Twelve…
Diving headfirst into the low bush, Lojen whipped around, branches fluttering in his eyesight.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
The guards turned on a heel and resumed their trek unhindered, unaware that he had just passed them without being seen or heard. The quivering branches covering his bulk resembled a gentle sway of the wind, nothing out of the ordinary. Hopefully.
Too close, Lojen. Too close.
Parting the prickly bush with his talons, he saw a low brick wall separating a grassy area from waist-high tables. Drenth’s guests glided along the grass, stumbled, and spoke at length, but most were facing the dancers and the acrobats upon fluted pedestals. Slowly, Lojen darted from the bush, thorns raking across his exoscales and tearing at his vest and trousers, scraping across his snout and horn stumps. He made a direct line toward the nearest wall. Laughter and clear, concise dialogue stopped him short, so he ducked behind what could only be called a trash bin since there was an odor that made him gag.
The smell was worse than the bloody stuff drakken tanners used to clean animal hides. Lojen covered his nostrils with his claws.
A maintenance hatch was barely visible next to the trash can. Praise Justice.
Sucking in his breath to avoid smelling the scent of another’s gorge, Lojen dug his talons into the hatch, prying it open. He ducked in the tunnel and closed the door behind him.
XXXIII
Ashe
SHE AWOKE DRENCHED in a cold sweat upon her naked flesh, the dream-that-was-not-a-dream was over. Reality. Sobering truth.
She threw the blanket aside and turned onto her side to find Wren missing. Part of her wondered if the time with Wren was all part of the dream, but the slight ache in her muscles, hips and jaw, told her it hadn’t been. Besides, she could remember every single second of the bliss. That was no dream, dreams always seemed to end just prior to the juicy parts.
Going to the vanity, Ashe turned on the faucet and splashed her sweaty face. Beside the sink was a perspiring decanter of wine. Her hand absently reached for it, but she stopped.
Not yet. You need answers.
The girl looking back at her was a face she recognized. The small scar just under her left eye where a training sword had clipped her at eight while under Cyan’s tutelage. Cheekbones that were flushed under her sand-dusted coloring. Curling locks of luscious pitch with a cool bluish tint that coiled around her face just below her ears. Her runic tattoos forever inked into the flesh of her left arm from wrist to shoulder, inside and out.
Every little detail of the person she had become, the face of one who had been trained to pray, to survive at all costs, to not give in to anything. And yet, she didn’t know this person anymore.
Her face resembled a lost little girl, one who didn’t know right from wrong. Who didn’t see the blinders that had been placed upon her. Who didn’t defy the odds and gone to the other side when it was the tougher option. She didn’t know this person, didn’t want to be that person anymore.
But who was she then if not who she was raised to be?
The clock atop the wall next to her mirror chimed softly. Emre, father. Solanine was the key, always had been.
In her anger, she took the nearest thing on the vanity—a music box—and threw it at the mirror. The box struck the image of a Drenth-born, Scattered Shards trained thief, shattering the reflective glass in a spider’s web of cracks. The series of fractures left a hundred white eyes with white pupils staring back, echoing the multitude of avenues her emotions were fleeing down.
There was movement in the doorway behind her, breaking her thoughts. “Ancantha?” She turned but saw nothing.
Ashe pushed away from the vanity and it was this movement that saved her life.
A well-placed stab of a dagger whizzed by her ear; the exact spot her neck would have been. A spine-severing attack, one stab and the victim would be dead before they’d realize it.
The attacker stumbled with the missed jab, a spray of water splashing the mirror. Ashe was already moving, her training kicking in. She grabbed a towel in both hands and wrapped it around her closed fists, pulling it taut. Only an inch-thick pool of mist filled the room, barely enough to call a puddle.
The attacker wore the firedrake cuirass of a scourge, and Ashe quickly realized, was the same one who’d assailed her on the gondola. The scourge crouched and bent her knees, feet spread. Then she lunged at Ashe with the burn of aetheurgy, most likely Void Form.
Ashe summoned her aetheurgy, already on the balls of her feet, as she had anticipated the woman’s aether-enhanced attack. Without the mist backing her up, her aetheurgy was lethargic, almost as if waking from a drunken coma. She’d have to hope it was enough.
The scourge led with the dagger, so Ashe used the towel to wrap the scourge’s wrist twice with the thick fabric, her aetheurgy of speed a fraction faster than the other’s. The woman cursed behind her tinted breather as Ashe twisted and jarred the dagger from her hand. Ashe used her bare foot to kick it away.
“Can’t be a coward here, you bitch. No one but you and me. You won’t be able to toss a bitty out a window, now. Fight me fair and see who wins.”
The woman responded with an attack aimed at her head and it forced Ashe to duck. Unfortunately, it caused her to loosen the grip of the towel on the woman’s wrist. The scourge freed her bound arm and yanked the towel from Ashe’s grip. Backing away, the scourge tossed the towel, turning her feet and raising her fists. Ashe did the same, though she bounced on her feet, staying limber like Cyan had taught her.
Both circled each other warily.
“What’s with you?” Ashe pawed the strands of her hair from her eyes while never taking them from her opponent. The scourge said nothing. “I bet it’s because I embarrassed your lover in front of all his friends down at the tether, eh?” The fierce killer of the Fallen swept around the room, keeping her distance, not speaking. “What’s the matter, Solanine rip your tongue out for not pleasing her enough? I bet that’s it, huh?” No response. “Fine, stay quiet while I kick your ass.”
Ashe attacked. She aimed a series of strikes at the woman in lightning quick succession, though not as fast as it should have been with a full complement of mist behind her aetheurgy. The scourge blocked her attacks, then reversed course and began to throw jabs of her own, forcing Ashe back, coughing while she defended the blows.
After a series of volleys and parries, they retreated from one another, pausing to catch their breath. Ashe breathed heavily, pulmo coughs making her throat raw. She was tired.
Her respite was short as the scourge lunged again, a piston of punches with aetheric speed. Ashe blocked, but her backside crunched into the vanity and the decanter of wine toppled, the glass shattering as it hit the floor. Fragments pierced the soles of her feet. Ashe roared as blood painted red smears as she tip-toed through the sharp battlefield, all the while preventing the woman’s fists from connecting and making a mess of her self-proclaimed pretty face.
The woman’s attacks came faster, leaving her less time to react as the nausea from blood loss swept in. Her muscles didn’t want to listen to her instincts. She took a fist to the abdomen, another to the temple, then another to her sternum. All three could, no, should have been blocked had she the aether in the mist, but she couldn’t. Weak she was without the mist.
She stumbled and went to her knee, blood slick underneath her. Ashe looked up at the scourge, waiting for the next blow to be her last. “You stupid bi—”
“O shut up, love,” the scourge said. “You don’t seem to realize you aren’t that funny.”
