Fireborn Champion (34 page)

“That was only part of my vision. The other half asked for forgiveness, remember? What sin is so great that a god requires their creation’s pardon?”
 

“You tell me. What did the shrine reveal?”

Iron took a deep breath.
 

The words almost spilled out. They gathered behind his lips like a raging thundersnow. He wanted so badly to say them. Instead, he straightened and shook his head.
 

Sander had his secrets. Iron could keep his because despite it all, he cared for his master.

“You’ve figured out as much as I have, Sander. We cross the desert and collect the priests. They’re the key to stopping the High King.”

Sander’s nostrils swelled with his smirk. He rolled his eyes and plucked the grass from his lips. “I’ve taught you too well it seems.”

“What do you expect? I lie to save a life.”

Iron’s master shook his head and strolled back the way he came. The man entered the tall grasses and paused, glancing behind him. “You think I’ve got a bitter heart because I raised you in the wild. You’re right that I never wanted to raise a little boy. I never wanted to sail to the edge of the world and hide in a mountain’s shadow for years, always knowing that while Sol killed my brothers and sisters, I hid in the safety of quiet snow.
 

“No, I did not wake up that morning hoping for this life. I did spend every morning after, thanking the Six for bringing you to me. I wouldn’t trade a single day of the life I had for the one that might have been. You may call me master and I call you boy, but in my heart, you’ve always been my son.”

Sander swept into the grass and vanished beyond a grove of palms. Iron twisted to the trunk and clutched it. He knocked his head against the rough bark and cursed his cowardice.
 

“And you have always been my father.” If only Iron could have told Sander that.
 

Sighing, he pushed away from the trunk. His eye caught a figure cresting the hill. Ayska’s braids fell over a shoulder and glimmered in the starlight. Her eyes were two jewels set against the smooth mask of her face. “We need to talk.”

“Why did you do that in Athe?” Ayska asked. “You told me you had a plan. That wasn’t a damn plan, Iron. That was suicide.” She crossed her arms beneath a sky washed by moon and stars. Concern glittered in those deep brown pools of her eyes., clouded by a thin veil of anger in her tone.

“I thought it was the only way to save you. Caspran wants me, not any of you. Delay him a little by threatening my own life and maybe you all would’ve gotten out of Athe safely.”

“Like I fucking care about that.” She stomped through the grass and planted a finger on his chest, her hot breaths flaring her nostrils. “I don’t even buy that. I’m—I’m so mad that you’d just give up like that! After all we…” She clenched her jaw. “After all I’ve sacrificed, you’d just take your life and abandon us to the serpents. Did my crew not mean anything to you? You’d rather fall on your sword and be a coward than fight for those of us you’d leave behind!”

Iron recoiled at her words. They speared his heart and twisted it into a bloody knot despite the anger heating his blood. “I didn’t give up. I was trying to save you. The High King wants
me
. I’m the key to ending this war. If I took myself out of the equation, then maybe there’d be no war.”

“Oh, you are just so preciously logical aren’t you, Iron?” She twisted around, whipping his chest with her braids. “Urum just spins on an Iron-shaped axis, doesn’t it? I stayed with you because you promised to fight the bastards who took my friends and loved ones from me. We were supposed to get revenge, Iron. You weren’t supposed to leave me like some Six-blessed coward.”

“I’m not blessed by the Six, believe me. But the war—”

Ayska whirled around and slapped his cheek, leaving a throbbing echo. “This war will never end until every alp is dead and the king’s head is rotting on the pike I’m holding. This war started years before you left Skaard and did just fine bleeding those of us in it without you. You think anything will change if you leave? Idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot and I’m not a coward.” His fists shook. He wanted to tell her.
I’m the Serpent. Gods be damned, I’m the Serpent!
 
Maybe she’d kill him then, and he’d get his wish. But once Ayska’s temper cooled, her crime would undo her. Iron knew it. Besides, if he told her the Six cast out the seventh god and that action set this whole mess in motion, her anger would destroy the tattered ribbon of humanity tethering her soul.

“There are things you don’t understand,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do. The thought of him hurting you made me desperate. I’m…” His hands went to her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I won’t leave you ever again.”

She shuddered and turned to him. Tears swirled in her eyes, but her lashes batted them back. “Fate punishes those disloyal to their hearts. Disloyalty always ends in blood and misery. This is a truth I learned long ago, one that will destroy you if you don’t follow it. What you did in Athe—it changed things, Iron. It changed us. I have a different perspective now.”

Her words came from wisdom borne on memory, another hint into a dark and disturbed past. Iron pulled her to him until her head rested on his chest. He smelled the desert in her hair and the oils of her braids. He cupped her head with a hand and smiled at the stars. The Mother’s constellation glittered on the dark field, an ever-present reminder of the approaching alignment. “It seems like that first time I met you was just yesterday and not—what, months ago?”

Ayska laughed as her hand coiled around his waist. “I thought to myself, who is this peacock’s ass speaking Rabwian like a man who’s just taken a bath in saltwater gin?”

“My Rabwian’s not that bad!”

“No, it’s worse.”

He slowly swayed them back and forth like a reed caught in alternating breezes. “I’d never really met a woman before unless you count the old woman Sander knew who’d tried to get me arrested. Honestly, I didn’t like you very much.”

“I did call you a little bay gull. You were squawking at that table like you needed a fish.”

He grinned, even as other thoughts dripped like water from a leaky roof into the tranquil moment. She’d been sitting in the tavern when they entered, hadn’t she? Ayska had known about Caspran’s imminent arrival. She’d somehow convinced the murderous alp to let her ship sail to open waters. It made no sense, when afterwards Caspran just seemed to know exactly where Iron would be and when. But the alp could have taken him at Spineshell if he wanted. The alp also could’ve captured Iron in the Old City. Batbayar’s explosives were powerful, but alps could heal from any wound. No, they didn’t escape Athe. Caspran let them flee Athe.

Iron frowned at the stars. Nothing made sense unless he really wasn’t the only one Caspran wanted. His eyes widened as the realization blossomed in his thoughts.

The circle was broken, and one by one, Iron had begun to gather the Six’s champions. Of course. He’d been such a fool. Caspran wanted all of them, not just Iron. That’s why he kept Ayska and Sander alive on Spineshell instead of killing them. That’s why he continued prodding Iron along his journey, ensuring Iron knew the gods’ shame in an effort to convert him to the Serpent Sun. A puzzle once jumbled formed frightening clarity and only reinforced his suspicion that someone in their group betrayed them.

“You never told me why you’d come to Skaard.” His gaze drifted from the stars and settled on her face. “You told me you came to Ormhild to kill Elof for his crime of slaving. You told Caspran you came to port to hunt for a weapon wanted by the High King. Which of those stories were true, or were neither?”

A long silence passed between their breaths before she spoke again. “Both are true in a way. We came to Ormhild because I’d heard Elof made port there. On the way, we intercepted the message the swifts carried. Going there seemed like a win for everyone. I’d actually been there a few days, hunting rumors and ghosts, all the while trying to avoid that waste of flesh slaver.” She pulled away, her scars running from her wrists to her shoulders casting little shadows of tragedy on her skin. “The crew didn’t want to hunt for some weapon. They wanted to stick to our original mission, to avenge my crew and strike fear into the slave trade.”

“But you wanted the weapon, so you stayed.”
 

“I’d given up when I heard you and Sander blabbering in Rabwian. When I saw you, I just—something felt right about talking to you. You had to come aboard. I had to have you with me.”

It made so much sense. It was the perfect story that fit within the mold of everything Iron knew about her. He didn’t know if that put him at ease or blinded him to her motives, but here in this speck of green lost amongst a sea of sand, he stopped caring. He stopped suspecting. He just was.

“You came for a weapon,” he said. “Instead, you found me.”

“Instead, I found you.”

Iron pulled her close again. They stared at one another, and for a moment, the world turned to mist. He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers. They tasted so sweet, and their touch electrified his skin. He could stay there in that eternal mist forever, and the Six and their war would never cross his mind again, just as long as he had Ayska.
 

Her lips departed, and she leaned away. “No. Forgive me, but no.”

“I love you, Ayska. I know I do. Even from the first moment I saw you, I loved you.”

“You just said you hated me!” She laughed and turned to the side as the world reappeared from the retreating mists.

“Only because I couldn’t accept it. I do love you. It’s true.”

“And what do you know about love, little bay gull?” Ayska took a step back, sucking in a breath of air as she turned to the pond. “Was it a lesson your master taught you? Was it defined for you in a book?”

“Of course not.” He took a step closer to her. “I don’t need to learn the definition. It’s something your heart teaches.”

“Spoken like a poet who never knew the feeling. Love is not what you think it is. Love is an obsession. It’s a painful ache. It’s a worry. It’s a risk. When you lose it, if only for a moment, your world breaks like a wine glass smashed against the wall. Love is not a pleasant thing, not the true kind of love that’s more than lust or passion.”

“Do you love me?” he asked.
 

Ayska turned her back as she crossed her arms. The pool lapped at her feet. She stared at its cool waters while Iron stared at her through the torture of his twisting heart.
 

She lifted her gaze toward the sky. “I do love you, Iron.”

“Good!” His smile pressed his cheeks toward his eyes as he marched over to her. “I knew you did. I knew you felt something!”

She whipped around, the look in her eyes freezing him like an old glacier. Ayska backed toward the reeds leading to their camp. “No, it’s not good. You don’t understand, not at all. We can’t love each other. I won’t let us.”

“What? Why are you torturing yourself?”

“We both torture ourselves, you idiot! I see the struggle, the pain when I look at you. It’s my curse. It’s my fault. I can’t love you because me loving you would destroy you, just like it almost destroyed you in Athe. What happened back there taught me one thing more than anything else. This—you and I—we can never be. I’m sorry, Iron.”

“Oh, so now you’re pressing the blade to your own throat.”

“That’s not the same thing and you know it. You barely know me. You have no idea where I’m from and what kind of burden I bear. There’s a curse on me, and if I let myself love you back, you’ll fall to it too.”

“Being enslaved must have been a horror I can’t imagine.” He walked toward her, trying to calm his thrashing nerves. “But you can’t let that part of your life poison you forever.”

“Being a slave?” Ayska laughed and trotted to the hilltop. She stopped, whipping around. “Being a slave was a horror you’ll never imagine. But being a slave isn’t what I speak of. My curse, my pain, my burden, they all come from the days before I wore chains. We will never be together Iron, because if we were, I’d destroy you, or worse, make you into a monster like me.”

“Ayska…”

“
No
.” She sighed and turned away. “My life belongs to Kalila. I am loyal to no one else. I’m sorry. I do love you, and I will follow you to the ends of Urum to destroy Sol. But we can never be together. Never.”

“Ayska…” Iron’s voice tumbled into soft whisper.

She shook her head and darted to the camp. The tall reeds closed behind her, a wall of grass that might as well have been made of steel and taller than a titan. Iron turned, walking to the tree. He slid to a seat before falling to his side. He closed his eyes, listening to his breath.

In his mind, he was back in the Everfrosts, riding a thundersnow. In that moment, he was the High King of his own kingdom, the Lord of Ice and Snow. Fate stole that throne from him and crowned him this cursed Fireborn. He didn’t like the fire. He didn’t want the fire. Let him have ice. Let him ride snow.
 

Iron didn’t move from his spot in the shadows. Late in the night, sleep eventually claimed him.

The reed’s lash left a pulsing sting against Iron’s back. He winced at the pain as a grain of sand lodged itself in his eye and gave him two sources of irritation in as many seconds. He ignored the blur of his vision and slid awkwardly on the dune, his ankle rolling in the sand. Ahead, the rest of his companions reclined on their greyhorns while the beasts trudged over the endless desert. At the back of the line, Iron walked without the aid of his mount, practicing the ridiculously complex moves of the Shining Step.
 

Batbayar grunted and scowled at Iron from his lumbering ride. “I thought you might learn faster,
elchgharat.
You are clumsy. Shining Step is different than other styles. You must move without thinking, always walk in motion. Shade Stride is to kill unseen like a shadow with knives. Loyal Stance is to defend when hope is lost. Gentle Dance is to bend and twist like lovers in bed. Shining Step is different than these. Shining Step is the Child’s walk, and children do not think. They do. You are young enough. Be a
child
.”