Page 33 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

She ground her teeth and seemed to weigh her answer before speaking. “I…left.”

“Why?”

Her fingers flexed. She tracked his gaze and buried her hands in her lap. “Because my Testing went poorly.”

Surprise flickered around the room. None of them had been able to sense a godsong, and neither had the Testers, it seemed, or it would have been them who issued her bounty.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean I’m going with you either way?” She demanded.

Oryn scrubbed a hand down his face. “We’re taking you to sanctuary.”

“Why?” She asked.

“Because you’re a Silverbow. Now, we were speaking about your Testing, Miss Ryerson.”

“Can you wield?” She demanded.

Gods above.

“Your Testing , Miss Ryerson.”

She glared, hesitating on her answer. “When I held the Testing rod…it…burned me.”

“What do you mean?” Colm asked. “Did it leave a physical mark?”

She nodded. The surprise was plain on Colm’s face and behind him, Aiden sucked a breath through his teeth.

“Did they try to collar you?”

She shook her head as if she still didn’t believe it herself. “No. They didn’t seem to notice. They went on their way.”

Oryn furrowed his brow. “So where were you going?”

“My father had a change of heart. He wanted me to go to the Vale, so I left.”

“You weren’t headed to sanctuary,” Colm said, understanding dawning on them all.

“The outpost in Windcross Wells,” she answered bitterly.

Mosphaera’s outrage slammed into the damper he held in place with so much force, he coughed. “Are you so eager to end up under Pallas Davolier’s thumb?” He asked more harshly than he intended .

“What would you have me do?” She scoffed. “Let my family be put the question? Let them hang?”

Bade sat forward, elbows on his knees. “Ten seconds in a collar and you’d be singing a very different song.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“If you don’t like a little room, girl, you wouldn’t take well to a leash.”

Color drained from her face and Oryn heard her heart skitter.

“Enough,” he snapped at both of them. “What does Ralenet have to do with your leaving?”

She pushed a loose strand of copper hair behind an ear and shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d never heard of Peytar Ralenet until I saw the bounty.”

Oryn arched a brow. “Your lessons have not covered the king’s small council?”

She scowled again. “I’m sure they probably have, but I don’t find royalty to be of much bloody interest.”

Oryn darted a warning look at Aiden as the fire wielder laughed.

“Has your father been to Misthol? Or Pavia?” Colm asked.

She shrugged. “I think so, but it was a long time ago and he never spoke of it.” She swallowed audibly, tears suddenly brimming in her eyes. A note of pleading entered her voice. “Please, do you know what’s happened to him? His name is not on the list.”

“We can make inquiries,” Colm said, even though that could only mean two things. She gave a tight nod and swiped a tear away. “Where was your Master of Arms from?”

She furrowed her brow and gave a mirthless laugh. “Perhaps I am the most ignorant woman in Estryia. I don’t know.”

“How long was he with you?”

“My whole life.”

“You never asked about the vow?” Colm pressed.

She shrugged. “Marwar never talked much about himself. He just said it was a long time ago.”

The spirit wielder scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “Do you know what the vow mark means?”

She shrugged again. “A sacred vow.”

“Yes, but to invoke the mark, at least one of the parties must have a connection to the gods,” Oryn said. “And the fact that it was still on his skin, meant he hadn’t yet fulfilled it.”

She frowned, her brow furrowing. “He swore a vow to a wielder?”

“He swore a vow to someone with a gift, unless he had his own.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t know.”

“What were you doing with two jars of lamp oil?” Aiden asked jovially.

She huffed a sigh as she tipped her head back to rest against the wall. “Something rash.”

“Like in Innesh?”

She winced. She clearly hoped they hadn’t connected her to Innesh. “I may or may not have felt a certain kinship with the accused.” Bade snorted, and she leveled him with an icy glare. “I don’t find much sport in watching flesh melt from people’s bones, do you?”

The blademaster blanched.

Oryn still didn’t understand what it was Mosphaera wanted with the girl, but if there was any doubt she was a Silverbow, it was evaporating by the minute. Even when she was striking blind, she was striking true. Fire was to Bade Bandone what small spaces seemed to be to her.

Enya

Enya glowered at the men who filed out of the room, seemingly content with her interrogation. They’d introduced themselves in the end, as if they hadn’t knocked her out and dragged her off to only the gods knew where.

The silver haired demi-elf called Oryn still sat on the stool beside the bed.

Icy blue eyes fixed on her. She still found them unnerving, even if she was too angry to find his hard face handsome any longer.

He reached over and set Liam’s horse head carving on the side table.

She snatched it up before he’d fully drawn his hand away, taking comfort in the feel of it against her skin.

“What is it?” He asked.

“I thought we were done with questions,” she snapped. He quirked a brow and her traitorous heart went skittering. “It’s just something from home.”

“I can heal you, if you want. ”

She swallowed, pressing back farther into the wall. “I thought there were no gifted healers outside of Oyamor.”

“There’s one, but I’m not her.” He shrugged. “Complete healing requires gifts and training I do not possess, but I can do enough. Unless, that is, you want to keep the scar. Some people collect them.”

Enya raised a hand to the tender skin on her cheek and sucked in a sharp breath.

She’d all but forgotten the wagon driver’s whip until now.

She couldn’t visit a wise woman for stitches with her bounty plastered everywhere, though she didn’t know if she was entirely comfortable with a gift being used on her.

The stories of elven healing were miraculous, but the gifts were also dangerous.

He must have read something of her hesitance. His voice softened as much as iron could. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had healing done. It doesn’t hurt.”

Enya raised her chin and made herself stare into those depthless eyes. “Fine.”

He brought big, rough hands up to cup her jaw.

Startled by the contact, her breath caught as every hair on her body tried to stand on end.

Any icy ripple that started at his palms spread across her face.

She failed stifle a gasp. It swept down her neck and back, all the way to her fingertips and toes.

As the waved traveled, her skin itched where it knit back together and the aches in her travel weary muscles washed away.

Her jaw fell open when his hands broke from her skin and she brought her own up to feel what he’d done. The lash was gone, not scabbed, not scarred, simply gone , like it had never been. The corner of his mouth turned up in a self-satisfied smile, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“You said you’d answer my questions if I answered yours,” she said.

He cocked his head. “I said I’d consider telling you why I offered an escort.”

“Well?”

He pressed his lips together in a thin line. “We hunt the godsung gifts. See the gifted to sanctuary, when they want it. Your father wasn’t the only to refuse, but most accept.”

That certainly had been what she was expecting. “Why?”

He gave another shrug. “It suits my purpose.”

“Which is?”

“None of your concern,” he answered flatly.

Irritation flashed in her, but she asked, “Can you hear them all?”

“No. ”

Enya stared, waiting for him to say more. He only stared back as if he was made of stone. They sat for so long, she shifted uncomfortably on the bed and finally dropped her eyes to where her belt knife sat abandoned on the table.

“Are you going to give that back?”

He shrugged. “I’ll look after it for now.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have attempted to snatch the belt knife, but the pang of regret she felt was only for her own loss of it, and not what she’d intended to do with it. “So I’m a prisoner, then?”

He cocked his head again. “I mean to deliver you to Drozia.”

Enya started at the mention of the dwarven capital. “Drozia? I can’t go to Drozia. It’s…warded against my kind.”

The corners of his mouth turned up again. Enya had the distinct feeling the insufferable stone faced man was laughing at her.

“But it’s not warded against my kind.”

“My father wanted me to go to the Vale.”

“You’ll like Drozia.”

She wondered what would give him that impression, but she had more pressing questions. “So I’m a prisoner until Drozia?”

He sighed. “How you get to Drozia is entirely up to you. You can have the belt knife back when I know you won’t try to stab anyone with it.”

“Fine.”

“Don’t give me a reason to take the bow too.”

Enya swallowed, but she pushed to her feet, making Oryn slide his stool back and cede the space. She swept her coins into her hand and gathered up her lamp oil. “I get it. You’re the hunter, I’m the hunted .”

“There’s one more thing,” he said as she stepped around him to the door and retrieved her cloak. “No more fires.”

Enya regarded him flatly, even as she flinched internally. Light, how do they know about Trout Run? “You don’t tell me what to do.”

“When you travel with my companions, I do.”

“So you’re in charge of this little band then?”

“We vote.”

“And when it’s a tie?” Vote or not, she had no doubt that it was Oryn bloody Brydove’s will that was imposed upon them. When he didn’t answer, she nodded in satisfaction. “Fine, but I want a vote.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “No. ”

“Then I don’t know that we have a deal.”

“Are you rejecting my offer of an escort?” He asked, surprise plain in his voice.

“I was doing fine on my own.”

Liar. She strode for the door, unsure exactly where she was going to emerge, but she was too stubborn to ask.

“We’ll be leaving at dawn.”

Enya pushed the door open, her head swiveling. She knew this hall. She had a room in this hall. She whirled around, counting the doors, realizing the gods damned man had taken the bloody room right next to hers.

Oryn

Oryn sat staring at the door that swung shut behind Enya bloody Ryerson.

He ought to let her run off on her own. She clearly didn’t want his help.

She had wanted to stab him. But at the mere thought of abandoning her to her fate, a sudden gale ripped through the open window as Mosphaera howled her objection.