Daggers sleep, p.28
Dagger's Sleep, page 28
part #1 of Beyond the Tales Series
There, halfway down the slope, Neskahana’s army fought in a defensive formation shared with Buckhannock’s army. The young man Rosanna had seen the night before, Buckhannock’s prince, called out orders to the formation, gesturing an order to charge forward into the ranks of both the Pohatomie and Tuckawassee.
Berend stood next to the prince of Buckhannock, giving a similar motioned command to Neskahana’s warriors.
Where was her father? Surely, he couldn’t be among those the bodies, lying wounded or dead.
Isi gripped Rosanna’s arm and pointed. “There.”
Rosanna’s father fought hard at the edge of a small group of his personal guards, cut off from the rest of Neskahana’s warriors. He swung his long knife in one hand, a war ax in the other.
His strike was blocked by a Tuckawassee warrior dressed in gold-fringed buckskin and wearing a crown. The current king of Tuckawassee, backed by ranks upon ranks of his men.
One of her father’s guards fell. Pitifully few remained guarding her father as the Tuckawassee surrounded him.
Neskahana and Buckhannock were charging forward, but they wouldn’t reach her father in time.
Father leapt backward to avoid a strike and stumbled on one of the bodies on the ground behind him. The Tuckawassee king raised his war ax as her father struggled to regain his balance.
“No!” Rosanna glanced about. She didn’t have anything she could throw, not to mention the distance was too great.
Daemyn drew an arrow from Zeke’s quiver, nocked it, and raised the bow. In all the time Rosanna had known him, she’d never seen him use a weapon besides his staff, not even the dagger he’d worn on his belt.
But hadn’t Father told stories about how Arlen Rand had taught him how to use a long knife? And what about the stories that said Jubal Rand was a great archer?
Those were all Daemyn too. He’d had a hundred years to practice any weapon he wished.
Daemyn drew back the bow, his eyes narrowed, and he released.
The king of Tuckawassee staggered and fell, Daemyn’s arrow in his chest. A second Tuckawassee fell before he could finish swinging his hand ax at her father’s head.
Then the warriors from Neskahana and Buckhannock were there, pushing the Tuckawassee back and enfolding her father into their ranks.
The morning sunlight glinted on High Prince Alexander’s crown. In the ranks of the Guyangahelans, a man pointed toward where the high prince stood. Orders were given, and the Guyangahelans marched forward, spears thrust ahead of them.
With the armies of Neskahana, Buckhannock, Kanawhee, Monongadotte, and Guyangahela facing them, the warriors of Tuckawassee and Pohatomie regrouped into a small knot of men and women.
Within the ranks, a few men and women worked their way forward, talking urgently to their commanders. Counseling for more war or for peace?
Rosanna peered closer. Did she recognize a few of those down below? She glanced at Daemyn. Had she seen them last night among Daemyn’s relatives?
He rested the end of the bow on the stone parapet as down below, weapons were laid down. “The battle’s over. At least for today.”
Rosanna sagged against the battlements. Tomorrow might bring more war. The Tuckawassee surely wouldn’t take the death of two of their kings lightly.
But, for now, she could take a deep breath and hope that for today, Tallahatchia would have peace.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Rosanna
WITH CAPTAIN DEGOTAGA, Otho, Chogan, and Ilma at her back, Rosanna pushed into the crowd of Neskahana’s warriors, smiling as they stopped to bow and congratulate her on waking the high prince. Isi had remained behind in Castle Eyota to help tend to Zeke.
“Ro-Row!”
She barely had time to whirl around before Berend plowed into her. She hugged him, trying to ignore the patches of blood on his clothes. Based on how tightly he hugged and how fast he’d moved, the blood wasn’t his. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Fine. You did it. You really did it.” Berend pulled away enough for her to see the scraggly scruff on his chin and cheeks. There hadn’t been time to tease him about it then while running from Major Beshko, but now . . .
“Of course, I did.” She swatted his arm with a backhand. “What’s with the attempt at a beard?”
He rubbed his chin as if stroking a bushy beard. “You like it? Some of warriors from Monongadotte made a pact not to shave their beards until the high king was restored, something about a pledge their grandfather made sixty years ago that resulted in this impressive beard down to his knees. It sounded like a grand idea. But then you had to go and wake him before anyone of us from Neskahana could get a good start at it.”
Rosanna cocked her head. “Sorry. I think I did you a favor. Your beard doesn’t seem to have gotten the message to start growing yet.” Beards weren’t something many men in Neskahana could grow, much less wanted to.
Berend rolled his eyes with a sigh. “It’s humiliating, especially when I spend my nights literally covered in fur.”
“It must be unbearable.” Rosanna found herself grinning. When had she last grinned like this?
Berend grinned and threw his arm around her shoulders. “Exactly. I can bearly contain my disappointment. Now let’s find Father and Mother and assure them their favorite daughter is alive and well.”
Rosanna rolled her eyes and fell into step with Berend as they threaded their way deeper into the camp.
Men and women set up tents, tended the wounded, and recovered the dead. By nightfall, not a single body would remain abandoned on the field of battle.
“Rosanna.” Father stood from where he knelt next to a wounded warrior and dashed to her. He hugged her as tightly as one of Berend’s bear hugs. “I’m so proud of you.”
Mother joined them a heartbeat later, wrapping Rosanna with warmth.
When Father pulled back, he held out a piece of paper. “Willem asked me to give this to you.”
The note contained only a single line. I’m honored to have you for a sister. Willem.
Rosanna swallowed back a lump in her throat. She didn’t have to ask to know Willem had written only the one note, to be given to her whether she succeeded or failed.
This was home. Not Castle Deeling or the rapids along the Onohio. Home was her parents’ embrace, Berend’s puns, and Willem’s serious expression.
But something deep inside her still ached as if someone was still missing. Part of her heart now belonged elsewhere, a home not found even with her family.
NIGHT HAD LONG FALLEN over Castle Eyota. The king of Pohatomie remained under guard while the other kings, including Rosanna’s father, packed inside Castle Eyota’s hall to recognize High Prince Alexander as the high king, set a date for the official coronation, and write up an official treaty to deal with Tuckawassee and Pohatomie.
But Rosanna’s role in this was over. All she had left to do was figure out what would happen now that her quest was done, the high prince awakened.
She found Daemyn by himself on the wall top over the back gate, gazing down at the Kanawhee River flowing black and shimmering into the deep darkness of the mountains. The stars overhead winked and burned in the depths of the sky. In the far-off distance, a pack of wolves howled to the wind.
He remained still as she approached, leaning against the battlements, his head bowed. She rested her elbows on the stones next to him, gazing out into the night. “What do you plan to do now that this is all over?”
Daemyn sighed and lifted his head to stare up at the stars. “I don’t know. I never planned for this, living after High Prince Alexander woke.”
“Why not?” She inched closer. If only they had an understanding between them, something that would give her permission to wrap her arm around his and lean her head against his shoulder. It had felt so right to hold him as he’d been dying, but the wall was back between them now that he lived. She wasn’t sure what she had to say or do to make him lower it again.
“My task was all there was. Now . . .” Daemyn’s shoulders slumped, his voice strained. “I don’t know what to do with another lifetime.”
She ached for him, for the years that weighed on him so much that he didn’t rejoice at being spared death yet again. She had to swallow before she could force out the words on her heart. “You don’t have to live this lifetime alone.”
His shoulders slumped farther, as if her words only added to the weight pressing him down. “No, Princess. Don’t hang your hopes on me. Go home to Neskahana. Find someone there.”
She crossed her arms, heat flaring through her chest. “Why do you always do this? Push me away every time I try to get close. I thought you might care. Look at me and tell me I’m wrong.”
“Princess, I . . .”
“Don’t.” She couldn’t stand to hear him say her title one more time, as if it was a shield he held between them. “My name is Rosanna. Say it.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not? Make me understand.” She gripped his arm. If there was one thing this quest had taught her, it was to fight for the things that mattered. She had crossed mountains at this man’s side, paddled to the headwaters of rivers with him, and watched him die twice.
Perhaps they weren’t quite up to speaking wedding vows and pledging their lives to each other, but she reckoned it was about time they scouted things out to see if they could make it there eventually.
“I just . . .” He pulled his arm from her grasp and turned away, but not before she caught a glimpse of his expression. Wide-eyed, brow furrowed.
This wasn’t anger. It was confusion.
It was easy to forget, standing where she was, how hard this was for him. She only saw Daemyn, the quiet young man who had led her through the mountains. She hadn’t been there during all the other names he’d worn while waiting for the high prince to be awakened. How could she begin to guess what it was like to have over a hundred years of memories yet still be twenty-one years old?
For that’s what he was, especially now. He’d been different when he’d woken after dying of old age. Younger, if that was possible. When she’d met him, she’d guessed him twenty-five because the weight of the years he’d lived clouding the depths of his eyes. That was gone now, and she couldn’t mistake him for any age other than twenty-one.
If she’d thought herself falling for him before, now something between them fit better than it had. Perhaps now he would be able to smile again. Laugh. Live.
If space and time was what he needed to sort through everything, that’s what she’d give him.
For now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Alexander
ALEX NEARLY RAN INTO Princess Rosanna as she hurried down the stairs from the battlements, swiping at her eyes, though she wasn’t sniffing or making any noise indicating she was sobbing. Just shedding silent tears as if even that was a release she barely allowed herself.
He caught her as she stumbled on the last step trying to avoid him. “Princess Rosanna. I don’t believe I thanked you properly for waking me up.”
She wiped at her face one last time, drew in a breath, and faced him as composed as if she’d come in response to his official summons.
Yet something in her remained the wild-haired girl who woke him. The same one who had casually destroyed a priceless antique glass apple without a second thought. “You’re welcome, though I was just doing what I was called to do.”
He glanced between her and Jadon’s stiff, dark form silhouetted against the stars and lowered his voice. “I left a girl back a hundred years ago, but I think, if I’d truly loved her, I would’ve tried harder. Don’t give up yet.”
The set of her shoulders straightened. “I don’t intend to.” With one last nod, she swept past him, her stride firm.
Alex marched up the stairs. As he approached, Jadon straightened, his posture stiffening in a semblance of how he’d stood as Alex’s manservant. But he wore the posture awkwardly, like a shirt that no longer fit him. “Was there something you required, Your Highness?”
What did he require? Alex leaned against the battlements, staring into the darkness dotted with campfires.
In the daylight, he had searched the mountains around the castle, looking for familiar stones and trees. But saplings had grown into towering trees. Old trees had grown still older or come crashing down. Even the river had deepened and changed its course.
And the town of Eyota had been reduced to crumbling homes and rotting stumps of docks, its few remaining citizens trying to eke out an existence in the shadow of the slumbering castle and ever-present threat of war.
He required something familiar. Someone who remembered the way things had been a century ago.
“You don’t have to be my manservant any longer. Not after what you’ve done.” Alex rubbed at the signet ring on his finger. “I can make you my seneschal. My chief advisor. Or, if you prefer, I will grant you land and a barony in whichever of the Seven Kingdoms you desire.”
Instead of smiling, Jadon stiffened still further. “I will serve wherever you wish me to.”
Alex curled his fingers. Why did even his attempt at a reward sound like he was demanding more work and obedience? “No, no. That’s not what I meant. I’m trying to reward you. Choose whatever you wish, and if it’s in my power, I will grant it.”
Jadon was a statue staring into the distance. “I wish for no reward. I merely did my duty.”
“You did far more than that.” Alex shook his head. “I could use an advisor. My mother, me, and you are the only ones left who remember the Tallahatchia that once was.”
“If that is what you wish.” Jadon’s back was so stiff it looked about to snap.
“Don’t. Don’t go back to being the silent, dutiful servant. I don’t want a servant. I want . . . I want a friend.” Alex faced Jadon, palms up. “I need someone unafraid to honestly tell me the truth without any pandering. I didn’t have that a hundred years ago, and I was a miserably selfish, arrogant prince. I don’t want to return to what I was before the curse, and I’m begging you that, if you can stand my presence after the horrible person I used to be, you’ll be that person.”
Finally, Jadon turned, his back a fraction less stiff. “You were a mite arrogant back then.”
Alex rested his elbows on the battlements, a smile twitching his mouth. “Come now. Don’t hold back.”
Jadon huffed out a breath, and his posture relaxed still more. “I’m not sure you’re ready to hear all of it yet.”
“Perhaps not.” Alex chuckled, but he wasn’t sure how much mirth was behind it. He had a long way to go before he could laugh at the man he had been, and in too many ways, still was.
He shook his head. Enough about himself. “Do you know what happened to Mirabelle?”
Had she been happy? For some reason, Alex needed the answer to be yes. He didn’t want to think that by falling into his curse, he’d cursed her to a life of misery as well.
“She had her own curse to fight, but she came out of it with a man she loved deeply.” Jadon waved down at the black shape of the dying roses ringing the castle. “She grew those, about a year after you fell asleep, when it became clear we couldn’t hold off the Tuckawassee forever.”
There was something about those roses, a farewell that spanned the decades. Alex could be at peace with that, knowing she’d had what she never could have found with him. “And her parents? Did I just dream they fell asleep when I did?”
“They woke early. From what I was told, they were never meant to stay caught in your curse forever.”
Something in Jadon’s voice said there was more to this story, but now wasn’t the time to ask. It was enough to know Mirabelle hadn’t lost her parents, nor had she been unhappy. It was all he could’ve wished for her. Hopefully she’d known that, even as she’d grown the hedge of roses to keep him safe for a hundred years.
Alex let the silence lengthen for a beat. “They call you Daemyn.”
Jadon’s shoulders slumped, as if the name reminded him of a great weight he still carried. “One of many names I’ve had. It was easier to kill off a previous name than try to explain why I wasn’t aging.”
“I suppose I should call you Daemyn, then.” Yet Alex still struggled to give Jadon another name than the one he’d spent eleven years calling him.
“Doesn’t matter to me.” Jadon swept pebbles from the wall top with his fingers. “I’m Jadon. And Daemyn. Arlen, Jubal, and all the other names I’ve worn in the past hundred years.”
Jadon had paid a far higher price than Alex had, as if he too had suffered a curse. Something that could have been avoided had Alex not let his own arrogance lead him to pick up that dagger. “Did you have time with your family?”
“Some. I had to keep moving, checking if the sapphire cleared and eventually organizing those loyal to you. But my family stuck by me, best they could.” Jadon stared off to the north as if he could see that little cabin in Buckhannock. Was it still standing after all this time?
With the hitch to Jadon’s voice, Alex could hear what he wasn’t saying. Jadon was there when his parents died, his siblings died, his nieces and nephews died. And still Jadon was here on this side of the WaterVeil. “Did Luke ever forgive me?”
“Not fully, I don’t think. Not when he realized, even more than I did back then, how much it was going to cost me.” Jadon shook his head.
Luke would’ve taken his spear to Alex if he’d guessed how much Alex would hurt Jadon in what was then the future.
Alex swallowed and stared off into the night, seeing again that crystal throne room. “Why did you do it? Volunteer to find the cursebreaker?”
It was a question he hadn’t thought to ask back then. He’d simply expected it, as if it was Jadon’s duty to share his curse.
But Jadon hadn’t had to volunteer any more than he’d had to remain Alex’s manservant. He could’ve walked away and left Alex to his own arrogant misery. Probably should have.
