Tristan watched the dead coals, letting the wind kick their dust into his face as Ash ministered to Aspen. His hands shook, both from cold and fear. Aspen had been so small, so fragile. Worn out body, spirit, and magic, and there was no telling if she would come back from that. And she had done it all for him when he had all but run away. He gripped his hands together, squeezing until his knuckles turned white. He would make it right. He had to.
But what if you can’t? His mouth ran dry at the thought. What if she dies, and it’s all your fault?
Styrax sat across from him, silent and grim. They sat that way for a while, not a word between them, and for once, Tristan had no inclination to break that silence.
“Tristan.” Styrax clenched his hands, his gaze steely as he watched Tristan. His usual humor was gone, replaced with hurt and betrayal and fury and a desperate need to understand. “I have put up with a lot from you because I understood a lot happened all at once and it was hard to break the habits of Lorate. But this?” He gestured to Aspen’s tent. “You have crossed a line that there may be no coming back from.”
Tristan couldn’t look him in the eye. “I know.”
“Aspen could die.”
“I—” Tristan’s voice broke. “I understand.”
Styrax rubbed his face and sat back. He studied his hands in silence for a while. “Why? What have we done to deserve this treatment?”
His voice sounded as broken as Tristan felt. He sensed the question referred to something greater than just their group. “I can only take responsibility for my own actions. You, Ash, and Aspen have done nothing to deserve the way I have treated you.”
Styrax rested his brow in his hand and twiddled a stick in the dirt. “I’m not here to punish you. I just want to understand. The Tristan back there is not the Tristan I know. Please tell me why.”
The lump in Tristan’s throat seemed too big to talk around, but Styrax needed to know—deserved to know. “Styrax I-I think I’m a monster.”
Styrax said nothing. Didn’t agree nor argue. Tristan silently thanked him for it. He already understood so little of what was happening to him. Adding any further distractions would only make the problem worse. “There are thoughts…this voice…it tells me horrible things. To do horrible things. I see monsters everywhere I look, and lash out when there’s nothing there.” He looked into the fire, hands clenched so tightly his nails dug furrows in his palm. “It might be best if I…found my own way. I’m dangerous.” He heard Aspen’s skin tear. Saw the scarlet stains on her tunic. “To you and everyone else.” Memories of the voice—of the darkness it sowed in his chest—haunted him. He feared he would lose his mind entirely if he left. But he feared what he would do if he stayed more.
“What happened, Tristan?”
Tristan’s hands shook. “I-I almost killed Aspen. I—”
“No, not that. What made you go back to help?”
“I…” Tristan’s mind went blank. “I don’t know. It’s like…I knew Aspen for the first time. The voice was gone, and I didn’t think. I just did.”
Styrax leaned forward, face earnest. “And what happened before that? Anything unusual?”
“Other than getting a thorough and well-deserved whipping from a child? No.”
“What happened in that fight?”
“Does it matter?” Tristan leapt to his feet and paced. “What does that have to do with anything?” He pulled at his hair, reliving that moment over and over again—watching Aspen fall soundlessly, face as gray as fog. “He attacked me. Aspen saved me. And now she’s sharing a bed with Death and it’s all my fault!” He dropped to his log again and buried his face in his hands. Tears, bitter with guilt and remorse, wet his cheeks.
“Tristan,” Styrax leaned forward, gaze piercing, face set with firm earnestness. “I know this may be a lot to ask of you right now, but I need you to trust that I’m asking these things for a reason.”
Tristan took in a shuddering breath. He pressed his palms into his eyes, scrubbing away the overwhelm of emotions, and the images relented. For the moment. “I do trust you. Of anyone in this upside down kingdom, I trust you the most.”
Styrax put a hand on his shoulder. “Then tell me.”
Tristan did. He told him everything from the moment they entered the village to the moment he tried to keep the villagers off Aspen and failed. Every bitter, terrifying thought. Although it didn’t make the situation any better, talking about it made it less…cursed? Less like he had imagined it all and was slowly going mad.
When he finished, Styrax sat back in silence for a long time. He stared at the stars as if they could speak. “Can I see the rings?”
Tristan nodded and fished the broken strap from his pocket. He hesitated for a moment. These had been the only things he’d ever had from before his memory. If anything happened to them…
He handed them over. He trusted Styrax.
Styrax took the first ring into his palm and left the other with Tristan. He weighed it, turned it over in his fingers, and whispered a few words over it. It glowed green. A somehow familiar mist curled from its edges. Styrax stopped speaking, and the glow faded.
“What was that?” Tristan asked, his voice hoarse. A spell? A curse?
“A talisman,” Styrax said as he handed it back to Tristan. “It’s meant to protect you from those that would do you harm. It’s weak, but the magic’s still there.” He looked Tristan in the eyes. “Whoever made this cared a lot about you.” Styrax gestured for the other ring. Tristan handed it to him, still dangling from its strap.
Styrax gasped in pain the moment it touched him. He flung it to the ground and kicked a pile of dirt over it as he scrambled away. Tristan had never seen him look so horrified.
“What? What?”
Styrax looked at him with wide eyes. “You…You’ve had this on you for five years?”
Tristan nodded. He couldn’t get words out. Not in the face of Styrax’s fear.
“Tristan, that thing has been…touched.”
Any previous notion of what that word meant fled the moment Styrax said it like that. Tristan’s tongue latched onto his cheeks in his dry mouth.
“A demon, a warlock…I don’t know what, but there’s enough dark magic in there to kill you.”
Tristan found his voice, weak and barely there. “But Laire said it was supposed to help me bring back my memories—”
“He lied.”
Tristan shook his head. No. He couldn’t believe it. Not of the man that had saved him. Not the man that gave him a home. “No. It’s Sedick. It has to be. He tricked Laire when he made it for me.”
“Sedick did this?”
Tristan nodded again. What else could he do?
Styrax leaned forward with a puff of breath as if expelling some demon from himself. He rubbed his eyes. “Okay. This is a lot to take in. We’ll revisit this whole Sedick thing later. Right now, do you understand what this means for you?”
Tristan simply looked at him, uncomprehending.
Styrax leaned forward, his face warm and soft. “It wasn’t you thinking those thoughts and doing those things. It was a curse.”
Tristan’s heart leapt at the thought. “It…it wasn’t me?”
Styrax shook his head.
“I’m not—” Tristan’s voice choked and tears sprang to his eyes. “I’m not a monster? I’m not a danger to anyone?”
Styrax’s eyes welled. “No. And I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize the curse sooner, and that you had to suffer from all of that all on your own.”
Tristan wept, all his fears washing out through those floods, and Styrax sat quietly next to him until he had no more tears to cry.
Aspen woke to an almighty crash, and Ash cursing under her breath.
Despite feeling like someone had thrown her to a herd of stampeding minotaurs, Aspen smiled. “Sweet Sister Earth, you’ll wake the dead with that racket.” It alarmed her at how much she sounded like the dead, rasping past chapped lips and horrific cotton mouth.
Ash sucked in a gasp that she nearly choked on and whirled. She gaped at Aspen for a moment with unabashed relief before she pursed her lips and quirked an eyebrow. “Then I will have done my job.” Her eyes welled, and she swept Aspen to her, squeezing her until her ribs nearly collapsed. Aspen grimaced past the pain and patted her on the back.
After several long, excruciating seconds, Ash finally released her. She wiped the moisture from her eyes and brushed her hair away from her face. “Sweet Sister Earth, if you ever scare me like that again…” She shook her head, unable to finish the words.
Aspen patted her arm. “I’m sorry.”
“I would certainly hope so! Stop. Putting. Yourself. In. Danger!” A punch to Aspen’s leg punctuated each word. But softly. “A cursed back. Stab wounds galore. And now sorcerer’s blight. No more, do you understand?”
“I said I was sorry!”
“You’d better keep saying it until I actually believe you!” Ash sat back on her hands, disturbing the pile of cooking utensils she had dropped. “You are so lucky we have Hemlock’s miracle salve for your back. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here for me to yell at.” She put a shaking hand to her face and smiled at Aspen. “It’s good to see you.” Her voice broke with emotion.
Aspen smiled softly back, choking back the unexpected lump in her own throat. “It’s good to see you, too.” She didn’t want to dwell on how close she had come to being gone forever. How the faceless shadows had breathed down her neck and loomed over her head. The thought sent chills down her arms. She rubbed the gooseflesh away. “How’s Tristan?”
Ash’s face darkened. “Ah, yes. Him.”
Aspen sat up straighter, grimacing at what that did to her body. Ash’s tone reminded her of some…dark times for Ash. “What did you do?”
Ash threw her hands up. “Nothing! Although I definitely considered removing him from his limbs.” Some of the tension left her body with a sigh. She tucked her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “There have been some…developments.”
Aspen watched her with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean?”
Ash sighed again and scratched her scalp. “I suppose there’s no polite way to say this.” She gave Aspen a pointed look. “Tristan was cursed.”
Aspen had nothing to say about that. She sat and mulled the thought over in her brain. It certainly made his lunatic antics more understandable. But how? And why? Her tired, ill mind ached at the effort to piece it together. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why waste the resources and energy? Surely there are other people that it would be of more benefit to curse?”
Ash leaned forward, her look earnest. “I could hazard a guess.”
Her meaning evaporated the pained fog of Aspen’s mind like a forest fire. She blanched. The world swayed, and she clutched at her blankets for balance. “No,” she said. She couldn’t tell if her voice came out hoarse due to misuse or fear. The tent walls threatened to collapse on her at any moment. Her throat ran dry and the base of her left thumb burned. Her scar writhed on her back. “It can’t be…” she gulped. She couldn’t get enough oxygen to her lungs. “Him. It can’t. I told you already; he’s not him.”
Ash put her hands on Aspen’s. “I know you don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t blame you. But there are too many,” she waved her arms vaguely about her head, “things for it to all be just a horrible coincidence! Laire just happening to be in the same fort as Tristan? Tristan not remembering anything about his past life beyond five years? They never found the body, Aspen. There’s too much evidence—”
“I know that!” Aspen’s outburst wracked her body and triggered a coughing fit that tore through her lungs. All the better for it. It kept her from sinking into that night, watching his head shatter over and over again. She bit back tears and pulled her hand from Ash’s. “What you call hurt, I call torture. Real, physical anguish I am trapped in every moment of my life. You think I don’t want him to be alive? I have done nothing but dream and hope and pray for it since that night.” She rubbed the mark on her thumb and ignored the pain in her back. “But all I’m ever reminded of is the horrible finality of that night. How irreversible my mistakes were. I watched it with my own eyes, Ash. Ro is dead. Gone forever. And I—” Her voice gave out on her. She bit her lip. “I have to live with that.”
Ash looked like she wanted to say more, but refrained. Aspen saw her own pain mirrored in Ash’s face and wished she could recant her harshness. But she couldn’t. Choices were irrevocable once they were made. She rubbed the mark on her thumb. It reminded her of that fact every day.
Ash patted Aspen’s knee, all her unspoken words tight on her face. Trust. Believe. Try. Aspen didn’t have the strength to do any of it. Ash, blessedly, didn’t say any of them. “I’m going to make you some food.”
Aspen’s stomach curdled at the thought. “I’m not—”
Ash pushed a finger to Aspen’s lips. “I’m. Making. You. Food. You are hungry, and you are eating. Stay here and get some rest until I come back to get you.”
She left Aspen alone with her thoughts. A dangerous place to be. They trembled through her body, reliving the nightmares. Her fingers twitched into the way she held her sword. Her scar ached. Crimson pools of blood spotted her vision while faceless specters hovered at the edges. Three men stood before her, each staring into her soul with lifeless eyes. They were gone. She knew it.
Another face swam through her memories, blurring the nightmares. A woman with dark hair and a scar across both eyelids. Aspen had tried to forget her. To push her aside as just a hopeful fantasy that had emerged amid her agony. The woman had offered too much hope. Had driven Aspen on too many feverish searches for a man she had watched die. But today, her words resonated in Aspen’s bones and nurtured hope where it was not wanted.
I will help him.
Aspen pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until she saw nothing but the stars they made. A single tear slipped down her cheek before she could catch it. She twisted her fingers into the hairs on her scalp and pulled. “He’s gone,” she said to her phantoms. “He’s gone. He’s gone, he’s gone. No one saved him. And it’s my fault.”
But the woman’s voice came again to her mind as it had that night so many years ago. All will be well. All will be well.
Aspen sobbed.
Tristan’s firewood clattered from his arms. He didn’t know if he should laugh, cry, or faint at the sight of Aspen sitting by the fire with her cloak wrapped around her like a blanket.
“You’re awake!” He picked up a few stray slivers of firewood and bustled to her. “We didn’t know…I was worried you…” He shook his head and threw the wood onto the fire. Sparks fizzed into the night. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just—” his voice cracked. He bit his lip and choked back the lump in his throat. “I’m glad you’re all right.” He sat across from her and smiled.
Aspen didn’t look at him. She stared into the fire, a bowl of stew clutched in her lap.
Tristan’s smile faded. Right. They weren’t friends. He had been a monster and almost gotten her killed. He wouldn’t be surprised if she never spoke to him again. He wouldn’t blame her. He clenched his hands in his lap.
“I’m sorry for everything I did,” he said.
Aspen slurped her stew and rolled the chunks in her cheeks.
“And I know that’s never going to be enough. I mean, you nearly died! Why would words make any of that better?”
Aspen slurped again.
Tristan ran a hand through his hair. He was making it worse. Absolute, total disaster. “I wish there was a way I could make it all up to you, but I know there isn’t. I was awful, ungrateful, bigoted, and just a monster. If there was any way I could erase all the hurt I caused you, I would in a heartbeat. And if you ever think of anything I can do to make it up to you, I would jump at the chance.”
Aspen swallowed. Swished the last remnants of broth in her bowl.
Tristan’s throat ached around the lump that had formed. He should have expected this. He deserved it. All the apologizing and begging in the world wouldn’t fix the damage he’d done. But that didn’t mean he still hadn’t wished…He clenched his jaw. He couldn’t expect that of her. “But if you choose to never speak to me again, that is more than I deserve.”
He stood to leave.
“Aren’t we fervent tonight?”
If the sky rained golden coins, Tristan could not have been happier than in that moment. He whirled to face Aspen, eyes wet with relief. “You’re talking to me?”
“Considering my only other options are a stew bowl and the empty expanse of darkness, I would certainly hope I’m talking to you.”
“But, why?”
“Because if I were talking to my stew, my sanity might come into question.”
“Not that.” Tristan couldn’t believe he’d missed her sarcasm. “Why are you talking to me? You didn’t say anything for a while, and I thought...”
“Most consider it rude to talk with your mouth full.” She sipped the last of her stew, the gleam in her eyes wicked. “Plus, you were saying such nice things.”
Tristan put his face in his hands, unsure if he should be relieved or irritated.
“Tristan.”
He looked up. The humor had gone from Aspen’s face. She looked at him with a soft intensity that made his heart trip in his chest. Aspen set her bowl down and leaned closer to him. The smell of roses and fall leaves wafted from her hair. Had he noticed that before?
“Ash told me about how you ran me all the way here, and that you were never far while I was recovering. I wanted to say thank you.”
He bowed his head, his shoulders hunched. Sparks from the fire spat in his face, and he thought of all the times he’d done the same to Aspen. “I don’t deserve your thanks. You wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place if it wasn’t for me.”
“I’ve had more people than I can count try to kill me,” she said with a smile—a small thing that barely turned up the corners of her mouth—and the warmth of the gesture burned on his cheeks. “But none of them have ever come back to help me recover.”
Tristan didn’t know how to respond to that. “Is the number of your near-death experiences supposed to make me feel better?”
She stirred the ashes, their glow turning her skin to amber. “We all make choices we wish we hadn’t. It takes a rare character to let go of their pride and try to fix things on their own.” Her gaze darkened and her jaw clenched. “Ash also told me about the curse.”
Tristan nodded. “Even with it, though, that’s no excuse for how I—”
Aspen held up a hand. “I know. It certainly didn’t help, though.”
Tristan couldn’t argue with that.
Aspen nodded as if acknowledging his acquiescence. “I’ve been doing some thinking since Ash told me. All of it is pure speculation, but I’d like to discuss those thoughts with you sometime when I’m not quite…so…” a yawn poured from her mouth, “tired.”
“I’d be honored.” Tristan helped her to her feet.
She scrunched her nose and patted his cheek. “Don’t be so sure. You don’t know what I have to say yet.” She headed off to bed.
“Aspen?”
She moaned in response. “Not even two steps and you’re already pestering me again?” she asked.
“Last question, I promise.”
“So you say, but we both know that’s nothing but lies.”
Tristan chuckled. “Last one before I let you sleep, then.”
“Fine,” she grumbled.
“Will you teach me how to fight?”
She eyed him carefully. “Are you sure you’re ready to take lessons from a monster like me again?”
Tristan grimaced. “Yes. How many times do I have to apologize for that?”
“That’s now two questions. And as many times as I say so.” Her grin was wicked and far too excited. “Your training starts as soon as I have time.” With that, she made her way back to her tent.
“And when will that be?”
“Three.”
Tristan winced.