and concise as if he were speaking them directly to her right this moment.

Shift has made itself indigenous to
Toryn...to the Li bloodline...

It has changed itself so that only a
Toryn whose veins flow with the blood of the Li clan is able to wield it...

Her heart was pounding.

"Sara," Ashlyn said quietly, staring down at the photographs in front of her. "Would these...track marks show up on anyone who was injecting with my father's blood?"

"Presumably so."

Ashlyn slammed her fist down on the table, the metal clanging beneath her hand, and Sara jumped. Ashlyn reached across and grabbed the other girl's hand, staring intensely through the thick lenses of her glasses. "Listen to me, Sara. Don't tell anyone you know this. Not anyone. This stays secret. Got it?"

The scientist nodded in confusion.
"Certainly."

Ashlyn
closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'll be back. Don't do anything else- anything- until you hear from me." Turning on her heel, she marched to the door, flinging it open just as a brilliant bolt of lightning split the sky in front of her.

"Aik," she said to the wolf
, who was still curled around himself and grumbling at the rain. "You need to stay here and make sure no one gets in. Seriously, no one, not even the Toryn elders."

"Of course,
Ash." The furry beast stood and shook like a dog, droplets of rain spraying in every direction. "I will await further orders from you."

Ashlyn
stepped out into the rain and looked up at the gray sky...swallowed hard. This wasn't going to go over well at all. She began walking, and Skye fell into step beside her.

"
What'd she say?" he asked curiously.

One step.
Two steps. Her feet were like anchors in the ocean, sucked downwards by the inevitable pull of gravity, almost too heavy to lift.

She glanced over at
Skye, trying to think of some way to form words out of the jumble of information swirling in her mind. Oh, the thoughts in her head were horrible, too outrageous to even consider, but what if she was right? What if she was right, oh
gods,
what if everything she'd been led to believe was nothing but an intricately fabricated
lie?

Before she knew it, she was running, her sneakers pounding on the wet grass as she sprinted towards the br
idge that led to Heaven. The wooden slats echoed and groaned beneath her feet, and she hit the double doors running, the dual hinges allowing them to swing inward and the distinctive stench of sake filling her nostrils as she charged into the room. Momentarily blinded, she paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, breathing so hard it felt like her lungs were cracking.

Her gaze focused on Kou, sitting at the end of the bar closest to
the wall, listening to Tag talking animatedly with Ellis. Restlyn was rummaging around behind the bar- where else?- with her newly dark hair pulled into a tight bun.

"Floor!"
Nozomi- who had been bartending in Heaven for longer than Ashlyn could remember- shuffled out from behind the counter. "Floor wet!" he yelled at Ashlyn in very stilted Merchant Tongue. "You disrespect!"

Ashlyn
brushed past him, focusing only on Kou as she stomped towards him, water droplets flinging with every step."Grab him," she snapped at Ellis, pointing towards Tag.

One
of the things she'd always liked about Ellis, despite his Spartan beginnings, was how he didn't question things at the wrong moment. In a split second he was on his feet and shoving Tag face-down onto the bar, firmly locking the Toryn man's arms behind his back in one swift motion