Page 26 of Power of Draken (Fated to the Draken Riders #1)
Chapter 26
Rowan
“ S o, what are the odds that a day of travel has put you in a forgiving mood?” Logan asks, crouching beside me as I lay my bedroll under a canopy of gnarled oak branches. Consistent with its generally mocking mood, the weather is perfectly clear and warm for this time of autumn, the stars winking to some music only they can hear.
“What’s there to forgive?” I smooth out my bedroll.
“I think even Grayson would see a trap in that question,” he mutters.
My hands hesitate on the blanket. “Perhaps you are referring to that night when you did all sorts of intimate things to my body and then disappeared in the morning as if nothing happened?”
“Well, yes.” Logan’s voice is cautious. “In my experience, women tend not to appreciate that behavior.”
I finish setting up my bedding, pull off my shoes and climb inside. “Probably because they make the mistake of assuming the bedroll acrobatics have meaning beyond the immediate physicality of the moment.”
“That was a lot of long words.”
“It was a long day. Good night, Logan.” I curl up on my side, turning away from him. The one advantage of a forced march through the woods is that every fiber of my body is more than ready for sleep. My new goal, which I set the moment Kyrian disappeared from view on that summit, is to shove these three men back into the isolated mental box they’ve always belonged in.
Logan walks around and crouches impertinently on my other side. “And you are of the opinion that our acrobatics were utterly without meaning?”
“I don’t need opinions when I have facts.”
“Do you now?” Reaching out, Logan grazes my arm with a feather-light touch that sends shivers down my spine.
I inhale sharply and pull away.
“Looks like I have my own set of facts,” Logan purrs quietly, his teasing voice going straight into my clenching chest. Anger rushes through me, spilling into my blood like a flash flood of emotion.
“No,” I say, swinging up to my elbow so I can point an accusing finger into his chest. “You don’t get to do that. You’ve got your conquest, or bedpost notch, or whatever it is you used to mark made awkward book geek open her legs off your list. Well done. Mission accomplished. But I’ve about this much self-respect still left,” I hold my thumb and pointer finger half an inch apart, “and I’d like to keep it. So, please, take your warrior’s body, and perfect face, and sensual touches that you’ve honed to a blade’s edge perfection, and keep them away from me. If you’ve ever cared for me even a fraction as much as you pretended, please do as I ask.”
Logan flinches, and I make myself ignore the apparent pain rippling over his face. Whatever he thinks he is feeling, it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him not getting what he wants right now. And he’ll feel it right up until a squirrel rushes up a tree and he will want it instead.
I make myself close my eyes and keep them that way until I hear him rise to his feet and walk away from me with measured quiet steps.
“You really want to go through the center of Doverly?” I hear Logan ask Kai quietly.
Kai’s been closed-mouthed about, well, everything, so I keep my eyes shut and my breathing even as the pair talk.
“Want? Of course not. But it’s the closest waypoint, and I’m not going to see her at a flogging post for returning one check-in short.”
“You bloody well know I wasn’t suggesting letting that happen,” Logan’s words strain through his teeth.
“Well those are the two options.” Kai's voice is cold and unyielding. "Unless you have a third that doesn't involve her bleeding or a delay getting her to safety and freeing us to help Kyr, I suggest you make peace with Doverly."
There's a tense pause, but then Logan exhales heavily. "You think the raid will reach this far inland?”
Wait. Raid? The news startles me into letting my eyes fly open, my hands pushing against the bedroll.
The men’s conversation halts immediately.
Shit. Embracing the error, I push myself the rest of the way up. “What raid?”
Both men turn to me. Kai's expression is inscrutable as always, but Logan can't quite hide the frustration simmering in his eyes as he brushes his gaze along my body.
“A Flurry assault force penetrated the twenty second outpost shortly after the field exercise started,” he says matter of factly. “I expect they will be neutralized or retreat well before reaching Spire East.”
“And you are just telling me this now?”
“Does it have any bearing on any of your actions or decisions?” Kai retorts.
“Only on my opinion of you,” I say brightly, letting myself back down to the bedroll. If my words sting, Kai gives no indication of it. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. The truth is, it shouldn’t matter. I’m not in the triad, and at this point, any expectation of loyalty or genuine connection on my part is folly that I need to get over.
Kai fooled me once. Shame on him. Then Logan. I’ll be generous with myself and split the shame of that one evenly between us. But Kyrian’s l eaving makes it thrice. Frankly, anyone who fails to learn her lesson after that, deserves what she gets.
The next day, as we get closer to civilization, Kai and Logan take turns leap-frogging ahead, one of them always going forward to scout while the other stays with me. It effectively means that they cover twice as much ground as I do, but that seems to bother them as little as the blood they sometimes return speckled in. If anything Kai seems increasingly eager to get me back to the Spire, opting for better roads at the cost of the occasional attackers he cuts down with little thought.
The trees begin to thin as we near the Doverly outskirts by early evening. As the sun begins to set, casting long shadows across the thinning forest, Kai returns from his latest scouting foray and unrolls a map before us.
"The waypoint box is located in the alley by the cellar of an abandoned brewery on the western edge of Doverly," he reports in clipped tones. “Everyone and their mother has caught onto the coin game and the waypoint’s location, but there is little cooperation between the… I don’t even know what to call them. Neither civilians nor combatants fit.”
“Doverlians?” I offer.
“Doverlians,” Kai agrees. “There is little cooperation and less training, which works in our favor. If we make a rooftop approach after nightfall and go this way, we should meet the objective with minimal risk.” Kai traces a route with his finger, explaining the additional details he’d just learned. The fact that he got in and out is encouraging. Then again, I pity anyone who gets into his path.
Waiting comes next. Waiting for the sun to set, for the time to pass, for the start time to approach. The air grows heavy with the scent of impending rain, a subtle current crackling through the atmosphere. Of course it would be raining the day we need to galavant over rooftops. Two clear nights in a row is apparently an unfair ask of the weather.
Finally, after an eternity of waiting and yet all too soon, Kai packs up the few supplies we’ll need and moves us out .
The rooftops of Doverly are a maze of crumbling tiles and precarious ledges, the rain turning every surface into a death trap. Kyrian would have loved it here. Don’t think of Kyrian, I chide myself, following Kai’s lead, his movements precise and calculated as he navigates the treacherous terrain. I follow close behind, my heart in my throat every time we jump over a gap between roofs or balance on shifting footing.
Between Logan’s training and the climb with Kyrian, I’m stronger than I was, but my limbs still keep getting caught on loose debris, making small stones fall to the ground. Logan, who is bringing up the rear, is there every time I falter though. Sometimes a moment before, as if he can predict the mess I’m about to get into. Given the amount of time he’s spent watching me fall on my face in the training yard, he probably can.
Kai stops abruptly, and I nearly crash into him, barely catching myself on the slippery tiles. He crouches low, motioning for us to do the same. I follow his gaze and spot the waypoint—an inconspicuous metal box attached to the side of a derelict building. Relief surges through me, but it’s short-lived.
“They’ve upped the guard,” Kai whispers, his voice barely audible over the wind. “This isn’t who was here earlier.”
I peer through the rain and spot the figures stationed around the building. There are four of them, their faces obscured by hoods, but their posture unmistakable. I may not have the body or movement of a properly trained warrior, but I know what one looks like—and the men below us aren’t the disgruntled civilian drunks who usually make a nuisance of themselves. The group down there is disciplined, alert, and armed to the teeth.
My heart sinks.
“Mercenaries,” Kai says tightly, confirming my suspicion. “Armed with auric steel.”
Before we can move, a sudden noise from below catches our attention. A door slams open, and more mercs pour out into the alleyway .
“Two more,” one of the newcomers says, displaying a pair of metal tags that flash in the moonlight.
“Start working on them,” the merc who must be the leader says crisply. “The code word is worth five times the tag. But keep it quiet, lest you scare my fish off.”
That would be us, I realize. The fish. And the them to be kept quiet are cadets being tortured.
My blood turns to ice.
“The cellar of the old inn is soundproof enough,” the tag holder says with a nod. “You’d have been yelling at me before now otherwise.”
They separate but my breaths quicken, fear coursing through me.
“We need a distraction,” Logan suggests. He is too calm for what we’d just heard. For what’s unfolding right beneath us.
“Agreed,” says Kai. “That and a different vector of approach.”
Kai moves over the roof, melding into the shadows. He motions for us to follow as more shadows curl out from around him, rising up to conceal all of us. “We’ll use the north side roofs.”
I pull up the memory of the map Kai sketched for us. North side. That’s the one most likely to have fewer guards. Because no one in their right mind would go that way.
Well, no one has ever accused the men I’m with of being in their right mind, so here we are.
Kai leads the way around the buildings, his steps silent against the wind howling by us and threatening to blow us clear off the narrow edges. There is no cover here, and the raindrops drive into my face like needles, reducing the world to a blur of wet stone and shadow.
“We are almost there,” Logan whispers into my ear as he steadies me before another roof gap, this one wider than any we’ve crossed yet and flanked by shifting tiles on either side. Between the rain, wind, and my galloping heart I can’t figure out where to even put my feet. A tremble runs through my body. This is madness. Utter madness.
Logan pulls me against him. “Close your eyes.”
“Like hell I will. ”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you then.” He grabs me and leaps into the air, me against his chest and my stomach somewhere in my throat. It’s all I can do to stifle my scream of terror as we land on the other side and Logan sets me down on the slippery shingles.
“Close… your… eyes does not qualify as a warning,” I hiss between pants, putting as much indignation into the words as I can. Except this time, the quip is all strategy. A distraction from the hauntingly familiar tell-tale signs of a dizzy spell that are suddenly washing over me.
Not now, not now, not now, I order my body, trying to hold on to myself in space. The rain is wet. The wind is loud. Your fingers are cold. Concentrate on that.
"You alright, Ainsley?" Kai's voice is low and gruff, but I detect a hint of worry beneath the stoic exterior.
"I'm fine.” I blink rapidly to clear the spots dancing in my vision. "Just give me a moment to -” another wave of dizziness washes over me, this one in no mood to play. I’ve been here before. It’s how I’ve collected countless twisted ankles and bleeding foreheads and worse. “I’m -” The world tilts and blurs, raindrops running sideways across my vision. Then my knees give way.