Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (5 page)

"I was talking to Vargo about you," she offered, a little tartly.

He said nothing, and Ashlyn frowned again.

"What's your horse's name?" she asked, trying a different tactic.

"Name?" he repeated mildly.

Ashlyn's eyed widened. "You haven't named your horse? How do you call it? 'Here, horsey?' Gods, that's lame. The poor thing probably thinks you don't even care about it."

The barn door opened. She turned to see Skye striding into the barn, his sword strapped to his back, his gloved hands flexing at his sides. He looked ready for war.

"Time to load up. Aaron’s already in the airship."

"Okay," said Ashlyn, hopping off the bucket. "Drake, I don't know where we're headed, but you better think up a name for your horse before we get there or I'm going to call it something really girly."

"Glad to know the Ash we all know and detest is back," Trace said, coming up behind Skye.

"Yeah well, it could be worse. I could be a Spartan," Ashlyn said affably as she led her horse out of the barn. Trace couldn't think fast enough to make a comeback before the other girl was gone.

Chapter 3

Flour Power

"What's the matter, sweetie? Not hungry?" Ashlyn cooed, holding out a tempting handful of fresh-
cut hay to Suki. The chestnut mare cocked her head to the side and stared at Ashlyn, obviously still miffed about the loading argument they'd had only a few minutes before.

"Come on, Suki," Ashlyn pleaded, switching fluidly from Merchant Tongue to Toryn, which was the language she spoke most often to the mare. "I know I should have taught you to load into an airship a little sooner than today, but it's not like there's a bunch of airships just lying around for me to practice loading. And this isn't so bad, is it? Look at all the other horsies that are here to keep you company."

As if she could understand Ashlyn's words, Suki glanced at the other horse in the stall with her - Aaron's mangy brown gelding, Tritan, who was snoozing beside her. Suki’s dark eyes blinked as she surveyed what was possibly the smelliest, most ancient animal known to man. Suki then gave her insipid human owner a pointed look.

Ashlyn sighed. "Okay, then. Have it your way."

She stepped out and slid the latch into place on Suki's stall door. As the airship slowly rose from the ground, Ashlyn remembered her tendency for motion sickness. Her stomach, in stark contradiction to the smooth ascent of the ship, plummeted ominously, and she squeezed her eyes shut, willing the rocking sensation to stop.

The fingers of her hay-less hand clenched the edge of the door slats; tight enough to turn her knuckles white, tight enough to force slivers of the aging wood into her fingertips. The dull soreness in the back of her head from hitting the doorjamb the night before became an agonizing, throbbing ache at the base of her skull. The pain was a relief, in a way, but not enough to still Ashlyn's suddenly shaking world.

"I'll be fine," she said out loud. The tremble in her voice belied the brave words, but she ignored it. "Fine, fine, fine, FINE." With that, she pried her fingers from the door and turned, managing only a half step before her legs buckled and she fell ungracefully to the floor in a tangle of limbs and fresh hay.

"Urgh," she muttered, clutching her stomach. No way was she going to get sick this time. The month she'd spent on the airship before had been downright nasty, but she was an adult now, almost twenty-four and not about to embarrass herself by barfing all over the interior of Aaron's most prized possession.

Particularly not when Skye was in the room next door, waiting to see how much her fighting skills had changed in the past eight years, if at all.

Ashlyn wasn't so sure herself, especially with the weakness in her right arm. It was hard to see your own improvement when you were fighting alone. Certainly her reflexes had been honed to perfection - monsters rarely surprised her these days, a big difference from when she'd first set out on her own and the first blow was pretty much always
not
hers.

Slowly she climbed to her feet, noting with irritation the grass stains on her knees. Fantastic. She scooped up the smushed hay and tossed a bunch of it into Suki's pen, but her aim was lousy. The hay whacked Tritan on the head and fell to the floor. There was no response from the slumbering gelding. He was probably dead or something.

She tottered away from the stalls, gaining only a small bit of confidence with every unsteady step. If she hadn't gotten sick already, chances were she probably wouldn't. The only serious issue she was having was the doorway - it seemed to be expanding, collapsing, and moving from side to side all at once.

"Focus, pipsqueak," Ashlyn said loudly, trying to force herself to regain all senses. It didn't help that the ship was still moving, throwing her off-balance even more. She clumsily unstrapped the hira shuriken from her back and thumped herself hard in the forehead, triggering an answering wail of agony from the bump at the base of her skull. It worked. Her world began to steady almost immediately.

Ashlyn stepped through the doorway, smiling at her success, and stopped when she came face-to-face with Skye. Who was shirtless.

Man, have I been missing out with this whole reclusive warrior gig.

He quirked an eyebrow, a crooked smile creeping onto his lips. "What?"

It took Ashlyn a second to realize she had actually voiced her thoughts - in Toryn, thankfully. She switched to Merchant Tongue and said sheepishly, "Sorry, just thinking out loud. I'm not, uh, feeling great. I'd forgotten how much I
don't
like flying."

His curious expression turned concerned. "Are you up for this? We can always wait . . . "

"No, I'm fine." Or she would be, if she could keep from touching any part of his sculpted chest or well-muscled arms during their scuffle. "Are we fighting hand-to-hand or with weapons? I don't remember which one is required for the, um, Leadership Duel."

"Without weapons, first. We'll look up Toryn customs when we reach Cosmea and figure out how you're going to be fighting Devlyn." He held out a hand, and Ashlyn reluctantly handed over her shuriken. It was a long-range weapon, to be sure, but she always felt more comfortable when she had it, regardless of whether she was using it or not.

Skye set the hira shuriken on the table next to his sword and turned to face her, clenching his fists together and bowing in traditional Toryn style. Ashlyn smiled and did the same. Her stomach had ceased its flip-flopping completely, and she wondered wryly if bloodlust was all that could satiate her motion sickness.

What she found more strange than her sudden wellness, however, was the feeling of comfort she had in the one-on-one atmosphere with Skye. Eight years may have made her a little shy around a large group of people, but she felt totally at ease with just one person.

"Okay, just some basic stuff right now. I'm going to come at you with my fists and I want you to block as best you can." Skye advanced before he had even finished the second sentence, aiming punches at her with the grace and fluidity of a natural athlete (a corny observation that Ashlyn was pretty sure wouldn't have been made if Skye had been fully dressed, but seeing as how he was half-naked, her mind was running wild with all sorts of zany thoughts).

Ashlyn dodged easily, sometimes throwing up her left arm to block the blows. When she realized that he was slowly backing her into a corner, she sidestepped underneath one of his jabs and shoved him forward against the wall, catching his arm and twisting it behind his back as he attempted to elbow her in the stomach.

"Hey," she said, happy with herself. "I guess I still got it, right?"

Skye laughed, and she was suddenly aware of the flex of his forearm against her wrist. She stepped backwards, releasing him. Dang. She really needed to get over this or she wasn't going to be able to focus at
all
.

"Not bad," he said, turning towards her again. "I could have taken you if I had attacked your weaker side, though. You seem more focused on using your left arm to fight and defend. What happens if your left side is incapacitated somehow?"

"Then I fight with my right," she replied, not sure that it was the truth. "I'm naturally right-handed, but I had an injury to my arm a couple, um, I guess about a year and a half ago. It just hasn't recovered yet. Not fully, anyway. It won't affect my fighting, though."

"Let me see," he said. He took her arm and ran his hand down her bicep.

"Ow," she muttered, more out of habit than anything.

Skye ignored her admission of pain -
what a feeling guy
- and squeezed her upper arm gently, feeling the scarred muscles and abnormally thickened bone within. "It was a bad break," he observed.

"You don't have to tell me that. I was
there
," Ashlyn said fervently. She could still remember the feeling of the snake's fangs sinking into her skin, tearing her muscles, snapping her bones like dried branches. It was more horrible than anything she'd ever experienced before.

She could actually conjure up the memory of the pain as if it were still happening. With other injuries she only remembered the before and after - with this one she had a front-row seat to view a close-up anytime she felt like it.

"Did you get these to cover your scars?" he asked. His fingers traced the outline of her tattoos, sending shivers down her arm.

"Yeah. You can't see the scars now unless you're up close. The artist did a pretty good job of hiding them," Ashlyn said, staring at the tattoos, transfixed as she always was whenever she studied the fascinating designs. "Hey, but don't worry. You should have seen it before I took my little sabbatical at Jenn's house; my arm was like a frigging
twig
, dude. I've built it up a lot and I should be okay to fight."

"Jenn’s house?" Skye repeated. "Is that where you were while all of this was happening?"

Oops. She met his gaze uneasily, expecting to see some kind of anger. But his expression was uncharacteristically sorrowful, gleaming with what looked suspiciously like unshed tears. Her reflection wavered in his aqua eyes.

"I stayed there for six months," she said. "A viper attacked the ranch where I was staying, and I killed it. It nearly tore my arm off, but I killed it, and afterwards…well, I thought Restlyn might be in Endro, so I went there, but she was gone.”

“You were in Jenn’s house?” Skye’s expression was guarded, but she saw the pain in his eyes when he looked up at her.

Ashlyn pursed her lips, trying to control her temper. So both she and Restlyn were taken with Skye - Restlyn obviously more than she, because Ashlyn had never acknowledged the emotions as anything more than a youthful crush - and yet here was Skye, still hung up on a dead girl.

She jerked her arm out of his grasp, unable to hide her exasperation. “Actually, I was in Restlyn’s house, but she’d already moved on to Storim by then. It hasn’t been Jenn’s house for years, Skye.”

He nodded. “I haven’t been back at all in the last eight years. I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t you ever visit Restlyn?”

He turned away, and Ashlyn rolled her eyes. There was a lot she wanted to say to Skye- and number one on that list was
Get over yourself and notice Restlyn for once!
But yelling at him wouldn’t do any good now.

She turned and left
the room, not bothering to snatch up her shuriken off the table.

Skye’s obsession with Jenn was confusing and more than a little weird.
Ashlyn was one of the few who knew the details of the swordsman’s relationship with Jenn, and she knew that it had never gone beyond friendship, but it certainly didn’t look that way to people on the outside. Skye’s older brother, Jax, had died in the war, and Skye had taken on the responsibility of protecting Jax’s fiancée, Jenn. He’d failed when Lord Angelo had killed the Angel, but in Ashlyn’s opinion, there was no reason for Skye to still be grieving eight years later.

Ashlyn
found Restlyn in the kitchen, deep in thought with her nose buried in a cookbook.