The premonition had surfaced the moment I first encountered Aspen, during the courtyard battle with the Masters, back when she was a fledgling caught in the midst of carnage. Since that fateful night, I hadn’t told her, nor anyone. Whatever this portent meant, broadcasting the particularsmight ironically worsen the outcome and produce a fatal ending. A common consequence of trying to cheat destiny.
As for Aspen’s lies, she would outgrow them. Just as she would outgrow her… attachment to me.
I hadn’t known. Not until touching Aspen’s shoulder tonight, the contact shedding her defenses, so that every besotted emotion burned across her features. Astonished, I had struggled in vain to process this revelation, her eyes clinging to me with such candid yearning.
Tenderness. Ruefulness. Both reactions afflicted my conscience. My incapacity to read her notwithstanding, I’d been a fool not to recognize Aspen’s infatuation earlier.
Yet another reason to extract myself from her life. I could not offer the girl what she sought, and she would spit on my sympathy if I attempted to console her.
My steed flew across the maple pasture and down a winding road leading south, into the deepest, darkest crevices of Autumn. Aspen would grow up. As she spewed last night, the girl would survive as she always had. Enemies would come and go, and she would learn how to defeat them.
All else that lay ahead must remain unknown. Much like the differences between falsehood and truth.
“I don’t want to remember this night. Or you.”
The wind sliced through my armor, giving flight to my stallion. With a scowl, I kept going, kept going, kept going.
Had she been lying? I could not say.
But one thing was finally certain. The girl couldn’t have known who else had been in the woods last night. Either that specter would have exposed their identity by ambushing her before my intervention, or she’d have severed their head with her axe prior to my arrival. Aspen’s traumatically chilling history verified this.
So the only other plausibility was that she had met with them on purpose.
Not. Possible.
The pestilent motherfucker had emitted a malevolent essence, intending to do mortal harm. Aspen wouldn’t ally with such a villain.
Compulsively, she lied to everyone. But she would never lie about that.
4
Aire
Seven years later
The corpse went down quickly. Though from my perspective, this target appeared as if it might resurrect itself from death at any moment.
Although the body slumped, its head tilted upward. Indeed, the posture mocked the angle of my sword buried inside the figure’s chest, implying I’d failed to stab him correctly.
Steel vibrated as I yanked out the blade, wishing to run him through again. A black thought for a principled knight.
My comrades pounded their fists in applause, brothers and sisters-in-arms filling the orchard with the clank of gauntlets. Amid that shrill reception, I glared at the figment in its truest form: a crowned mannequin dangling from the branch of a tree, hanging at eye level, with a distorted X painted on his chest.
Shredded yet still in one piece. An enemy who refused to die. An oppressor who didn’t know how the fuck to stay down. Someone in need of an overdue slaughter.
Blood coated my teeth, the briny flavor seeping into my palate. Perdition, I’d sunk my canines through layers of tissue inside my mouth, biting hard while spearing the blade deeply.
Resisting the temptation to mutilate this lifeless form, I stalked backward while spinning the broadsword. My bladesliced the air as I twirled it once, then plunged the weapon into the left scabbard at my naked back.
Discipline. Focus.
Every soldier’s gaze rested on me. Anticipation, eagerness, and a desire to impress Autumn’s First Knight radiated from this troop. But however sincere these inclinations, even enemies could be distracted, swept away by excitement, caught up in the moment. Promoting a susceptibility, much less demonstrating a short fuse, came at too high a price. Throwing an infantile tantrum was the Summer King’s hobby, not the default of a seasoned soldier.
I jutted my chin, summoning the troop’s squire. As he approached, a walnut-sized gulp rolled down the length of his beanstalk throat. The lad thrust his blunted training sword but missed the figure’s heart. And in that moment, enhanced fury coursed through my veins.
I conjured the Summer monarch’s heinous features. Rhys’s leer when he attempted to purchase Nicu back in Spring, long before I’d met the child. The king’s talent for thwarting surveillance, retribution, and eternal reckoning for over a decade. His ability to bounce the hell back every time.
Every. Cursed. Time.
