Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) (22 page)

Something flashed across his handsome features-
something like the pain she’d felt the day before, when he had coldly
backpedaled after finally admitting his feelings for her. Ashlyn felt a brief
twinge of satisfaction.

The loud whirring of engines reached her ears, and
over Drake’s shoulder she saw the airship circling, looking for a place to land
in the water-soaked city.

Drake grabbed Tag’s body and flung it aside, finally
freeing Ashlyn to move. She tried to pull one knee up, and couldn’t do it,
barely eliciting a tremble from her leaden limbs. Drake gently reached over and
touched her injured arm, and the green light of
heal
illuminated his face as the warming effects of the magic
enveloped her.

“No…use,” Ashlyn mumbled, and turned her head to the
side, irritated at the loss of her numbness as she began to warm up. “Leave me
alone.”

Somewhere in her head she was aware that he was
trying to save her, and she was also very much aware that he did not seem to be
another one of her hallucinations. But she wanted to be left alone.

Drake turned her face towards him again. “Stay
awake,” he said firmly.

“No use,” she repeated.

“I won’t let you die,” he snapped, ruby eyes
flashing. “I promise you that.
Stay
awake.
”

She could feel her wounds closing, nerves
reconnecting and flesh knitting under Drake’s touch. As the pain of healing
intensified, it seemed to penetrate the haze of her delirium. Ashlyn found
herself thrown back into reality with surprising abruptness, and her whole body
jerked in shock. “That
hurts,
” she
moaned, trying (and failing miserably) to pull her arm away from Drake. “Stop
it.”

He responded by sliding his arms underneath her and
standing, picking her up so that her head lolled back and her arms dangled
awkwardly. Ashlyn’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, but a sharp bark from Aik
brought her back. “
Crap,”
she said
ineloquently, realizing that her body was trying to quit even as Drake was
trying to save her.
I’ve lost too much
blood.

“I’m taking you to the airship,” Drake said, and he
shifted her in his arms so that her cheek was against his shoulder. “Stay
awake.” He began to run, and Ashlyn was totally helpless to do anything but lie
in his arms and stupidly hope that he didn’t drop her. She could hear the rhythmic
clicking of Aik’s claws on the pearl tiles as he followed, could feel Drake’s
hands tightening on her body. Every step served to jolt her out of
near-unconsciousness, but the urge to sleep was constant and nearly
overwhelming.

“Talk to me,” Drake told her suddenly. He leaped
over the last two steps, landing with a splash in thigh-deep water that
drenched them both, and waded towards the next staircase. The urgency of his
movements and the shallowness to his breathing was unmistakable. He was worried
about her.

If she’d had the strength to do so, Ashlyn would
have laughed out loud. She was dying, he’d rejected her, and he wanted to talk
now?
Her thoughts were too muddled to
comprehend that he was trying to keep her awake, but some miniscule, polite
corner of her mind (a corner that was clearly repressed during her more lucid
moments) reminded her that it would be rude not to comply with his request, so
she struggled to respond.

“You don’t…need…to breathe,” she murmured, saying
the first thing that came to mind. It seemed a betrayal for Drake to deceive
people with unnecessary human habits.

“But I still do it,” Drake answered candidly as he
ran up the steps. “As much from habit as an attempt to blend in. Keep talking.”

Ashlyn thought about her dad, lying beside him and
holding his hand. She’d been so happy to see him again. But after Kou had
broken into the room, her dad had still been lying there, a peaceful and serene
expression on his face…except that he hadn’t been breathing at all.

“Kou…had…
re
…
reveal
,” she whispered, and she was
speaking so softly that only Drake, with his superhuman hearing, could have
understood her.

Their eyes met briefly as his step faltered, a
slight hitch in his stride, and she saw the sorrow in his eyes. He knew about
her father.

Ashlyn had lost her hira shuriken to Kou in the
basement of her home in Toryn, and she was so desperate to save a dying Vargo
that she allowed Kou to escape with the weapon, along with the stanes inside
it.
Reveal
led its user to whatever
they were seeking, and Kou had found Ashlyn’s father by using the stane’s
powerful tracking magic. Kou had murdered Lord Li as Ashlyn slept beside him,
by injecting some kind of poison into her father’s IV line.

There was a small, desperate part of her that had
secretly hoped Sara or Aik were wielding some kind of rare magic that would
bring her father back to life. There were so many stanes in Kresmir, so many
magics. One of them had to bear the power of resurrection.

But the despair in Drake’s eyes told her the truth,
and Ashlyn wanted to die in that moment. For three years she had avoided her
father and Toryn, fleeing her destiny until even Lord Li had believed her to be
dead. When she’d returned, Kou had led her to believe that her father was the
enemy, driven mad by
shift,
but in
reality Lord Li had been a victim of Kou’s manipulations and cruelty. His last
months had been spent suffering at the hands of a monster. If Ashlyn had
accepted her birthright and returned to Toryn following Lord Angelo’s defeat,
then maybe her father would still be alive today.

“He’s
gone,”
she
choked out, and began to cry, except that she had no tears left, and her sobs
only invoked pitiful tremors in her already trembling ribcage. Hers was the
crippling, heart-rending grief of a dying daughter, the lamentation of a broken
warrior. There was no reprieve.

Drake lifted her closer, crushing her to him in an
awkward embrace as he ran. “I know,” he said, and his voice was raw, like he’d
been breathing hard from running too long, except that Ashlyn knew vampires
didn’t need to breathe and Drake Lockhart could never get winded.

The sound of his boots against the ramp to the
airship clanged in her ears, and Drake said, “We’re here, Ashlyn, just
stay awake,
” before Sara’s shrill voice
cut in with, “Careful now. Where is she hurt?”

“Her right arm was torn open. I’ve sealed the vein.
She’s nearly bled out.” Drake spoke as he ducked into the airship, heading down
the corridor towards the infirmary. Ashlyn numbly focused on keeping her eyes
open, fighting the urge to squeeze them shut under the harsh fluorescent lights
inside the ship.

“She’ll need a transfusion.” Ashlyn heard metallic
squeaking as Sara yanked open a file cabinet. “What is her blood type? I can’t
remember. Where is her file?” Desperation was creeping into the scientist’s
tone.

Drake placed Ashlyn on the operating table, easing
her down carefully and lacing the fingers of his right hand through hers.
 
“We have the same blood type,” he said,
brushing strands of frosty hair back from Ashlyn’s face with the cold metal
fingers of his gloved left hand. “Take mine.”

There was a brief pause as Sara considered this, and
Ashlyn stared up into Drake’s face, blinking furiously to abate the sting of
her dry eyes and trying very hard to stay conscious. Now that she’d been yanked
from her own delirium into the real world, emotions were ricocheting back and
forth inside her, each one opening a fresh and painful wound upon impact. She
wanted to sleep, she wanted to die…she wanted to wake up from this awful dream
and be back in Endro, far away from Toryn and Kou and the horror of reality.

Drake held her hand tighter, his eyes burning
straight to her soul.

“I don’t know about that, Drake,” Sara said at last.
“Your condition…your blood might have contagions that could…affect Ashlyn.”

“She won’t turn.” Drake’s voice was sharp. “Please. She
is dying. My blood has healing properties. A direct transfusion is the only
way.” He didn’t release Ashlyn’s hand, instead jerkily raising his silver
glove, unbuckling the straps with his teeth, and dropping the heavy contraption
to the floor with a loud metallic clank. He offered his wrist to Sara, and the
light gleamed off the scar tissue that covered his forearm. “I’m ready.”

Sara hesitated, clearly flustered. Skye appeared beside
her, and his expression was grave.

“Drake, can you guarantee that she won’t become a
vampire if you give her blood?” the blond swordsman asked, folding his arms
across his chest.

“Can you guarantee that she’ll live if I don’t?”
Drake countered, and Skye glanced at Sara, clearly expecting a response.

Sara’s face was white. “I- I can’t guarantee
anything,” she stammered. “But every moment we wait changes the odds.”

“Then let me
save
her,”
the vampire hissed, and even in her half-conscious state, Ashlyn could
feel the angry heat radiating off him in waves. “You know I’d never do anything
if I thought it might hurt her.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Skye said, nodding. He
glanced down at Ashlyn, seemingly considering the options. Finally he turned to
Sara. “Do it.”

The scientist rushed to the cabinets and began
pulling out equipment, and Ashlyn watched her silently. Skye distracted her by
suddenly holding something to her mouth, and she looked up at him, feeling the
dampness of the canteen’s opening against her lips.

“It’s only water,” he said. “Drink.”

She was immediately frustrated to find that she was
too weak even to swallow, but she let the water trickle down her parched
throat, and it was soothing nonetheless. When she had drank it all, he moved
away, touching a hand briefly to her shoulder for reassurance.
 

Her eyes eventually drifted shut, lulled by the
comforting warmth of the infirmary. She listened quietly as the people around
her spoke in hushed tones, and began to drift off to sleep, only to be interrupted
by Drake.

“Ashlyn,” he said, and his voice was soft but
urgent. “Stay with me.”

“You
…stay
with
me,”
she retorted hoarsely,
angry at being awoken. She was at once irritated and exhausted, and in her
grief-stricken and weakened state, Drake’s uncharacteristic display of
affection was as frustrating as it was comforting. With a monumental effort,
she managed to open her eyes again, and turned her head slightly to see what
was happening.

Sara was pushing something into Ashlyn’s wrist,
attaching her to a long tube that was already hooked into Drake’s arm. Ashlyn
had never seen Drake without his silver glove before, and the complex web of
scars starting just above his wrist and continuing up the inside of his arm was
both horrifying and fascinating. There were so many crescent-shaped ridges
crowded onto the skin of his forearm that some of them overlapped onto each
other like some kind of morbid patchwork quilt.

She watched fuzzily as the blood began to flow from
his body into hers, and felt an immediate jolt as the foreign blood touched her
veins. “Your arm,” she whispered. “What…are those?”

“Bite marks,” Drake replied.

Skye appeared on Ashlyn’s opposite side, eyebrows
knitting as he surveyed what must have been extensive damage to Drake’s entire
forearm. “How many bites does it take to turn you into a vampire?”

“This wasn’t done to turn me,” Drake answered, and
the brevity of his answer spoke volumes.

Ashlyn had never questioned why he wore the silver
glove, but now she found herself wondering what else he had kept hidden from
her- and also wondering just how extensively Lord Angelo had tortured Drake
before turning him into a vampire. Most of Drake’s wounds healed with little or
no scarring, so these bite marks must have been inflicted while he was still
human.

She could feel the blood strengthening her, little
by little. Hesitantly, she tried to squeeze Drake’s hand, and was pleased when
her fingers responded.

His gaze locked once more with hers, and Ashlyn took
a deep breath, feeling almost like time was standing still, trapping the two of
them together in a strange limbo. With her delirium slowly dissipating, she
felt like she could finally see him clearly, and the events of their last
meeting crowded her mind uncomfortably. It wasn’t something she wanted to think
about right now, but with Drake holding her hand and staring deep into her
eyes, his blood flowing into her veins, it was impossible to focus on anything
else. She could tell from his expression that there was something he wanted to
say too, but it certainly wasn’t the appropriate time or place.

“Tag is…dead,” Ashlyn rasped, turning her head
towards Skye and breaking eye contact with Drake. “I wounded Kou…but he
escaped.”

“You did good, Ash,” Skye said firmly. “We left
Trace and Ellis in the Heavenly City. If Kou is still on the northern
continent, they’ll find him and kill him, and we can finally end this.”

She nodded faintly, a lump in her throat. If her dad
had still been alive, Skye would be reprimanding her right now for running off
alone for the third time in a row. Somehow Skye being nice to her was a million
times more soul-crushing than Skye yelling at her for being an irresponsible
brat.