Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy)

Prologue

For thousands of years, mystical beings known as Angels protected the Free Lands of Kresmir, offering their wisdom and guidance to the mortals who shared their world. Under the direction of the ethereal race, Kresmir blossomed. Besides sharing their knowledge of how to conserve Kresmir’s energy rather than squandering its resources needlessly, the Angels taught the mortals how to harness the planet’s natural magic in precious gems known as
stanes
. Kresmir was changed forever with this discovery.

The rise of Lord Angelo and his Spartan assassins, however, was a sudden and unexpected blow to the Angels, and to the people under their tutelage. Lord Angelo’s origins remained a m
ystery, but one thing was clear- his cruelty was unmatched in the once-peaceful Free Lands. After overthrowing the eastern continent and orchestrating a brutal attack on the Angels’ Heavenly City, Lord Angelo moved quickly towards world domination, even overthrowing the monarchy of the western continent, Toryn, and placing its people under tyrannical rule.

Lord Angelo’s reign lasted nearly two decades, marked firstly by the genocide of the Angels, and secondly by the crippling drain on the planet’s resources to create a superhuman army, helmed by Lord Angelo’s Division of Enhanced Military Operations Nano-engineering. The genetically enha
nced, magic-wielding DEMON army was virtually unstoppable.

As Lord Angelo’s power plants continued to sap energy from the wounded planet and its dying sun, a DEMON soldier named Skye Damien formed a small rebellion against Lord Angelo. Despite the devastating
loss of Jenn, the last known Angel in Kresmir, Skye Damien’s ragtag group of insurgents challenged Lord Angelo and ultimately defeated him, overthrowing the dictator and establishing an elected president over the newly-formed Free Lands Democracy.

After saving the world, their mission complete, the rebels scattered. Among their ranks was sixteen-year old Ashlyn Li, daughter of the reigning Lord of Toryn. Overwhelmed by her newfound celebrity, and feeling ill-prepared to face the responsibility of training for Ladyship of her kingdom, Ashlyn retreated into seclusion. For eight years, she traversed the Free Lands, avoiding human contact and trying to make some sense of her conflicted feelings towards her friends, the rebels who had helped her save the sun.

Chapter 1

In the Rain

Ashlyn hummed tunelessly as she picked her way carefully over the debris of what used to be the outskirts of Endro, stopping only when something of potential value flashed enough to catch her eye.

Most of it was junk, really. She'd noticed that on her first trip through, on her way to Jenn’s old house, where she'd been for the past
six months. It was longer than she'd stayed in any one place in the past eight years. Long enough to remember that once upon a time, she'd been a social butterfly, and it was time to start fluttering again.

Anyway, she wasn't here to search for money, but if someone had decided to leave behind a diamond watch worth a couple hundred credits, damned if she wasn't going to pawn it. Eight years of solitude hadn't made her
that
boring.

Heh.
She smiled as she tucked a tarnished locket into her pocket. There was probably a lot of people who would disagree with her on that. Aaron, for one. The old codger. She smiled humorlessly at the memory of her old friend. A good head and a half taller than her and more than willing to use his size to get what he wanted, the aging pilot was crass, uncouth and frickin' annoying at times. But it probably wouldn't be too awful to see him again, or any of the other people she‘d met on her adventures eight years ago. They were the last people Ashlyn had spent time with, cared about. The last people who had cared about her . . .

Oh, stupid girl!

Ashlyn shook her head and led her horse, Suki, around what looked like a bent piece of a metal door. She felt irritated at herself for remembering something that had taken place so long ago. Even now she knew her friends, remembered their faces, could still recall the feeling of warmth and acceptance she had experienced when she was with them. Not a day went by that she didn't think about them. And yet not one of those friends had made any attempt to contact her once their job was done.

How was that even possible? How could you spend an entire month living with someone, fighting by their side, and
saving the world
, and then just . . . forget about them?

Even Drake . . .
damn him . . . the last time she'd seen the vampire gunslinger, he'd been ducking through the doorway at the inn at North Camp on the upper continent, a beautiful and familiar woman at his side. There had been a smile on his face. A smile. Ashlyn knew how rare Drake's smiles were. To see him offer one so easily to that pint-sized bratty Spartan, Trace, was more than Ashlyn could handle.

Ashlyn had
fled silently, unwilling to conjure up anything resembling manners for the girl who seemed to have cracked Drake's impenetrable barrier.

She'd come here to find
her adopted sister, Restlyn, after that. The older girl was half-Toryn, and the closest thing to a sister that Ashlyn had. The last time Ashlyn had seen Restlyn, the older girl was living in Jenn’s house. But apparently no one had thought to contact Ashlyn when the citizens of Endro had abandoned the dying city. No one had thought about including her.

Her friends had obviously moved on in the last eight years, but Ashlyn felt like she was running in circles, trapped between old memories and a scarily uncertain future. When she’d been in the
thick of it, fighting against Lord Angelo, she’d never considered what to do afterwards- after Lord Angelo’s defeat, and after she and her friends parted ways. How could she return to Toryn, after everything she’d been through? It wasn't like you could put your life on hold to live and travel with a bunch of strangers for a month, get nearly killed about a gazillion times, save the world, and wake up the next morning ready for tea and leadership training in your hometown tourist attraction. Please.

Her father might have been disappointed in her when she'd left, but Ash
lyn couldn’t bear the thought of continuing as if nothing had changed.

Nope, the world had bigger and better things for Ashlyn Li, and if she couldn'
t find it by wandering Kresmir aimlessly for the rest of her life, then at least she hadn't sat on her butt and waited for death to come knocking.

Okay, so maybe her plan had a few blurred lines and blank spots, but it had seemed like a darn good one eight years ago, when she'd been faced with the pros
pect of training to become Lady Li.

Still
...she got lonely sometimes. You didn't get to be her age without craving a little human companionship at some point, particularly when you'd been traveling the world and fighting for the better part of a decade.

She ducked out the same way she'd gotten into Endro six months ago
- through a tear in the thick outer walls that had no doubt been caused by some fiend. The heavy rain that had been falling all day had finally stopped, although the wind was still going strong. Ashlyn glanced at the setting sun. With the constant darkness inside those walls, she hadn't realized it was so late. No one wanted to be outside Endro at night. There were too many monsters roaming the hills surrounding the abandoned city.

Ashlyn turned Suki
east. She hadn't been to the city of Storim in a long while. Four years at least. The last time, she had walked into a bar, thinking that the name- "Restlyn Place-” had sounded too coincidental to be true, and before she'd even gotten three steps in, some jerk had pinched her butt. Naturally, by the time she was done kicking him in the face, she hadn't really been in the mood for a drink, and had stormed out without a backward glance. She'd been halfway to the southern continent before she realized her favorite bo shuriken was missing. She must have dropped it in her haste.

Damn that guy. She'd never been able t
o find another bo shuriken quite as balanced as the one she'd lost.

Ashlyn caught sight of her reflection in a puddle on th
e ground, and rolled her eyes. The guy probably hadn't had much taste to begin with, but he must have been
really
drunk. Four years ago she had still looked like a little kid. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-three, Ashlyn was finally growing up. Gone was the stick-figured little thief with gangly limbs and googly eyes. In her place was a lithe, somber-faced warrior, still slender but graced with all the curves and features of a real woman. Ashlyn had resorted to hacking off her hair with a knife for the first few years, but had finally given up and let it grow after seeing the results in a mirror. Now it was long, nearly to her waist. Not quite as stunning as Restlyn's knee-length locks, but pretty impressive for a tomboy ninja.

The change hadn't affected the percentage of would-be admirers that
weren't
beating down Ashlyn's door, but maybe she was jinxing herself by keeping her hair severely pulled back all the time. She shook her head vehemently, feeling the tail of her braid brush the exposed skin between the waistband of her shorts and her shirt's hem. She wore a bandanna across her forehead to keep the shorter strands out of her eyes, never bothering to do more than drag a brush through them every now and then.

It was pointless anyway, really. She hadn't seen one single presentable man in all her years of traveling. Maybe she'd set her standards too high.

Hours later, she was barely able to see her hand in front of her face. There was a tiny sliver of a moon, hardly giving enough light for poor Suki to find her way.

When they
finally reached the first lamp-post outside of the small city of Storim, Ashlyn relaxed.

Sometimes her own thoughts were so loud that she could hardly concentrate on anything else, and although she'd grown accustomed to the silence of solitude, tonight she was more than ready for the usual chaos of a town to put her mind at rest.

Suki’s hooves clicked against the cobblestones as they rode across the square and into the light coming from the livery's open doors. Ashlyn dismounted slowly, noting the slight differences in the town's layout since she'd last visited. Restlyn Place was still here, but most of the other shops had changed either hands or names, because she didn't recognize any of them.

Go figure,
she thought wryly.
You leave town for a couple years and expect everything to be the same when you get back, but it never is.
She allowed herself a few moments to wonder briefly just how much Toryn had changed in her absence as she paid the livery owner and handed Suki off to the stable boy.

"Hey, where can I get something to eat around here?" she asked him, not particularly hungry, but hoping that maybe she could find some nice, respectable, family-owned restaurant to hide in.

"Restlyn Place is it," was his brief answer. "We ain't got no place else anymore...the town's not big enough to support 'em."

Ashlyn trudged across the square once more, noting with some disappointment that the rain had picked up again, and opened the door to
Restlyn Place. The sight that greeted her was unexpected, if a little nostalgic, as she stepped into the doorway, one hand still on the well-polished doorknob as the wind tried to blow it shut.