Slight and Shadow (Fate's Forsaken: Book Two) (12 page)

The archer watched, horrified, over Elena’s shoulder as his companion fell. It wasn’t until Slight slipped between his ribs that his eyes shot back to her, and by then, it was too late. He was already dead.

The noise of hurried footsteps drew Elena’s eyes to the ceiling. They clattered overhead for a moment, faded out, and she held her breath. Then came the noise of someone pounding on the hallway door.

She knew the time for play was over. Holthan would handle the stragglers — Elena had to find the Duke.

It only took her a moment to spot him: he had his face plastered to the iron bars of his cell door. His goatee had grown out into a full beard, the months away from the sunlight had paled him, but there was still a considerable amount of haughtiness in his eyes — and they watched her with interest.

His gaze flicked down to Elena’s chest, obviously searching for an emblem or some clue as to who she was. But he found nothing.

“Who are you?” he demanded. When Elena didn’t reply, his hands shot up to grasp the bars. “I don’t know who sent you, but I’m worth far more alive than dead. Get me out of here, and I’ll make you rich.”

Elena stopped at the door, and Duke Reginald smirked.

“Yes, you heard me. I’ll pack the whole bottom of a galleon with gold and jewels … and your employer never has to find out.”

He yelped and fell backwards as Elena’s boot struck the door. The bolt snapped under the force of her blow, and she wrenched it open.

“You’re making a mistake!” he cried, scrambling to his feet. “I’ll make it so you never have to shed blood again —!”

“But what if I really,
really
like it?” Elena whispered. She watched as Reginald’s eyes widened in recognition. “What if I don’t want to stop?”

She pulled her mask down, then, because there was no point in staying covered any longer. Reginald’s eyes swept over her, and then his face went scarlet.

“
You
!” he spat. “I knew there was something off about you — the whole lot of you! D’Mere was always going on about her little pets, but I was beginning to think that she’d made it all up. I must admit … I never thought to look for you in her court.” Greed shone behind his eyes as he took in the gory scene behind her. “D’Mere kept you close, then — closer than I ever expected. And I can certainly see why. You’re no ordinary killer, are you?”

Elena didn’t respond. She knew there was no point in denying it.

For some reason, Reginald seemed to think that knowing the Countess’s secret gave him an advantage. “It seems a shame, to bind a woman of your talents to such pithy tasks. Set me free,” he said, closing the space between them. “Ride with me to Midlan, and I’ll speak on your behalf to the King. He won’t let your skills go to waste. The Countess’s plan is doomed to fail,” he added, when Elena didn’t respond. “I know how she’s been scheming with the others. She even tried to drag me into it. But it won’t work. And she’s too stupid to figure it — gah!”

His body curled around Elena’s daggers as she rammed them through his middle. “You would’ve done better to hold your serpent tongue,” she whispered in his ear, “than to insult my Countess.”

She pulled her blades free, and Reginald managed to land on his knees. He looked down at his wounds, grasped at them for a moment, but seemed to realize that it was hopeless. When he looked up at her, Elena was surprised to see defiance in his eyes.

“Too late,” he muttered, coughing on a mouthful of blood. “She’s got one, too.”

“Who has what?” Elena said impatiently. The pounding on the hall door was becoming louder and more rhythmic: the guards were trying to ram it down.

Reginald managed a smirk. “The Dragongirl.”

His words made no sense to Elena. They were probably only the ramblings of a dying man, but she remembered what he said — in case they meant something to the Countess.

She watched as Reginald toppled over, squirmed, and finally lay still. Then she sheathed her daggers and jogged out of the cell — where she nearly ran into Holthan.

He’d retrieved her throwing knives from the bodies of the card-players.
Is it done
? he asked, as she tucked the knives into her bandolier.

Yes
.

Good. Follow me
.

They left the way they came — slipping out through the grate, past the stone, and into the shelter of the night.

*******

Once they’d made it back to the safety of the mainland, Holthan sunk their boat. They jogged into the woods, listening to the bells that cried out from the castle.

“What are they saying?” Holthan whispered.

Elena was in no mood to talk. “Figure it out,” she muttered, moving ahead of him. “You were supposed to memorize the signals on the way here.”

“Maybe I had better things to do.”

“They’re ringing about an emergency at the castle,” she said shortly. “It’s nothing specific — but you should stay off the main roads.”

“Well … why don’t we just wait till morning?”

Elena didn’t hear the darkness in his voice — she was far too busy thinking over the fight. Her muscles tensed as she remembered the precise angles at which she’d turned, the force she’d used to drive her daggers. She played it over, searching for flaws, and she didn’t find many.

There were a few things she could improve on. But for the most part, it had all gone according to plan. Reginald had many enemies, and his wounds were common enough that any assassin might’ve been responsible. No one would be able to tie the killing to the Countess —

Holthan’s hand clamped down on her arm, startling her. “Where are you off to?”

She broke his hold easily and darted for the horses. He obviously hadn’t been expecting her to fight back — she usually didn’t. Usually, the darkness in Holthan’s eyes held her captive, and fear gripped her limbs like a vise. But not tonight.

Tonight, the thrill of the fight still burned in her veins, and it kept the fear from freezing her.

She’d just gotten her mare untied when Holthan grabbed her wrist and jerked her around. “Let go of me,” she snarled. She tried to pull her arm free, but he was ready for it. This time, there would be no escape. “I have business in the desert,” she reminded him, “and
you
have business in the forest. The Countess will want to know that we’ve succeeded —”

“The whole Kingdom will know by sunrise.” Holthan pulled his mask down, and the dark hunger in his eyes matched the snarl on his lips. “No … my business is with you.”

In one rough movement, he ripped her mask away and locked his lips onto hers. He pressed down so hard — she knew her lips would bruise. She swore she could hear her ribs groaning against his hold.

But this time, Holthan had chosen poorly.

He hadn’t waited until she was off her guard, or wandering alone in some unwatched corner of the castle. He’d attacked her while her blood was up. Through her eyes, he was nothing more than an enemy — just another lopsided match that she must find a way to win. So instead of squirming, she stood still.

She relaxed, and Holthan’s mouth moved more boldly against hers. It wasn’t long before his lip slipped between her teeth …

Then she bit down. Hard.

He roared and tried to pull away, but she held on. Blood coated her tongue with a taste like metal. Her teeth went through his flesh and clicked together on the other side. Then his fist came out of the darkness and struck her in the face.

Her head snapped back and her mouth opened in shock as she flew to the ground. The whole earth spun around her, but she managed to pull herself to her feet. Holthan’s moans came from behind her as she stumbled over to her horse. It was by sheer willpower that she managed to pull herself into the saddle — with one eye shut tight and her whole head throbbing in pain.

Elena pointed her mare to the south and left at a gallop. They tore across the countryside for several miles before the fire left her veins. It was nearly dawn when the full weight of what she’d done finally struck her, and she burst into tears.

Oh, it hurt to cry. Her whole face stung from Holthan’s blow. Tears shoved their way painfully out of her swollen eye, the pounding steps of her mare jostled her throbbing head, but she couldn’t stop. She realized that she could
never
stop. If she ever slowed down, if she ever tried to return to the Grandforest … Holthan would kill her. He’d killed for far less. He’d killed just because he felt like it.

If she returned, not even the Countess would be able to protect her. No, Elena’s home was lost.

This realization brought on another wave of stinging tears. What would Holthan say had happened to her? Would he tell the Countess that she’d been killed? Deserted? And what would D’Mere do without her? No one had been as vigilant as Elena. She didn’t trust the others to keep the Countess safe.

But as the sun rose and warmed her swollen face, she realized that it was too late for regret. She couldn’t turn back, now. She wouldn’t be able to protect D’Mere any longer. The bile rose in her throat at the thought, but there was nothing more she could do …

Wait — there was
one
thing, one last task to be done. And she intended to do it. She
would
do it, for the Countess’s sake: Elena would find the Dragongirl, and she would kill her.

After that, she wasn’t sure where she’d go. But there would be others across the Kingdom who would have need of her skills, and she wagered it wouldn’t be long before she found a new home.

Chapter 11

Arabath

The fastest way to reach Whitebone was by sea. Kyleigh’s little vessel followed the current south, and the days were mostly fair — but she still spent a good portion of the journey with her head over the railings.

The ocean was meant for swimming. It was unnatural to bob along on its surface, and her insides could never quite catch up. The movement wasn’t so bad on a larger ship. But on this tiny merchant’s vessel, she felt every buck and break. And her stomach heaved in constant protest.

“Look, dragoness,” Silas murmured, tapping her on the shoulder as she voided the remainder of her breakfast.

“What?” she snapped.

Silas hadn’t stopped chattering since the moment they set sail. He’d never seen the ocean before, and behaved as if nobody else on board had seen it either — calling out anytime he spotted so much as a weed drifting through the water, and exclaiming every few minutes that he’d never laid eyes on anything quite so bizarre.

Kyleigh was very near to giving him a closer look.

But this time when he pointed, she was actually excited by what she saw: a telltale shadow hung against the horizon, a sign that their journey was about to end. It was still too far out for human eyes, but she told Jake and Silas to start packing their bags. A few minutes later came the welcome cry:

“Land, ho!”

Her companions crowded in on either side of her, watching excitedly as the shadow in the distance took shape. Waves struck the beach and gave way to rolling hills of sand. The morning sun hid behind them, staining them pink with its rising glow. Tall, spindly trees grew like weeds along the shore. They were all trunk, with only a small gathering of leaves sprouting at their tops. But even that slight weight seemed to be too much for them: many of the trees were hunched over, slouching at such severe angles that they practically grew sideways.

The sleepy chime of a bell drew their eyes to the right, and Silas pawed at her arm again. “What is
that
?”

Not two miles away, a large gathering of rooftops towered above the dunes. When their ship crept around the next bend, an entire town blossomed out of the desert.

“It’s the port city of Arabath,” Jake supplied, since Kyleigh had a hand clamped stubbornly over her mouth. She was determined to hold onto the water she’d just swallowed.

Arabath was easily the largest settlement in Whitebone. Like all desert villages, it had grown up around a water source: a large oasis that pooled in the middle of town. The cool waters came from a spring deep beneath the sands, and many believed they had healing powers. Kyleigh had even heard of nobles paying large amounts of gold to have the waters bottled and shipped to their castles.

But that was before the Whispering War. Now the people spent their coin on armor and weapons — and cared more about
dodging
wounds than healing them.

The shelf of rock that jutted out from Arabath made a natural port, and the people of the Kingdom had been visiting it for centuries. They flooded in from every region, eager to spend their coin on the fine jewelry and glassware that the desert craftsmen were famous for.

They were so famous in fact, that Baron Sahar had stolen all of the best craftsmen straight out of their shops. Now he kept them locked in his mines deep in the eastern sands, where he forced them to work as slaves. His wares cost him nothing to make, and he sold them at exceptionally high prices. So Sahar had been living comfortably in his wealth for years.

But Kyleigh planned to change that.

Once their ship was tied to the docks, they were finally allowed off. Kyleigh had only ever seen Arabath from above — she’d never actually set foot in it. So she was surprised when a horde of merchants flooded the docks.

They swarmed the ramp, gathering so thickly that she had to elbow her way through them. They called out in the Kingdom’s tongue, shouting high and low around each other, trying to be the voice that stood out from the crowd — though their accents were so thick that most of what they shouted sounded like gibberish.

Kyleigh pulled her hood over her head as she wove her way between them. She was determined to be careful, this time. Her long stay in the mountains hadn’t dulled the King’s memories: Crevan had already sent his army after her once, and if she was spotted in Whitebone, he would certainly do it again.

Last time, her foolishness had cost them the life of Garron the Shrewd. It was a mistake that haunted her sleep, a mistake that had made her realize just how fragile the lives of her companions were — a mistake that she would never make again.

So Kyleigh planned to keep her face hidden until they were well away from Arabath, out in the solitude of the desert.

As they filed off the ship, the merchants crushed in. Kyleigh shoved her way through them, dodging the various glittering trinkets they shoved under her nose, and balling her fists so they couldn’t press anything into her hands. The stale odor of sweat and human filth hovered in the small pockets of free air; whatever array of spices the merchants had consumed for breakfast still clung to their breath and clothes.

She heard Jake cry out behind her and had to grab him around the wrist to keep him from getting swept away. After a few minutes of shoving and weaving, they popped out on the other side.

Silas wasn’t behind them, and Kyleigh was afraid that she was going to have to go back in after him. But then Jake spotted him standing up the path. He was balanced on his tiptoes, his neck craning in interest above the crowd. His pants were tighter and a good inch shorter than they’d been before.

“What did I tell you about changing shape in public?” Kyleigh said when she reached him.

He looked away from where he’d been sniffing the air and fixed her with an unconcerned look. “That it’s important that I not be spotted. And I wasn’t.” He pulled down on the seam of his breeches and grimaced. “Though I wish now that I hadn’t changed. Things are beginning to get … crowded.”

While Kyleigh had been too sick to do much of anything, Silas and Jake had made good use of the journey south. Jake thought he might be able to create a spell that would keep Silas’s clothes from ripping every time he changed, and Silas was happy to let him experiment. They practiced late at night, and where the merchants couldn’t see them. The first couple of attempts caused Silas’s trousers to burst into flame — and left the end of his tail smoldering.

But Jake eventually figured it out … well, mostly. Silas could now change shape without losing his clothes, but they shrank a bit every time. By now, the hems of his trousers were almost to his knees, and the buttons of his shirt were strained tight.

“
Must
I wear them?” he whined, scratching piteously at his collar. “I could travel much faster bare.”

Kyleigh waved a hand at the crowd. “Do you see anybody else running around the way Fate made them?”

“Well … no —”

“And if
you
did, don’t you think people would notice?”

“Perhaps,” he said through gritted teeth.

“And if we get noticed,” she pointed behind him, to where a cluster of guards were making their way towards the docks, “they’d probably want to have a chat with us. Of course, by a
chat
I mean that they’d string us up by our toes in the Baron’s dungeon and burn the truth from our lips with red-hot coals. Is that how you’d like to spend your first trip to the desert?”

He glared at her.

She patted his cheek. “I didn’t think so. Now, let’s find you some more comfortable trousers.”

They bought Silas a few more changes of clothes at one of the shops along the beach — and Kyleigh made sure they were especially itchy — before they wandered deeper into Arabath.

“Remarkable,” Jake murmured as they wound their way through the narrow streets.

He had his journal opened and was already scribbling madly with a stick of charcoal. Though Jake was a clever creature, he seemed incapable of doing two things at once: in less than a minute, he’d already run into the back of a parked wagon, bruised his hip on a fruit stand, and nearly tripped over a wandering dog. Once, he’d been so focused on his notes that he’d made a wrong turn — and Kyleigh had to turn back to retrieve him.

“It
is
remarkable,” Silas agreed. His golden eyes flicked every which way, and his nose never stopped twitching. For all of his talk about human weakness, he seemed rather interested in them.

Kyleigh had a difficult time not smiling as she watched him. She remembered her first trip through a human market, and all of the excitement of discovering something new: the many strange scents, the colorful tones of chatter, and the way the humans’ faces moved. Their faces always seemed to be moving — and every slight twitch in their features carried a different meaning.

Setheran had begun to teach her what all of the expressions meant, but she never got a chance to finish the training. There was a lot about the humans that she still didn’t understand, and on more than one occasion, it had gotten her into trouble.

Nevertheless, it was nice to have something new to learn. Kyleigh might’ve been old to the earth, but she was still young to the ways of men.

It was obvious that this was Silas’s first time out among so many humans. Though she didn’t know everything about them, Kyleigh knew a few things — and she knew Silas could get into trouble if she didn’t keep an eye on him.

A woman slid past them, and his nostrils flared to catch her scent. Several brightly colored flowers were woven into the dark tresses of her hair. They gave off a sickly sweet aroma, and Silas leaned in to sniff them as she passed.

Kyleigh had to grab his collar to keep him from burying his nose into her hair.

“But there aren’t any flowers like that in the mountains,” he said, his eyes following after her. “I only wanted to smell them.”

“Still — you shouldn’t touch women who don’t belong to you. If her husband is anywhere nearby, you’ll be in trouble.” Kyleigh bit back a smile at the confused look on his face. “Her
mate
,” she explained.

“Stupid human customs,” Silas said, with no small amount of disdain. “The females of
my
species aren’t tied to anyone. They may go from one mate to the next as often as they wish.”

“Well, we can’t
all
run around with our tails on fire every spring — otherwise there wouldn’t be any great cities like Arabath,” Kyleigh quipped. “We’d all be living in caves and treetops.”

“Boldly spoken, from the dark,” Silas growled back. His gaze dug into the shadow of her hood. “You’re lucky that I can’t find your eyes to glare in.”

“It
does
seem a bit darker than the average hood,” Jake agreed. There was a smudge of charcoal on the end of his nose from where he’d had it buried in his journal. “I’ve often wondered about it. Is it magicked?”

Kyleigh shook her head. “A whisperer made it for me.”

Jake’s spectacles slid down as his eyebrows climbed. “Whispercraft,” he murmured, and his mouth hung open even after he’d said it. “That must’ve cost you a fortune.”

She shrugged, smiling at the memory. “Not as much as you’d think. The craftsman owed me pretty severely.”

Silas stopped in the middle of the path, and Kyleigh had to leap to the side to keep from running into him. “Do you smell that?” he hissed, his eyes closed tightly.

It only took her a moment to catch the scent: meaty flesh roasting over open flames, thick skin packed full of spices — and crisping perfectly in the morning air. Kyleigh’s empty stomach rumbled after it. Now that she was on firm ground once again, her appetite came back with a vengeance.

Silas took off at a run, with his shoulders arched forward and his neck bent on the hunt, and Kyleigh followed him without thinking — leaving Jake to tag along behind them. It was only after they arrived at the meat vendor that she heard the poor mage panting loudly, and realized that she’d let the smell of food get the better of her.

“Sorry, Jake —”

“You might’ve just
told
me that you were hungry,” he gasped, planting his hands on his knees, “instead of setting off like that. I thought we were being chased!”

“It won’t happen again,” Kyleigh promised. She was more than a little embarrassed by the way she’d acted. They were
buying
their food, not killing it. She shouldn’t have let Silas goad her into a hunt.

She looked up to chide him and saw that he was already standing at the meat vendor’s table, watching as he turned a fresh leg of goat over a small fire.

“Easy with the roasting, friend,” Silas said, his eyes on the meat.

The vendor smirked at him. He turned the leg twice, barely searing it. Then he handed it over. He looked rather shocked when Silas tore in.

“I’ll have mine the same way,” Kyleigh said, when she saw how much Silas was enjoying it. “And we’ll buy all the salted meat you have prepared.”

Most of what the desert folk ate came from the earth. There weren’t many creatures that could survive the punishing sun, and so they usually did without meat. But Kyleigh couldn’t do without it: her dragon half needed red flesh, and could survive on nothing else.