Sword Sisters (2 page)

He rolled me onto my side again, brushed my hair—my damned, unruly, untamable red hair—from my face. He pushed my tunic up from my waist, exposing my stomach. Then he put his lips close to my ear. “I’ll do it quickly. I’ll try not to make it hurt any more than it has to.” Then he kissed my cheek.

He kissed my cheek.

No man had ever done that before. I’d been touched, of course. The Demons who’d…well, “raised” isn’t right, but…whatever, they’d certainly touched me. But the Reapers who’d rescued me had not been inclined to coddle a Demon-haunted, Demon-trained girl who might or might not go into a psychopathic rage and destroy everything around her at any given moment. They’d given me a home and a purpose, but their affection was always at a distance.

This…this was not. This was immediate, and here, and now.

It was such a new sensation that I felt almost none of the pain when the arrowhead broke the skin of my belly or the sensation of the shaft sliding through my internal organs. Then it was gone, and the maddening, itching tingles that signaled my body’s healing kicked in.

The boy sat back and looked at the arrow. “Wow,” he said. “That’s quite the weapon.” Then he smiled at me. He smiled. After all he’d seen, after all he’d comprehended, he still smiled. “Listen, I have to go now or my family will go crazy. They hate it when I’m late. But I’ve been told that Reapers can heal themselves really quickly. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I said although I wasn’t sure if the word was audible.

“I’ll be back after dark to check on you as soon as I can sneak out. There’s food and water here, so help yourself to what you need. And feel free to borrow a fresh hunting tunic.” Then he bent down and did it again. He kissed my cheek again.

I wouldn’t be here when he came back of course. Long before then, I’d be good as new, and I had to get away before this boy, this human, told anyone about me. Most humans regarded Reapers with a fair amount of distrust, and in my vulnerable state, I was no match for an angry mob. I managed to raise my head and look him in the eyes. I was fading fast, sliding into the sleep that would allow my body to knit itself back together, but I couldn’t go yet. I had to know one thing. “Name…?” I breathed.

He smiled. At me. He said, “Oh, that’s right, we haven’t been introduced. My name’s…”

And then I passed out.

I snapped out of my favorite memory of that excruciatingly gorgeous smart, kind, young man as the wood beside my face exploded and drove razor-sharp splinters into my cheek.

An enormous boot crashed through the log that hid me, narrowly missing my head. My Reaper instincts took over: I curled into a ball and rolled backward, out of my hiding place and into the open. Clearing the log, I flipped back onto my feet and took off. I needed some distance before I could turn and fight.

Or so I intended. No sooner had I taken a step than two meaty fists grabbed my biceps from behind and lifted me high off the ground. Incredibly strong fingers encircled my upper arms and dug into my skin. The forest swirled around me as I fought.

The iron firmness of his grip did it. First, I saw the little flashes of light around the edges of my vision, then a reddish tint washed over everything, turning the world crimson. I knew the cause: My body was throwing itself into Demon mode, rushing blood and adrenalin to all my muscles and senses, making them stronger, faster, and more lethal. Even the veins in my eyes dilated, which explained the blood-tinted view. In moments, the rational parts of my brain would shut down, and I would go berserk to a degree even my captor might not be able to control or survive. I was no longer a Reaper but a Demon. And that meant someone had to die.

But there was a tiny spark still unaffected, and in the voice of my mother, the Teller Witch, it said firmly, No! NO! A great surge of ice-cold calm turned the rush of blood back on itself. I froze, locked between my Demon and Reaper natures.

Then the rage faded. No one would ever know how close it had been or how strong I had to be to resist it. They would consider me weak, in fact, for letting it peek out at all.

For a moment, my feet still kicked before I got conscious control of myself. Then I growled, deep and low. After all, at my core, I’m nothing but a wild creature even without the Demon blood in my veins.

I looked back over my shoulder and met my captor’s gaze. He assessed me with his usual cool amusement, completely sure of his superior size and strength. If he only knew how close he’d come.

“Aella,” he rumbled, my name becoming as much a growl as my own animalistic noises. Then a deep guffaw erupted from his chest, and playfully, he dropped me to the ground. I spun to face him.

“Aella,” he chided again, still in the throes of a roaring belly laugh. “You bring me endless amusement!”

Andraste, or “Andre,” towered over me; he towered over almost everyone, human or Reaper. He had a massive body, all hard muscle and leathery sinew, and his arms were almost as big around as my waist. In battle, he was merciless, yet there was another side to him, a tenderness that surfaced whenever his mate Freya was in his presence. I, of course, never saw any of that same tenderness directed toward me. He was here to teach me to be a warrior, and tenderness was not useful in battle.

His laugh angered me, and his ridicule angered me more. His interruption of that fleeting, most precious memory of the boy who’d kissed my cheek reignited my rage and, without even thinking about it, my fist was already on its way toward its mark.

Of course, Andraste—older, wiser, stronger, and with faster reflexes—caught my fist just an inch away from his solar plexus. It would have been a painful but inconsequential blow: lethal to a human but to a Reaper only really annoying.

The smile vanished from his face, replaced by a look I knew far too well. He was disappointed in me. Clutching my fist in a hand the size of my skull, he shook his head.

“Sorry,” I mumbled and relaxed my arm. He dropped my fist. We faced each other in silence, the only sound coming from the forest around us.

Then, still silent, he efficiently began picking the splinters from my face. He made no effort to be gentle, which would have been out of character anyway. I gritted my teeth against the pain. Why was it these tiny, insignificant injuries often hurt more than sword hacks or ax blows?

He finished, wiped his bloody fingers on his cloak, then turned and walked away. I followed.

He was mad at me, but by tomorrow, he’d be over it. Little disrupted Andraste’s mischievous and generally jovial nature for long. Still, it bothered me that I was the cause of his current foul mood. Deep down, I craved his approval just as I did my adopted father’s. I’d never admit it to either of them of course. And they’d never believe it.

More to the point, I had to know how he’d found me. I’d used all the skills he’d trained into me to find a hiding place inside a hollow log far from any trail and yet he’d still discovered me. What had I done wrong?

Finally, I softly said, “Andre?”

He did not slow down, but an almost imperceptible nod gave me the courage to continue.

“Was it my scent, my trail, or my thoughts that you were able to track?”

Without looking back at me, he said, “All of them.”

“All of them?” I yelled.

Andraste stopped and faced me. There was a raw edge to his voice that I’d seldom heard before. “You are in training to guard the king. The king, Aella. The man, the human, who will rise to power upon his majority and rule all the humans in Ilan. You are the last Reaper who has a real task. The rest of us are simply marking time. Our wars are over, and we exist now only as symbols of the past.” He didn’t sound bitter, only sad and tired.

He looked down from his great height and gave me a glare that might’ve dissolved a mortal where she stood. “You are supposed to be the youngest, fastest, and strongest of all the Reapers, the last of us born and thus the one who will outlive us all. And yet you did nothing to disguise your scent, nothing to throw me off the trail. You ran, and you hid. That’s how a child plays a game, Aella, not how a Reaper perfects her skills.”

I sniffed my underarms. Was my odor that strong? I didn’t smell anything, but then Andre’s sense of smell was Demon-like in its strength and precision. Anyway, who wants to guard some entitled, whining man-brat who gets offended by a girl’s normal odors? I certainly didn’t apply for the job. Maybe my smell will chase him away, make him choose someone else to guard him.

Andraste rolled his eyes. “It’s your hair, Aella.” He grabbed a strand and pulled it, hard. “It smells of musk and rain. When you run, the wind catches the scent and leaves a trail so clear a noseless child could sniff you out.”

“My hair?” I pulled a lock of it to my nose. He was right. How embarrassing.

Fortunately, we emerged from the forest into the clearing around the Castle Raggenborg before he could criticize me further. As we strode across the lawn toward the drawbridge, around the old pit traps built during the Thousand Year War, the kitchen bells began to toll.

Oh, crap. Dinner time. I hate dinner. Dinner is the current bane of my existence.

“Nobody hates dinner, Aella,” Andre sighed as if he’d read my thoughts. “Now go clean up, or at least do what passes for ‘cleaning up’ for you. I’ll expect you reasonably on time.”

I mumbled something that might’ve been
yes sir
but could’ve also been
shug off
. Either way, he ignored it and sauntered toward the Great Hall, where all the other Reapers would be gathering. Dinner was the only meal we ate together. Actually, dinner was the only meal we ate, and we probably didn’t even need to eat that. But it showed the humans that we were, superficially at least, just like them.

Missing dinner was considered extremely bad form, and for a warrior race, form is everything. Well, form and weaponry. But still, a Reaper’s word is her bond: If that wasn’t true and true every single time, then the humans would fear and hate us as much as they do the Demons. After all, Reapers, like Demons, are inhuman, practically invulnerable, and skilled in the arts of death. But you could tell a Demon on sight. Reapers, unless you saw us in action or with our armored spines exposed, looked just like humans. And nothing is more terrifying than a monster hiding in plain sight.

So, as utterly painful as it was, I would go to dinner because it was expected. But I would not like it. Nor would I pretend to like it. Which was fine because no one there would pretend to like me.

#

I climbed the stairs toward my quarters, all ninety-nine of them. Why couldn’t it be an even hundred? I wondered for the billionth time. I’m told my Reaper grandfather built this castle a thousand years ago: my grandfather, Gilicus the Grim, his two brothers (all true half-bloods, like me), and my great-great-great-great-grandmother (humans age faster than Reapers, remember?), that era’s Teller Witch. It took them fourteen days. And technically, he wasn’t really my grandfather but my adopted father’s father, but how could I not claim ancestry from a reaper known as “the Grim?”

Nothing in all of Ilan was as grand as Castle Raggenborg. It rose majestically into the sky as though the three brothers expected the Creator himself to pay a visit and didn’t want Him to make too much of a step down. At the north and south ends, regal towers looked out over the whole peninsula during times of war. Now, abandoned in peacetime, they provided ample nesting for thousands of the local birds.

Many of the Reapers had quarters in the barracks, but because of my special situation—my Teller Witch blood, my status as king’s-bodyguard-in-training, and the general suspicion with which everyone regarded me—I had private quarters. They were so private that no one but me even used the stairwell that led to them.

This part of the castle used to be a jail for captured Demons back when the Thousand Year War still raged. Demon prisoners were “read” by Reapers with telepathic powers or studied by trackers like Andre and then set loose to lead the Reapers to ambush sites and Demon hideouts. After the war ended, the cells held human prisoners: basically anyone who opposed the budding monarchy while the new king was in his infancy.

I’d visited the now-abandoned cells on occasion out of boredom or homework for Eldrid’s history lessons. They were more sad than scary after all this time; the scratches and bloodstains spoke of fear, not battle rage. Whatever the Demons had done, the Reapers had more than matched them in savagery. But it had been necessary, I knew. And it was something the humans could never, ever have done.

For the last twenty years or so, the Reapers had been assisting the humans in becoming a self-ruling society. Soon, we would be nothing but guards. The most cunning, lethal, and courageous guards imaginable, but still guards. And after that…only memories and legends.

I glanced out one of the stairwell windows and saw from the position of the sun that I was going to be late. I ran the rest of the way, past the door to my quarters, and straight to the roof. I lowered myself through the bars of the sky light (one advantage to being smaller), swung my body out, and flipped once in midair. I landed feet-first, with a bounce, on my fuzzy bed.

The pretty blonde girl standing over my clothes shrieked as I scared her.

“Aella!” she scolded. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry,” I said and stepped down off the bed.