Kelley Armstrong - Sea of Shadows

Ashyn .

Moria spun and ran out the door.

Moria stood in the junction between two lanes. She looked toward the barracks, then the forest. The choice ought to be simple. Everyone was gone. Dead. Massacred by the shadow stalkers. She needed to get to Ashyn right away.

And yet, when she listened, she heard voices in the forest. Not the screeches of the shadow stalkers, but actual voices. Was it possible some guards had lived? The shadow stalkers could have slipped past them in shadow form.

She looked at Daigo, but the wildcat was doing the same thing, his attention swinging from those voices to the barracks and back.

Ashyn. It had to be Ashyn. Her sister was all she had left now that—

Moria’s knees buckled as pain washed over her. Daigo slid beneath her outstretched hands.

“I have you, too. I know.” But it wasn’t the same, because he was almost an extension of herself.

As she turned toward the barracks, she caught a flash of red-gold hair, streaming behind a figure darting between buildings.

“Ashyn?”

Of course it was. They were the only fair-haired Northerners in Edgewood now that their father…

Moria stifled the thought and raced after her sister. When she reached the end of the road, she caught sight of yellowish fur running around the next corner.

She whistled, but Tova didn’t come back. She ran after them and again she got to the road’s end just in time to see a flash—of both figures this time, her sister and her hound, running like the spirits of the damned were chasing them. Running toward the forest.

“Ashyn! Tova!”

They didn’t stop. Behind her, she heard that now-familiar snarling, moaning shriek, and she turned to see a twisted figure in an open doorway. A shadow stalker in human form. It lunged at her. She wheeled and tore off after Ashyn.

“She’s not coming back, is she?” Ronan said as he moved his playing piece. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Because you used her blade to kidnap me, Ashyn wanted to say. She’d forgiven him. Moria would not until he proved himself worthy.

“Is she worried about the Kitsune boy?” he continued. “I mean, yes, of course she is. But that’s what she’s thinking about. Him.”

Ashyn stifled a sigh and pretended to miss the question. After a moment, he said, “They’re courting, aren’t they?” Ashyn choked on a laugh. “No, definitely not.” “But there is someone, isn’t there? A girl like that…” A girl like that.

Ashyn loved her sister. And yet… It was not that Ashyn particularly wanted any of the young men who trailed after her sister. It was simply… well, simply that she wouldn’t mind a boy’s attention, if only to prove that she wasn’t completely invisible next to Moria.

It had started two springs ago, when a young bard came with the supply wagons. Ashyn still remembered him, with his dark eyes and long braids and quick smile, his pretty words and lilting voice. He’d seen Ashyn first and stopped midsong to stare. Then he’d begun to sing about her. He’d followed her from the village square, still singing as she blushed. That had felt… new. Wonderful and warm.

She’d walked all the way home with the bard singing her praises. Then Moria came swinging out, blade in hand, and told him to quit his caterwauling or she’d use him for target practice. He’d stopped singing about Ashyn then. And started singing about Moria.

Her sister had made good on her promise, whipping her dagger and pinning his cloak to the wall. And that was it. One throw of that blade, and he’d completely forgotten Ashyn. He’d followed Moria for the rest of his visit, composing ballads about the flaxen-haired warrior girl of Edgewood. By the time he left, his cape was so full of holes it looked like a fishing net. Yet he wore it as proudly as if Moria had covered it in kisses instead.

Then there was Levi. Again, Ashyn hadn’t been truly interested; he was a braggart and a bit of a fool. After he kissed her behind the village hall, she’d hurried home to tell Moria. She’d expected they’d laugh over it. Moria had indeed laughed… because he’d done the same to her. The next day he’d awkwardly apologized to Ashyn, and she realized he had drunkenly mistaken her for her sister.

Now Moria had caught Ronan’s attention.

“It’s getting late,” Ashyn said as she stood. “We’ll pick up the game tomorrow.”

“No, stay. My apologies. I was just…” He leaned to peer through the window and down the hall.

I know, she thought. And I don’t blame you.

“You can’t go anyway,” he said. “Moria said to wait until she gets back.”

“Yes, she does that. But I’ll be fine. I have Tova.”

The hound rose at his name. Ignoring Ronan’s protests, Ashyn put the game aside and said her farewells. Before she could take a step down the hall, though, the guard appeared in the flickering lantern light.

“I cannot permit you to leave without your sister,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Theoretically, Ashyn’s authority matched her sister’s. But in martial matters, particularly with the guards, it was Moria’s voice that rang the loudest.

“She seems to have forgotten me,” Ashyn said.

Anyone who truly knew Moria would realize that was impossible. Most likely, Moria had been waylaid and simply delayed. But Ashyn was tired and not particularly eager to wait.

The guard looked up at the hatch, as if considering. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but she was very clear.”

“Can you get someone to find her, then?”

He hesitated.

“The barracks are right above us,” she said. “Someone must be near.”

He nodded. She followed him down the hall. He climbed the ladder, opened the hatch, and called out. When no one answered, he called again, louder. Then a third shout, one that made her ears ring.

Something’s wrong.

The thought seemed to leap from nowhere, but it didn’t, of course. It had been there since they’d run from the forest. Whatever happened out there isn’t over. She’d felt that in her gut, in the cold silence of the spirit-empty village. When they’d met with the commander, she’d wanted to tell him to run . Everyone run.

That was foolish, of course. Run from what? Run to where?

Ashyn had watched her sister marching around, giving orders, and making plans, and thought, for perhaps the thousandth time since their birth, Why can’t I be more like her? Instead, she’d sat quietly to the side, fear strumming through her, ashamed of her cowardice, consumed by guilt.

Moria insisted that what happened in the forest was not Ashyn’s fault. It was not possible that a mistake in the Seeking could have caused that. While Ashyn knew she hadn’t raised those spirits, she could not help but feel she had still failed. That Ellyn would have been able to stop the spirits.

Now, as the guard came back down the ladder, that tamped-down fear and guilt ignited. She stifled the first licks of true panic and said calmly, “With the search party gone, they must all be on duty. Would you go out and check, please? I’ll wait here at the hatch.”

He nodded and climbed out.

“I’m going to step outside,” he said.

She fought a prickle of impatience as his boots scuffed across the floor. A distant door creaked.

“Hello?” he called.

No answer.

“What’s going on?” Ronan asked from his cell.

She silenced him with a wave and kept listening as the guard’s voice got farther and farther away. Tova whined. She waved him to silence, too.

“You there!” the guard’s distant voice called. “Yes, you! Come back.”