Читать книгу The Shadow City - Ryan Wieser - Страница 13

CHAPTER 4

Azgul

Present-day

Jessop ran down the hall, her linen robe beating about her knees. She rounded the corner, just in time to catch a glimpse of his golden eye and silver, star-shaped scar. She tried calling his name but her voice caught in her throat. She ran after him, tearing down the corridor. She needed to tell him—she needed to tell him he was bleeding.

“Jessop.”

Jessop woke to the sharp tug of Falco’s hands on her. Instinctively, she clambered back in the sheets, freeing herself from him. He raised his hands away from her slowly. Sweat greased her skin, her hair stuck to her face and neck with a stickiness that stung her. It was the middle of the night.

Falco slowly reached for her, resting his hand on her shoulder. “More nightmares?”

She nodded, sweeping her hands over her face, pulling her hair back from her hot skin. “I need you to find him, Falco.”

He lowered his hand from her slowly. “Kohl.”

The room was perfectly dark but they saw one another with ease. It was chilly, and yet she felt on fire.

“I broke his heart…he wants vengeance, I can feel it.”

She pulled the damp tunic off her body, tossing it to the ground as she moved to the side of the bed. She let her feet rest on the smooth floor and enjoyed the cool sensation. Falco readjusted to sit beside her. He held his hands together, leaning forward to regard her carefully.

“He is no threat to you.”

She kept her eyes trained on the ground. “He nearly killed me.”

“He caught us off guard. We both know he is no match for either of us. He will bring you no harm.”

She snapped her head up to face him, studying his gray eyes in the cold darkness. “Then why do we hunt them? Him, Hanson, the others. Why must we find them if they pose no threat to us?”

The question was rhetorical, but she asked it to remind Falco that she knew his thoughts, as she knew these men. One-on-one, or even three-on-two, they were no match for her and Falco…but that did not mean they bore no threat. They were the fallen rulers of Daharia, and they had many skills and many allegiances.

At his silence, she spoke again. “You have told me many times to not underestimate them. We did just that, the day you arrived, and it nearly cost me my life. We cannot do it again. I want them found and shackled.”

He held her stare for a long moment. His gray eyes appeared icy to her, cooler than usual. “You mean you want them found and killed, right?”

She said nothing. She saw Hanson’s face from that day on the terrace, paralyzed, betrayed. Hydo deserved death; he had murdered her family. But Hanson…she did not know if she could truly sentence him to the same fate as his friend. Despite all he had done, he was no murderer.

“Jeco will never be safe around him. Hanson will always be loyal to Hydo,” Falco spoke, answering her thoughts.

She quickly stood from the bed. “Don’t do that, Falco.”

He stood, throwing his arms out with frustration. “I’m sorry—but what choice are you giving me? You’ve been closed off for days. Since I arrived, if we’re being honest, you’ve refused to open up to me.”

She turned from him and rifled through her drawers for fresh clothes. “After months away from my family, I nearly died at the hands of someone I—”

“Someone you loved?”

She turned around slowly. Falco knew her heart, he knew her mind, and he knew she was always only ever going to be in love with him. “Someone I betrayed.”

He nodded slowly, skeptical. “You cannot tell me he isn’t in your heart. He plagues your mind each day and night. I have known you long enough to know you feel no fear—so do not pretend that the preoccupation is because of that.”

She ran her hands over her damp hair. “I loved him as I love Korend’a.”

“You never slept with Korend’a.”

His words were a slap. She turned from him and made her way to the bathing chamber. In the illuminated room she studied the freshly twisted scar on her abdomen. It was a thick knot of mangled flesh. The sight of it, the words Falco had spoken to her, all made her want to be ill. She steadied herself against the mirror, taking slow breaths, wishing her skin were less hot, or the room less cold.

Slowly, she let her eyes trail back to the wound. She had nearly died at Kohl’s hands but she couldn’t say with complete confidence that she wanted him dead. If that uncertainty meant some part of her loved him then so be it. Whatever she felt for him, it was not the love that she felt for Falco.

“I’m sorry. That was wrong of me to say,” Falco spoke, leaning in the doorway. She watched him through the reflection, their bright eyes locking on one another.

“Sleeping with him was part of your master plan, Falco.”

“I know.”

“Had there been another way—”

“I know.”

She studied his face for some sort of sign, some indication that he truly did know her heart still, as he always had. “Can’t you understand that I feel I’ve wounded him enough? He loved me, as you do, and I destroyed him. I do not trust him to roam free, but I do not think he deserves to die.”

He nodded but he did not appear in agreement. His perfect lips were tight around his teeth. His muscles tensed as he crossed his arms over his broad chest.

“Can you not understand that he nearly took you away from me? I thought you were going to die, Jessop. Can’t you see how I would want him, above all others, to suffer?”

They held one another’s stares; contemplating the position their common friend—enemy—had put them in. Before either could speak, a small cry called out to them.

“Dada,” Jeco wept.

Jessop waited for Falco to go to him.

“Do you want to?” he offered.

She turned, flicking on the water to bathe. “He didn’t call for me.”

* * * *

The blade was a dark violet color, the hilt made up of shining onyx stones. It was the most beautiful weapon she had ever seen—and its purple edge still bore her dry blood. She cleaned the weapon meticulously, wiping it down until there was no longer any evidence to the fact that it had nearly taken her life. She discarded the cloth and turned the blade over in her hand. It was singular.

We had this made for you, for your initiation.

The last words he had spoken to her.

Her stomach twisted with ghost pains, her skin still quick to remember the feeling of the blade deep inside her. She sheathed the weapon and placed it back on the ground. She had come to the Hollow nearly every day since she had been well enough to walk. Training was when she was most comfortable, wherever she was, whoever she was supposed to be, whomever she was with—she felt at ease with a weapon in hand.

“He designed it for you, you know.”

She smiled at Trax’s voice. He approached the ledge of the Hollow and sat beside her, letting his long legs swing over the lip of the edge. She watched as he picked up the weapon, admiring the hilt, pulling it loose from its sheath to regard the blade.

She watched him turn the blade over. “I’m not surprised.”

He sheathed the weapon again, laying it between them. “There are not many who can claim to fight with the weapon that nearly took their life.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never fought with it.”

He looked her over with glowing yellow eyes. “Shall we remedy that?”

She contemplated the offer, her eyes darting over the Hollow below—the fire, the burning oil, the ropes and sand…She had last been down there with him. Could she re-enter, with the blade he made her, and claim back a space they had shared for so long? She felt like an intruder, as though this were something she had lost in their dissolved relationship, that this place was something he got to keep.

She touched her hand to her stomach. “It’s still too soon.”

“Baruk,” Trax spoke, nodding at her with understanding.

She regarded his glowing eyes carefully; he knew she was lying. He was too reverent to say as much, though. He knew better than most how she felt. He had been with her, her aide-de-camp, her closest companion as she executed the greatest infiltration and deepest betrayal imaginable. He, like many of his kin, had always been loyal to Falco, but that did not diminish the relationships he had built with his brethren in Falco’s absence. He too had betrayed those he cared so deeply for.

Trax stood slowly, brushing the dust away from his trousers. “It feels as though we trespass on their land—”

“Trax.”

He raised a hand to ward off her defensiveness. “I don’t need to enter your mind to know it. I feel it, too. It is important to remember that it is not we who trespass on Hydo’s ground, but they who trespassed for so many years on Falco’s.”

His words resonated within her. As she had known, he felt her difficulties too, as they were his own. She nodded to her friend slowly, silently. Her guilt had torn her sight away from the truth, from the reality of their situation. She had done an unspeakable thing to Kohl O’Hanlon, but it did not change how she felt for Falco, or why she had done it. She now needed to know more than ever that it hadn’t changed how Falco felt for her.

She leapt to her feet. “Trax, could you go watch Jeco for me?”

He smiled at her knowingly. “Of course.”

* * * *

Jessop threw the door to the Assembly Council room open. Falco was leaning over a table, Urdo Rendo and Teck Fay flanking him, deep in conversation. His gaze tore up to her. “Jessop, Trax came for Jeco if you—”

“Leave us,” she barked, crossing the room swiftly. Without hesitation, the older Hunter and the mage left them. They had seen what she was capable of; they did not falter at her command.

“We were actually talk—”

She stopped right before him, ignoring his crossed arms and frustrated stare. “Well, we need to talk.”

He took a deep breath. “Alright. What is it?”

She studied his beautiful face, his pale gray eyes and perfect lips, his dark brow and short hair. The scar that Kohl O’Hanlon had carved down one side of his face. “I am in love with you, Falco. I always have been and always will be. Everything I did, I did for you, for Jeco, for us. I may have slept with Kohl for our plan to work, but that is not what bonded him and me.”

She could see how what she said upset him. His lip tightened at her words, but he forced himself to stay silent and listen to her.

“I watched him breathe at night and he realigned everything he believed in so that I could be a part of his life. While in the end he chose his brothers, for a while it seemed like he might have chosen me. Like I mattered more than everything he had ever been taught. Through all of these things, we were bonded. But did it make me fall in love with him? Never. Not for one moment. Not for a single second. You cannot shatter someone’s heart so mercilessly unless it is done for the one you truly love. What I did to him, I did for you. What matters now isn’t whether I want him dead or alive, but whether you can see past the bond we forged at your behest.”

His face softened but he said nothing. She rested her hands on his chest and still he did not move.

“I only want you. I know it will take time for me to live with what I did to Kohl, but that means nothing for us. But if you don’t want me too—”

Her voice cracked at the thought. If Falco couldn’t see past what had happened between her and Kohl, then so much of what she had done was for naught. If she had reclaimed a throne for a lord who could no longer love her, for a son who did not recognize her any longer, then…

He had his arms around her so suddenly it trapped her breath. His mouth found hers with ease and hunger, his fingers working over her tunic, grabbing her, propping her up on the table. With equal craving, she grabbed at him. She kissed him deeply, pulled him closer to her, felt the heat of his chest against her breast.

“Of course I want you. I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair as she kissed his neck.

She raised her arms for him to pull her tunic free. “As am I.”

* * * *

Jessop pulled her vest tight around her muscular frame. The leather ran smoothly over her tunic. The dark breeches tucked around her legs well. She traced her fingers over the Hunter’s sigil on her breast—Falco’s sigil. She would eventually don different attire. She wouldn’t always dress as a Hunter, but for the time being, it felt surprisingly good to once again wear the leather. She leaned over and pulled on her black boots.

With expert hands she wove her dark hair into a plait, letting it fall down her spine. She dampened her fingers in the bowl of water before her, patting down any errant strands. Finally, she reached for her blade. She did not stop to admire the hilt, she did not hesitate with a flash of Kohl’s face in her mind. She did not think of how he had designed this weapon for her and her body did not ache as it remembered being impaled. She simply grabbed it, a weapon—her weapon—and sheathed it at her hip.

“Mama.” Jeco’s small voice surprised her. She turned from her reflection and saw her son standing in the doorway, Falco behind him. He looked up to her with big gray eyes, and slowly, he smiled. His dark hair was messy and his face a pale blush—he had just woken.

Falco rested a hand on Jeco’s shoulder, his eyes beaming at Jessop. “You’re forgetting something.”

She arched her brow at him. “Oh?”

From behind his back he revealed her leather back holster, her two needlepoint daggers resting in their slender sheaths. She hadn’t seen her former weapons, let alone wielded them, since Aranthol. “Falco,” she whispered as she reached for them.

She swung the holster on with ease, until the hilt of each blade appeared just above her shoulders. She reached up and ran her fingertips over the hilts, and with expert ease, she freed the weapons, spiraling them over her shoulders, circling them about her fingers with skilled, memorized movements. The small weapons sung out as they sliced through the air. She spun them back and flicked them into their sheaths.

She stepped towards Falco, reaching for his hand. “Thank you.”

He nodded silently, and with his free hand he traced the outline of the sigil on her chest. “You’re in uniform.”

She nodded. “I am your Hunter.”

He pulled her closer. “You are my everything.”

As Falco kissed her, Jeco wrapped his small arms around her leg, hugging her tightly.