Dawn of Ash (13 page)

I had been rattling over everything for days. Risha and I had gotten in far too many conversations about what to tell him when he had figured it out all on his own, understanding the ins and outs of it enough to make what I thought had been sound, simple logic seem fickle.

I groaned a bit and turned away, my hand moving toward my curls, ready to drag its way through. I pulled it away quickly, not really wanting to be compared to Ilyan by an eight-year-old again.

It’s pathetic that you have picked up so much from your brother.

You are better than him.

You were supposed to destroy him.

No.

Kill him, Ryland.

Stop waiting.

Do this.

For me.

“Don’t worry; you don’t have to say it. My dad didn’t like it much when I was right, either.” The words came out so easily, the certainty of truth behind them, spoken with a grin and a flip of his hand.

Like it was nothing.

Yet, I felt responsible, felt so … parental?

My stomach flipped.

Is that what this was? This weird feeling of uncomfortable failure and of failed responsibility? I had never really had a parental figure to know. In fact, the closest I had ever had to a
dad
was Sain, and I was currently plotting to kill my biological father with him.

Even though I had watched plenty of TV shows, I had missed my own father in so much of my life I had never once contemplated how a parent felt in this type of situation. I was too busy sticking myself in the kid’s shoes, too busy trying to imagine what it would be like to have a father who cared and wanted to be in their kids’ lives, not just destroy them.

Now, somehow, I was standing where that TV dad had been, staring down at some kid with this weird feeling of sorrow and disappointment. A feeling I had somehow wronged this kid, that I hadn’t given him what he needed.

I had failed him.

You have failed me.

Be a good son, Ryland.

I felt like I had been kicked in the groin.

It was a sensation I was used to thanks to Rugby. Nevertheless, I didn’t think I would feel it quite so perfectly again, especially when no groin kicking had actually happened.

I was way too young to be dealing with this stuff.

Too late now.

“You’re right.” Those two words were so much harder to say than I would have thought.

Who would have guessed that accepting defeat to a kid would be so hard?

“Whoa,” Jaromir gasped, his eyes widening exponentially. “My dad never did that.”

“Did what?”

“Admitted it.”

It’s because you are weak.

I narrowed my eyes at him. It seemed like such the logical thing to do. If you made a mistake, you owned up to it. Then you made it better. Wasn’t that how this stuff went? I could already tell this was going to be a lot harder than I had thought.

Thank goodness I wasn’t his real father.

“Well, I made a mistake, didn’t I?” My voice was much harder than I wanted it to be. It was more with frustration from trying to figure this out than from anger. Jaromir didn’t really see that, though.

He looked at me with worry before shrugging his shoulders. “I guess.”

This whole thing was getting much too complicated.

“Well then, I’m sorry for it.” While I paused awkwardly, he gaped at me uncomfortably, and I did the only thing I could think of. “Now try it again.”

“Try what again?”

“The inverted flame.”

“But I thought—”

“You already seem to know more than your fair share. I promise no more secrets. And anything else you want to know, we will talk about it later. I promise.” And preferably not when I was still trying to figure out what in the world had happened and what role I had taken on.

Besides, I knew he had been dying to talk about what he had seen with Joclyn all afternoon. It was not something I wished to reiterate quite yet. I still needed to talk to Sain and figure out what in the world he had been thinking.

What he was doing.

I supposed it was a good thing we had already scheduled dinner tonight, even though we had planned on card games and trying to figure out where the rest of the Soul’s Blade was. I would have to add a Q&A to the schedule.

Jaromir caught my meaning quickly enough and grinned widely before running back to the center of the courtyard, leaving me trying to catch my breath while the space filled with streams of smoke and fireless flame.

“Why do I feel like I have just run a marathon?” I asked the question to the empty courtyard then jumped when someone responded.

“I didn’t think we had the space to run a marathon.”

I spun toward the voice, toward Risha who was walking through the dim red light toward me, her arms full of what looked like sandwiches and who knew what else.

I simultaneously smiled and cringed, something she did not miss.

“Are you okay, Ryland?” Her voice was sweet, and the disgust that had filled me at seeing the food left quickly. “Is it okay that I am here?”

“More than okay.”

I thought I had done a fairly decent job of keeping Joclyn clueless of my affection for her for all those years. I had done everything right: the right gifts, the right words, the right amount of touch. It had taken all my instincts not to go all caveman on her and claim my prize, and in the end, I had done it, anyway.

But Risha…

Risha brought out a whole new, awkward side of me I hadn’t even known existed, one that stammered and blushed for dumb reasons and somehow forgot to be suave. It was something no guy should ever be, especially over a girl. It drove me crazy, though she seemed to find it adorable.

“Good,” she said with one of her wide grins that twisted through my stomach, “because, with the look you were giving me, I was sure I had grown a lizard head out of my shoulders.”

She laughed at that, but I gawked at her, trying to get my mind to pick up the pace and form coherent sentences.

“No!” That was too loud. “It’s just that you smell … I mean the food smells … I mean the food…” I let whatever mumbo jumbo I had been trying to say fade away as she laughed, her green eyes sparkling as the bell-like chime of her amusement made my stomach flip around a few more times. All thought was slowly draining from my mind like goo.

There was something about her—about Risha—that had been troubling for me. Considering the way she always appeared with food when I was training Jaromir, despite having all of the responsibilities to tend to as Ilyan’s second, she had still managed to seek me out. I would venture a guess that I wasn’t the only one fighting off an overly strong attachment.

That and the way she looked at me pretty much sealed it for me.

“What is it, Ryland? Don’t you like food?” She could barely get the words out with how much she was laughing. Her eyes danced as the loose curls of her strawberry-blonde hair bobbed and swayed over her back.

“Something like that.” I tried my hand at subtly again, this time keeping my voice low, something that was made easier by the deep Czech we spoke.

My stomach flipped as her cheeks tinged with red, her eyes piercing mine while she took a step closer, her head held high as she offered one of the disgusting sandwiches to me.

“Or was it this supposed marathon you were running?”

My mind went blank. “What marathon?”

“When I came in … You were talking about a marathon.” She smiled, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear as she looked at me.

“Oh.” I could barely think.

It took me a full minute to catch on. Apparently, she had drained my mind of thought more than I had assumed.

“It wasn’t a real marathon.”

“I didn’t think so.” Her eyes glittered even more, staring at me with some message I couldn’t quite decipher before she looked away, toward Jaromir who was still shooting smoke away from himself, still trying to accomplish that darned wrist flick.

I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose, fully aware it was also something I had picked up from Ilyan yet not really caring at the moment.

“Jaromir is the marathon, I take it.” She took another step toward me, her sudden change in proximity making it very hard to concentrate.

Come on, Ryland, what’s wrong with you?

“I think I realized how much more he sees me as a father figure and less like a…” I struggled to find a word.

I could feel the heat of her skin radiate against me, making it very hard to focus.

“Friend,” she supplied.

Close enough.

I nodded.

“Well, to be fair, Ry, I don’t think he’s supposed to be your friend or you his.”

I turned toward her quickly, my eyes narrowing in question, but all she did was smile and move to sit on the old, bloodstained cobbles, her hand waving beside her in welcoming.

I sat beside her without question, my heart continuing to hammer uncomfortably in my chest.

“You can’t really be his friend and teach him everything he needs to know—to fight, to win … You have to train him, not play with him.”

She was saying things I already knew, things I should have been more careful about from the beginning. However, it was so much more complex than that, and I felt more than a little awkward admitting it to her.

I exhaled heavily and turned back to Jaromir, a small smile sneaking out at the boy. The streams of smoke were gone, replaced by tiny, little rings he had somehow figured out how to conjure all on his own.

“He figured out about my relationship to Edmund and what we are really training him for.” My voice was dead.

I heard her exhale beside me, her own frustrations rattling through the red-tinged air.

“I guess that would be marathon. What did you end up telling him?”

“The truth.”

“The truth?” She was frustrated, and I didn’t blame her.

My focus snapped to her at the panic in her voice, not surprised to see the aggravation that normally came before some kind of reprimand. Even if we were crushing on each other, she couldn’t let that side of her go all the way. I didn’t blame her.

“Calm down, Risha.” I was careful to keep the irritation out of my voice, but she fumed more. “I didn’t tell him anything. He had already figured it all out himself.”

“So much for shielding him.”

“That’s the thing, though,” I sighed, scooting a tiny bit closer to her as I lowered my voice, careful to keep him from overhearing.

She leaned forward, and my brain tried to melt out of my ears again.

Keep it together, Ry,
I ordered. It was becoming my mantra around her.

“He doesn’t want to be shielded, Risha. He wants to be prepared.”

She was obviously expecting something else. Her eyes widened with a little headshake, and then she pulled away from me a bit in shock.

Chuckling deeply at her reaction, I scooted away a bit, desperate to get some fresh air instead of that deep perfume she always wore.

It did, anyway, not that I minded.

“So he wants to know?”

“Every word.”

“Do you think he’s ready?” she asked me curiously, her eyes full of the same sparkle I had seen on the very first day.

“Why are you asking me?”

“Well, it’s like before … You aren’t his friend. You can’t be. But you are something, a guardian, maybe. Something like that. It seems like a decision such as that would be up to you. I mean, he can’t have a government raising him.”

“Don’t you think I’m a little young for that?” My voice was shaking violently, but I didn’t even try to conceal it. I wasn’t too happy with the sudden turn this conversation had taken.

Yes, it was something I had thought of barely moments before, but hearing it from someone else was a little too solid.

I swallowed heavily, trying to get the heavy lump out of my throat, yet it didn’t seem to want to move.

“I think you are as old or young as you want to be, but sometimes, when hard things happen, we have to grow up a little bit, whether we want to or not.” She stared at me intently, my heart racing even faster at the look in her eyes, at the little dimple that played around the corner of her lips.

“Risha!” Jaromir’s shout rippled through the courtyard as the boy intersected with Risha, tackling the beautiful woman out of sight, leaving me staring blankly into the courtyard as Jaromir began regaling her with everything that had happened over the past few hours.

I barely saw.

I barely heard.

I sat beside them, one word echoing through my head.

Guardian.

Scarcely a minute before, I had realized I felt like a parent to this boy. I had felt responsible. And now, with that one word, everything from before kind of fit into place.

Risha was right.

More than responsibility, more than some twisted parental relationship, sometimes you had to grow up and do what was needed of you.

Slowly, the idea cemented in my mind, becoming more familiar than it should have, the scene before me becoming a little clearer through the fog.

“Some marathon, huh?” Risha said as I looked up to where Jaromir was still occupying her, some weird pink smoke seeping from the palm of his hand.

I stared at them, watching her eyes sparkling as my stomach flipped again, the pungent smell of Jaromir’s magic filling my mind. It might have been the fumes from the smoke, but I was fairly certain being around Risha had turned Edmund’s voice off in my head.

Some marathon, indeed.