Their training continued over the next several days as an impenetrable anvil of obsidian, lightning-laced clouds drew further into view. Tristan continued to improve with every round of sparring with Ash and Styrax cheering him on, but he felt a slip in Aspen’s focus. She slept less, toying over and over with her stack of parchment and glancing at the storm system every moment she could spare. Her anxiety was palpable, and Tristan felt it building in him as well. They were nearly to the Dragon Scales—the place he’d recover his lost memories. Or at least he hoped. Dread clawed through his mind as he realized that he had no plan for after they made it there. What if it didn’t have the answers he was looking for? What if it had too many answers; ones he didn’t like? What if he’d been a murderer? Or a cheat? Or someone that nobody cared about? The thoughts tightened in his chest until he couldn’t breathe anymore.
But then Aspen would ask him a question, Styrax would joke about something, or Ash would make a face, and then all of his anxieties would quiet. It didn’t matter who he was in the Dragon Scales. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a plan in place for the aftermath. He would figure it out. And they would all be there to help him.
He had finally started to use the journal Aspen gave him as well. Ever since he had left the gold ring behind, his nightmares had stopped. No more monsters. But, also, no more of the hazy images that came with them. So, instead, he filled it with his day-to-day memories. If he found nothing at the Dragon Scales, at least he would have those to remember forever.
The sun shrank early behind the black wall of storm one night. It reached higher than Tristan could see—an impossible, swirling, endless, looming tapestry of a vengeful storm. Lightning arced across the billowing, pulsing black clouds in silver and purple. When he stopped to listen, Tristan heard the gales’ keening howls that shaped the clouds beneath their clutches. The sky and earth rumbled in a dissonance that wracked his frame. His heart stopped pounding in his chest. They had made it.
Aspen called an immediate halt, her face tinged green. “We’re here.”
Ash dug out rations and Styrax settled in next to Tristan, watching the storm with careful, reverential awe.
“We’re going into that?” As heroically as he tried otherwise, Tristan’s voice cracked when he gestured to the Pit manifested.
Aspen set her knapsack down and rolled her neck and shoulders out. She flexed her back with a grimace, pointedly avoiding looking at the storm. “The storm will clear in the next few days. We’ll enter the valley it leaves behind when it’s gone.”
Tristan watched the storm while a maw of dread ate his stomach. What in Sister Earth’s name would convince someone to ever go into that madness? What had convinced him all those years ago?
Styrax bumped Tristan’s shoulder. “You sure it’s still worth it?”
Tristan chuckled weakly. “Ask me again when I see what ‘gone’ looks like.”
Aspen cinched her sword tighter about her waist, her face set in grim lines. “The land’s constantly torn apart near the entrance. I’ll need to find a safe path now so we don’t waste our precious clear-sky time.” She cast a glance at Ash in an aside. “Considering how accommodating their last gatekeeper was, I imagine we’ll need every precious second.”
“I’ll go with you.” Ash jumped to her feet. She almost hid her wince when she put pressure on her injured leg.
Aspen didn’t look at her. “No, you’re still injured.”
Ash laughed, a bark of incredulousness. “You are talking to me about injuries? General Everything-I-Touch-Tries-To-Kill-Me?”
Aspen rolled her eyes. “I’ll be fine, Ash. I had an excellent healer.”
“I’ll be fine, too! It’s only a twisted ankle!”
Aspen didn’t argue, but still stubbornly refused to look at her cousin. Ash thwacked Aspen over the head with her quiver of arrows. “Aspen—Sister Earth, help me—I let you get away with so much, but going down there by yourself will not be one of them!”
Aspen whirled to face her in disbelief, eyes alight with indignant rage. “Did you just hit me with your quiver? Are we children, now?”
“You’re certainly acting like one, you stubborn, infuriating—”
Tristan stepped in before he could help himself. If they let this go on for too long everyone would end up with bruises, both to body and pride. “What if I go with her?” he asked.
“No!” Aspen said with a flash of…panic?
Tristan put up a conciliatory hand. A smirk threatened at the corner of his lips. “Well, Sister Earth, if I’d be a burden—”
“No, no.” Ash stopped him with a hand. “I think that’s an excellent idea,” she said. She raised a defiant eyebrow at Aspen.
Aspen muttered a curse and turned to leave pointedly without Tristan, but Ash caught her arm again. “It’ll be fine. You’re just looking around.”
Aspen pressed her lips together. A look of regret weighed on her eyes. “I’ve heard that before.”
Ash’s face softened. “Aspen…”
Aspen touched Ash’s arm. “I’ll take him with me, but only because we don’t have time to argue.” She adjusted her sword belt again with a sigh and looked at Tristan. “Are you ready?”
Tristan reared back. She was letting him go? Without a ten-minute argument beforehand? Strange, uncertain times were upon them.
He mutely dogged Aspen’s heels as they left the camp’s relative safety to approach the impenetrable mass of a storm. Only someone like Aspen would ever get him to be so harebrained and reckless.
Says the man that asked ‘monsters’ if he could travel with them.
“Stay close to me,” Aspen said over her shoulder. “The winds change frequently. They can sweep you into the storm if you’re not careful.”
“Oh, great.” Tristan couldn’t help but wonder if he should have stayed back at camp.
Aspen clambered over broken ground and upended trees as if she had seen them a thousand times. Much as Tristan had expected to struggle, he kept pace with Aspen step for step. A…something pulled on his mind. Lingering. Achingly familiar yet distant all at once. Anticipation and dread roiled in his stomach. He had been here before. No mistake. Something about the way the trees twisted and the boulders split and the absolute silence save for the storm’s omnipresent wailing created a feeling of déjà vu so complete he felt barely tethered to reality.
Tristan absently brushed the scar on his scalp. Something horrific had happened to him here, but he only felt the electric spark of excitement leap through his body. Would he finally, truly remember himself? If even a piece? Anything to get him on a path toward home and family and history.
“You still with me?” Aspen called over her shoulder.
Tristan blinked. He hadn’t realized how far his daydreams made him lag. “Sorry! I’m coming!”
Aspen waited for him. When he got closer, she nodded to the monster storm. “Do you think you’ll find what you’re looking for down there?”
“I hope so, once the storm clears.”
Aspen was quiet for a moment. She stopped and turned to him, face soft with empathy. “And if you don’t?”
A pit dropped in Tristan’s stomach. The thought of leaving the valley with nothing to show for it still filled him with dread. It made his chest and teeth ache. “I’m…I’m not sure,” he said.
Aspen parted a cracked, low-hanging branch aside and motioned him through. “I won’t pretend my opinion counts for much, but you are welcome to stay with us.” She gave him a rare, small smile. “No matter who you end up being.”
Tristan’s heart thumped once, hard, in his chest before it stopped completely. “Thank…Thank you,” he stammered. He didn’t know what else to say. What could he say to someone that had freely offered him a home if he wanted it? Had he known how much hearing that from her would mean to him? Absolutely not. It pierced soft and deep and threatened moisture in his eyes. He blinked it back. “I’ll consider that.”
Aspen nodded once, satisfied. Only when she turned to proceed down the topsy-turvy mountain path did he notice her hands shook.
“Aspen, are you all right?”
She stopped and sighed, shoulders slumping. With a groan, she shook her head. “No, there’s something—” A gasp of pain tore through her throat. Her back arched—nearly snapping her in half—and she staggered forward. “The sword—” she said, the word a gurgle in her throat. “Tristan, run!” She fell to one knee but drew her sword in time to parry a bone-white sword that had every intention of slicing her back to ribbons. Even with her miraculous defense, her spine still arched as if it had been hit. Her arms quivered. Somehow, she shoved the swordsman away. Barely.
“Laire!” Anger and fear stormed through Tristan in fiery knots.
Laire ignored him and lunged at Aspen like a wounded, trapped saber. The white sword hissed in a deadly arc. The air snapped around it as if recoiling from its touch. Aspen moved her sword to parry the attack, even as her back arched away from the blade. In that vulnerable position, she had no chance of stopping the blow. It’d slice clean through her.
“Aspen!” A noise somewhere between a grunt and a battle cry tore itself from Tristan’s throat as he bunched his legs beneath him and leapt between Laire and Aspen. He faced the sword with the flat of his dagger and shoved his other hand to the back of his blade for support, fingers curled in, knuckles pressed against the metal. The white sword hummed a funeral dirge as it fell toward him.
“Tristan, move!” Aspen tried to lurch for him but crumpled.
Laire saved Tristan. He faltered in shock at Tristan’s sudden appearance, and that hesitation dampened the power behind the swing. The sword’s smooth edge clanged off Tristan’s dagger and harmlessly deflected to the side, but the blow’s impact sent a devastating jolt through Tristan’s arm that left it numb and practically useless. Tristan staggered back, clutching his arm to his side. He maintained his grip on his dagger.
Aspen forced herself to her feet and leapt in front of Tristan. “RUN!” She shoved Tristan in front of her and they took off. “Sweet Sister Earth, what were you thinking?” she asked as she vaulted between boulders, checking over her shoulder for pursuit. “You could have lost your arm!”
Tristan knew about as much as she did. His body had moved on its own. He shrugged wryly, his breath ragged, but immediately regretted it when his arm shot agony through him. “Got caught up in the moment, I guess. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a good sword fight.”
“You will not stop me again!” Laire screamed. He barreled through the trees leapt for them. Aspen braced herself and took his blow head-on. Tristan jammed his shoulder into Laire’s midriff. Air exploded from Laire’s lungs and he flew back, tangling himself in the trees.
“That won’t hold him for long. Be ready.” Aspen dragged him away again, her brows furrowed in stern lines. “And you don’t bring a knife to a sword fight.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I own a sword that hasn’t been tossed into a river.”
A small, reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Aspen’s lips. “You do that. LOOK OUT!” She skidded to a stop, rocks clattering over down the edge of a cliff. She cursed and shoved Tristan away from the edge, stepping closer to him as her attention flicked between Laire and the surrounding trees. They were trapped. “Stay close to me,” she said under her breath. “That sorcerer can’t be far behind.”
With Tristan’s shoulders pressed against hers, Tristan realized how clammy Aspen’s skin felt. Cold sweat beaded down her neck and back. “Are you all right?”
She let out a coarse, humorless chuckle. “Not particularly.” She motioned with her shoulder to Laire, who had finally freed himself. “It’s that cursed sword. It’s what he wounded me with during a skirmish at the Dragon Scales five years ago, and now I can’t get anywhere near cursed galatite without feeling like I’m getting torn open all over again.”
Tristan’s world ground to a halt. The edges of his vision blurred. No. No, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t have been so simple. Couldn’t have been in front of him this whole time. He forgot how to breathe. “Did you say five years ago at the Dragon Scales?”
Aspen didn’t have time to respond. Purple flames arced from the trees, and Sorren let out a battle roar that clashed against the thunder as he leapt from the shadows, encircled by tongues of lightning. The lightning thrummed through the air like thousands of bow strings released in sync. Laire joined him and charged. Aspen threw Tristan to the ground and met the attack head on. She caught Laire’s blade on her own. Sorren’s lightning missed her, but he drew a knife and stabbed her in the hip. Blood welled from the wound and trickled down her side.
Still holding off Laire, arms shaking from the strain, Aspen twisted her body and disengaged, kicking Sorren in the midsection. He folded like a broken marionette. His knife dropped from his hand. Aspen kicked it to Tristan as Laire came at her again. “Tristan, take it!”
Tristan numbly wrapped his fingers around the knife’s hilt and extracted himself from the skirmish. He stood shakily, trying to get his racing mind under control. He should have known. Should have put the pieces together the moment Laire had admitted to cursing him. But he had hoped that maybe something about that kindness, that home, hadn’t been a lie.
Laire and Aspen charged each other, sparks flying from their blades and teeth grit in snarls. Flashes of images bombarded Tristan’s mind with each spark that flew. They echoed the fight in front of him. Swords clashing. Hundreds of them. A night that roiled with screams and grunts and the steam of warm bodies and steaming blood. The trees rustling around him turned to the distant crash of waves. A familiar voice screamed his name. Blinding, twisting, crushing pain in his skull. He cried out and clutched his head as his brain twisted itself in knots, trying to fit the disjointed images into one cohesive whole.
“Tristan! Tristan!”
Tristan. Was that his name? He didn’t know. Another name knocked against his skull, but he couldn’t quite catch it. It sounded the same. Or maybe the voice calling it sounded the same.
“TRISTAN! Look out!”
Tristan snapped from his trance, but too late. His foot slipped on a loose rock, and he tumbled down the mountainside. Uprooted trees, fractured rocks, nettles, branches, and bushes—he hit them all on the way down. He lost count of how many times he blacked out from the pain.
He reached the bottom with a final thud. Dust billowed out around him. Groggy and still miraculously alive, he struggled to his feet. His body did not keep quiet about the beating he had put it through. Broken ribs. Twisted ankle. Splitting headache. He wheezed and groaned.
The wind howled through his ringing ears and plucked at his clothes. Shards of rain pelted against his skin, and the air grew thicker and harder to breathe. Without even looking, he knew.
He’d fallen to the edge of the storm.
“Tristan!” Aspen barreled down the slope like a deer. Tristan had no clue how she kept her footing. Laire and Sorren weren’t far behind, more magic following her down the slope.
When Aspen reached the bottom, she snatched Tristan’s hand. “We have to get out of here!” she yelled over the howling wind. “I can’t hold them off forever, and you’re in no shape to help me!”
Sorren flung himself at Aspen. Still disoriented and reeling from his fall and the images flashing through his mind, Tristan tripped over his feet to avoid their tangle and fell flat on his back.
Aspen fell beneath Sorren’s weight and landed on her chest, striking her jaw on the ground. Sorren drove another dagger through her shoulder, searing magic arcing across the blade, and anchored it to the ground. She tried to writhe free, her eyes clouded in agony, but to no avail.
“Aspen!” Tristan blinked back the images still flooding his senses and moved to get to her, but Laire seized him and hauled him to his feet.
Laire double-checked to make sure Aspen wouldn’t interfere. She snarled at him, and Sorren, sitting on her back, smashed her face into the ground. Tristan instinctively moved to jump to her aid, but Laire tightened his grip on him. “You are a difficult man to catch.”
Tristan balled his fists. “You didn’t think that the night you dragged me from a battlefield, did you? The same night you wounded a young woman with a black sword on the plains of the Dragon Scales?”
Aspen froze in her struggle against Sorren and looked at Tristan, wide-eyed. Not breathing. The question she didn’t dare ask was frozen on her lips. Laire said nothing, his face impassive, but Tristan saw the guilt build behind his eyes.
Ire flooded through Tristan. His limbs shook and his muscles spasmed in revolt against the skin that kept them caged. All the world disappeared except for Laire; the man that had kept him in the dark, lied to him, and made him believe he had no purpose and no place in the world, other than to serve the vision Laire had dreamed for him. The man he had told Styrax could never have been the one to curse or abuse him in any way. He gritted his teeth until he saw red and clenched his fists.
“Let me go,” he growled.
Laire tightened his grip on his arm. “I can’t do that, Tristan. You’re sick. Once we get this all straightened out, then—”
Tristan twisted his arm out of Laire’s grip and threw him bodily to the ground. Laire recovered quickly and charged at him. Tristan scooped up Aspen’s fallen sword and parried Laire’s attack. Before Laire could regain his equilibrium, Tristan went on the offensive and rained blow after blow. He remembered the training sessions he and Aspen had had over the past several weeks, but he also pulled on the knowledge he’d had long before any of that. The lessons learned from the vague figure of a man surrounded by a golden glow, radiating kindness and love and patience. The hours of forgotten hard work that had trained his body to a point where it no longer had to rely on lessons and memory; it felt and knew what to do on its own.
Sorren tried to leap in, more magic gathering around him, but Laire called him off. “We can still bring him home!” he said, his eyes manic. “He can still serve his purpose!’
“Go to the Pit!” Tears of frustration and anger welled in Tristan’s eyes, accumulated over the past five years. He ground his teeth as he continued to pummel against the man that had kept everything he cared about away from him. The man that had touted family and bonds and loyalty. All he had ever wanted was to know who he was. He wanted the vague impressions—the feelings and images that were almost there—to become his again. He wanted to know about where he came from; who raised him, who he loved, and who loved him. But he knew nothing. The only person who had had any sort of link to it stood in front of him and, despite knowing how desperately he wanted—needed—to know, refused to tell him. Laire had refused to even acknowledge he’d had a past to begin with.
Laire took one misstep—fumbled briefly over a dead branch that didn’t immediately crack beneath his weight—and Tristan had him. He knocked Laire’s sword out of his grip. Tristan pressed to his advantage and took three steps toward Laire. Laire backed away from the weapon to avoid getting skewered through the neck. Tristan planted the white sword, tip first, into the dirt. He motioned with his head to where Aspen still laid pinned beneath Sorren. “Move.”
Laire hesitated. His attention darted between Tristan and the bone-white blade.
Tristan reared back his head and straightened his shoulders, his grip tight on Aspen’s sword. “I command you to move!” His voice cracked over the group like a great boulder broken from its mountain to crush everything beneath it. Laire’s eyes widened. He did as he’d been told, but fury radiated off him. When they got next to Aspen and Sorren, Tristan motioned with his sword arm. “Sorren, release her now, or I kill Laire.”
“Don’t do it, whelp,” Laire snarled. “Release her, and we’ve lost him forever.”
Sorren paled, his eyes darting between Tristan and Laire. “You have to go home to Lady Vinea,” he said quietly to Laire. He removed the dagger without question.
The moment she was free, Aspen lurched and threw Sorren off her back. A swift kick to the head knocked him out cold. Tristan winced.
Tristan angled himself to become a barrier between Aspen and Laire as she gingerly regained her footing. She stood at Tristan’s shoulder, not quite touching, but leaning toward him in case she needed additional support. Her breath came out pained and ragged. She sagged lower with every passing moment. Blood seeped between her fingers as she clutched at her injured arm. She needed medical attention. But Tristan couldn’t leave Laire and Sorren. That would put them all in danger again.
“Tell me about that night, Laire.” Tristan tightened his grip on the sword hilt. “Tell me about where and how you found me.” He swallowed. “Tell me who I am.”
Laire regarded him. “Careful boy,” he growled. “Much more of this, and I won’t be able to take you back alive.”
“I’m not going back. Never again!”
Laire met his eyes. A shroud fell over them, gray and dead and dangerous. He said nothing.
Tristan pulled on the leather strap around his neck in aggravation. He was so close to the memories he’d ached to recover for ages. The key had been dangled in front of him, yet he couldn’t quite reach it. “Where did I come from?”
Still, Laire said nothing.
Tristan stepped into him. He pressed the blade so tightly against the skin on his neck it drew blood.
“Tristan,” Aspen warned.
Tristan ignored her, even though he knew he’d put himself in more danger by coming so close to Laire. “WHO AM I?”
Laire looked at him with nothing but pity and regret. “A fool.” He lunged and latched onto Tristan’s wrist. “You’ve given me no choice.” He hissed. “Betliaoter!”
Someone screamed; not Tristan, but Sorren. He convulsed, agony and foam torn from his lips as he sobbed and clutched his head.
Tristan whirled on Laire. “What did you—” The words seized in his throat like hands strangling him from the inside. He collapsed with a gurgling gasp as Aspen’s sword dropped from his hand. The voice he thought he had banished forever roared to life like some primordial beast from the Pit itself. It rampaged through his mind and tore away the tiny fragments of memory pieces he had collected, eating them until nothing but emptiness remained. It replaced those memories with fear, terror, and hatred. Blood, carnage, and shrieks for revenge with monsters prowling in the shadows filled him, gobbling his memories and smiling at his despair while they licked their bloodless, cracked lips. Every muscle in Tristan’s body seized as he tried to curl away from the fear. Or hide. Or run. His body refused to do any of those things. He couldn’t flee from his own mind, even as the monsters razed it around him. He choked on the smoke of his burnt memories and screamed at the fear and pain and loneliness and his inability to escape any of it.
Someone snatched him beneath the arms, their grip tight and cruel. He lashed out, seeing only the toothy, spindly-limbed, wide-eyed demons closing in on him, reaching with their knobby, hooked finders for his heart. He struck something hard, like a cheekbone. None of the monsters were fazed. Their grins widened and their bodies expanded. He was slowly, torturously losing himself, bit by bit, and he had no tools or means to stop it. He could only watch as his life went up in flames around him and danced away as ash in the wind.
“Just remember, I had no other choice.”
With a heave, whatever had grabbed hold of him threw him into a wall of pounding water, suffocating wind, and roiling earth. And Tristan could do nothing to stop it.