Flame Moon (A Flame Moon Novel, page 12
Skye shrugged with a smile. “No harm — apparently I heal fast.”
Aiden pulled his pants on, and then put his arm around Skye’s shoulders, steering her in the direction of the house. She paused to pick up the picture of her that had fallen to the ground. It was a soaked, crumpled mess.
Aiden didn’t let it go unnoticed. “I am sorry, I should have taken it off the wall a while ago. Are we okay? Honestly?”
She looked up at him, truth in her eyes. “We are.”
They moved forth. “I’m going to have to re-cook your breakfast.”
Skye had forgotten how hungry she was.
They were walking across the clearing in front of the house, Aiden’s arm still about her shoulders, when a black jeep pulled up the drive behind them. Triaten. He drove aside them and parked.
Jumping out, he stood for a moment in the drizzling rain, taking the pair in. He wisely decided not to mention the dirty, ripped dress of Skye’s, nor the naked torso of Aiden’s. But he didn’t manage to fully hide his smirk before he mutely turned in front of them, and went into the house.
Kicking his wet shoes off at the door, Triaten eyed the couple. He had a clear twinkle in his eye. “I haven’t seen your rain in a long time, my friend.”
Skye’s eyes went wide. She looked up at Aiden, motioning out to the rain. “This is you?”
Clearly caught, Aiden shrugged in mirth. “Maybe. Didn’t think anyone,” he said the word pointedly at Triaten, “would notice, or mind. Much less, show up.”
Skye eyed Aiden suspiciously as she pulled off her sopping boots. She suddenly realized the quandary her soaked dress presented. She had no clothes. Dry underwear, as she didn’t stop to put them on earlier, but she was otherwise screwed.
“Yes, I know, but I have business.” Triaten said.
A flicker of curiosity showed on Aiden’s face, then he nodded. “Just give us a minute to get out of these wet clothes. Make yourself useful in the meantime — heat up that breakfast.”
Not embarrassed, Skye was nonetheless grateful for Triaten’s silence on what he pulled up to — them trudging half-naked, in the rain from the woods, an uneaten breakfast, sex permeating from them.
Soon under one of Aiden’s big, front-zipped sweatshirts, Skye folded up and flipped over the waistband of the shorts he gave her so they wouldn’t fall down. The shorts went well past her knees.
She came out of the bathroom, just trailing Aiden having changed in the bedroom. Both walked into the kitchen, Aiden pulled out plates, and they each filled them. They settled next to each other on a bench seat that lined the table. Triaten sat down across from them.
Aiden crunched a strip of bacon. “What business?”
“It’s the elders, they want to talk to you,” Triaten said.
There was no reaction as Aiden shoved in a forkful of eggs. “Did they say why?”
Triaten shrugged. “Could be the engagement ending — that’s known about town now. Could be they’re wondering why it’s raining. Could be the time blip last night.”
Skye froze. Her fork was mid-air. She wondered if she also had the power to become invisible. Triaten’s eyes on her told her it was not to be.
Triaten looked back and forth between the pair. Aiden just kept eating. Skye stiffly stared at the table in front her.
“What was that about, by the way?” Triaten asked.
Silence. Aiden kept his mouth full of food. Skye realized Aiden wasn’t going to save her on this one.
“Fine —” she blurted, “there was a moment last night that I had to go back and relive. And I don’t regret it, I wanted it too much. And I’m guessing you can imagine exactly what it was.”
Aiden choked, coughing lodged eggs. Skye rolled her eyes as she thwacked his back. Serves him right for not stepping up.
Triaten laughed, his hand quickly up to stop Skye from saying anything more. “Gotcha — I’ll ask no more.” He got up to get Aiden a glass of water.
He handed it to Aiden, who took a couple gulps.
Aiden’s throat finally clear, Triaten continued. “Anyways, I didn’t get much out of them about what they wanted — it was pretty vague, other than they wanted you sooner rather than later. I would guess better to take care of it right away, less to look like we’re hiding something.”
Aiden nodded. “I’ll go into town. Can you take Skye back to the ranch? I should be back by afternoon, and we can hit the training field. Is Charlotte still coming up?”
“Unless she has an emergency at the clinic.”
“Good.” Aiden stood up, his plate empty. He went to the bedroom, coming back out with dry shoes on. He was throwing a grey softshell jacket over his black t-shirt. “Don’t leave until she eats it all. She needs it.”
Skye’s plate was still three-quarters full. She rolled her eyes at Triaten in mock chagrin.
Aiden was to the door before he abruptly stopped, and strode back over to Skye, grabbing the back of her head and coming down hard on her lips. There was no mistaking what he was announcing. She was his.
Moments later, her mouth full, Skye heard Aiden’s motorcycle rev up, the growl quickly fading. Triaten was cleaning up the fry pan in the kitchen behind her, letting her eat with her own thoughts.
And then he interrupted. “You found the photo wall, then?”
Skye turned around to him. He was holding the picture of Skye. She had left it on the counter when getting her wet boots off.
Triaten joined her at the table, legs straddling the bench right next to Skye. He set the picture down in front of her.
Skye nodded, watching him as she chewed crispy bacon. “I don’t know if I should thank you or throttle you. I was ready to leave over it.”
“Sorry about that. I’ve known Aiden for well over a century, and he doesn’t always do what’s best for himself without a push.” Triaten absent-mindedly pushed his short thumbnail into the worn wood of the table, tracing a gouge. “He was going to pass up the opportunity — you, and I didn’t have a better plan to get him to participate long enough for, well, for this to happen.”
Skye tapped the fork on her front teeth, considering Triaten. “Even if you can’t read someone, you have a gift of intuitiveness, don’t you?”
Triaten shrugged. “It’d be ridiculous for me to not be intuitive about him after all these years.”
“But me, how did you know I would cooperate?” She took a bite of egg.
“To be honest?”
“Please.”
“I didn’t know. But I had a hunch. First off, you don’t have much baggage, not having a memory and all.”
“So any old woman with amnesia would have worked for Aiden?”
Triaten gave a wry smile. “Hardly, but take away memories, and people are who they are at their core. They don’t have the past shaping them. So for the few days I could read you before I got to know you, it was easy to see what you’re about.”
Skye’s eyes widened as the memory flashed. “But Aiden said you saw what I did on the train. How...how could you not see that rage?”
“You mean the asshole in the train car?”
Skye nodded, her breath held.
“Yea, the rage, I saw it,” his fingers tapped the table, “but it was a memory, foggy at that, so not nearly as potent as it would have been in real time. But frankly, the rage was nothing compared to the desperate guilt you mounded on yourself about it. It was sad to see, cause in my book, you were way too easy on the bastard. Justice is usually served out harsher in our world.”
Skye’s eyes shifted back to her plate, concentrating on not letting the memory fully resurface. She didn’t want to relive it, and she had worked hard to hide it away in her mind these past few weeks.
Triaten continued. “Beyond that, when I could still read you, mostly what convinced me you were the right one was how you reacted to Aiden. Admiring, but cautious. You weren’t scared of him, even though most are. You rarely thought twice about disagreeing with him, you’d go toe to toe in an instant — sweetly, of course. How do I explain it…your thought patterns match his, even if you’re in disagreement. Plus, you looked at him like he was water in a desert.”
Skye was stuck on an early comment Triaten had made in his assessment. “People are scared of him?” she asked, incredulous.
Triaten laughed. “You didn’t notice at the bar? All the time. Most of the time. It’s part of the charm of herculean strength. You don’t even need to prove your might. People just do what you want.”
Skye nodded, taking the odd thought in. Then she gave an embarrassed smile to Triaten. “Water in a desert, huh?”
His easy laugh surfaced. “Afraid so.” His face turned serious as he tapped the picture in front of her. “I’m guessing you saw the rest of the wall too?”
Her mouth full, Skye nodded, somber.
“But for how I found you two, I’m assuming all is well in that regard?”
Skye could see a corner of the office down the hall from her vantage at the table. Her eyes glossed over as she stared at it. “It breaks my heart to see what he has had to live with. I’m guessing you’ve tried to convince him to take it down?” She took the last bite from her plate.
“Charlotte has, me not so much. Aiden does what he needs to do. Not my place to try and change that.”
“Another insight from your abilities?”
Triaten’s hand rubbed through his dark hair. “A bit. People do what they need to do, to survive in body and spirit. And they’re not likely to change whatever they’ve set up around them physically, or in their minds, in order for that survival to happen.”
Skye contemplated him as she took a sip of water. “It must be a bitch to know so much about what goes on in people’s minds, huh?”
“Can be, love.” He nodded, and an out-of-characteristic sad smile flashed. “Can be.”
Skye got up and washed her plate. Triaten stood and moved toward the door waiting for her.
Putting the plate back where she had seen Aiden grab it from, she walked back by the door, put one wet boot on, then thought the better of it, taking it off. “Barefoot it is,” she said to Triaten, and they walked out the door.
Boots in hand, she walked gingerly over the rocky scrub grass to Triaten’s jeep. It had stopped raining. “Why did Aiden finally decide to stop and come back to the mountain?”
“Charlotte needed him.”
“How come?”
They got into the vehicle.
Triaten grabbed her jacket from the back seat. “Here, we grabbed it from the bar last night.”
Skye paused, eyeing Triaten. She’d seen this non-answering trick from Aiden plenty. “How come Charlotte needed him?”
Triaten shrugged. He started the engine. “Not my place to tell you. That’s for Charlotte to explain, if you can get her too.” He pulled down the long drive. “That’s when they got engaged.”
“Wow, she wasn’t kidding when she said they were engaged for years.”
Triaten smiled. “Yea — twenty or so. I think the elders were the only ones still holding out hope.”
They rode in an easy silence up the main road. The clouds had mostly dissipated, and the sun poked through the thick pines lining the road, still dropping wet droplets. Skye caught glimpses of a few blue forget-me-nots dotting the side of the road.
“What has Aiden done since he’s been back?”
“Helps out at the ranch, runs the adventure shop. He only goes out on missions when he thinks he can make the right sort of difference. It’s taken the elders a long time to get used to not having their best weapon at their disposal.”
They pulled up to the ranch. Mary was out front, walking with Dagger. She waved. Triaten pulled over to her.
From the driver’s side, she looked past Triaten, ignoring him. “Skye, my dear, how are you? The crew take good care of you last night?”
Skye smiled. “Lots of fun.”
Mary waited for more. Skye kept her mouth closed. If everybody else could give short answers, she could too.
Triaten picked it up. “We’re training this afternoon once Aiden gets here — what can we do in the meantime, love?”
Mary glanced back over her shoulder. “I have a load of hay that needs to be moved in the stables.”
“Good,” Triaten replied, “Skye needs to change clothes and we’ll be down.”
~~~
Aiden stepped into the hotel. Vaulting staircase, the picture of past opulence, swept upwards in front of him. Ruby red carpet blanketed the stairs, running up to offset the five-hundred light crystal chandelier above. He took no notice of the expense around him as he walked around the base of the circular steps, cutting behind and underneath them to a door blended seamlessly with the surrounding dark trim.
Not knocking, he stepped through the almost invisible door.
Eight people randomly sat about the spacious salon, some reading, one at the bar, two staring at a chessboard. The three sitting in the middle of the room, two on a leather-tufted couch, one leaning back in a wing chair, were deep in conversation.
Ignoring the rest in the room, Aiden went to the three in the middle, sitting down opposite the two on the couch. He made no apology for interrupting their conversation.
“I’m here, what do you want?” His voice was casual.
The male in the wing chair clasped his fingers in front of his face, elbows crooked on the arm rests. Silver tufts of hair were sparse on his near bald head. His face, etched with canyons of wrinkles, was spotted with marks of time. He was silent.
The elderly female on the couch, elegant in a silver bob that cut below her cheeks, sat ramrod erect, hands clasped in her lap. She bestowed on Aiden the slightest smile. The male next to her leaned forward. Though his hair was still dark, grey peppered through, and time was beginning to win the war around his eyes and forehead. He was the first to speak.
“We understand the engagement between you and Charlotte is void?”
“It is, Horace.”
“There will be no offspring?” Horace followed.
Aiden shook his head.
Horace glanced at his companion in the chair. His bald head inclined slightly toward Horace.
Horace continued, his voice grave. “Is this because of the woman you were with at Joe’s last night?”
“No, she is just someone who happened upon the ranch.” Aiden answered too quickly. He clamped his mouth shut, jaw rigid.
Three sets of eyes bored into him. He stared back at them, detached.
Horace leaned back on the couch. He crossed his legs and his arm casually went to the top line of the couch, fingers playing with the ornate carving at the corner. “You do remember Charlotte’s friend...what was his name?”
Aiden’s jaw flexed. “Thomas.”
“Ah, yes, Thomas. It was unfortunate what had to happen to him.”
Aiden leaned forward, his eyes steel. “Do I need to remind you, that you’ve been suffering from the consequences of his death, since?”
The gravelly voice, ancient, of the elder in the chair interrupted. “Half-breeds will not be tolerated, Aiden.”
Aiden glared at him, posturing. “You needn’t worry about that, Edmund.” Aiden stood up. “We’re done here.”
Aiden took several steps around the group before Horace stopped him. “Oh, and Aiden, the time shifts, do you know anything about them?”
Aiden looked down at him. “No, why would I?”
Horace shrugged. “No reason.” His head nodded to the lady next to him. “Helen just had visions of you both times they happened. Probably nothing.”
Saying nothing more, Aiden removed himself from the salon.
{ Chapter 10 }
Aiden was on a rampage. It had been hours since he had shown up at the ranch. When he had arrived, he had yanked Skye and Triaten from the barn, only half the hay moved, and dragged them to the training field.
Seething, he had thrown down an overflowing bag, daggers, swords, lances — all manners of dark silver steel, clattering out. His voice had been scarcely contained rage. It was aimed at Skye. “Everything in here, you need to learn how to use, and how to defend against.”
Aiden would attack, she would lose. He would have Triaten attack, and then circle the bout, shouting instruction, yelling at her for any moment of weakness. She would lose. And Aiden would attack again.
It went on for hours, and then Charlotte arrived. Aiden immediately set both Charlotte and Triaten onto attacking Skye at the same time. Again and again.
Both Charlotte and Triaten were experts, and Skye struggled. A sword and a dagger coming at her simultaneously was new, and she didn’t know how to protect her back or sides like she should.
Off and on, Charlotte and Triaten would attack together, then Aiden would take a turn. A small favor, Skye would only end up crushed on the ground with the Aiden bouts, merely because Triaten and Charlotte wouldn’t go there with her. Aiden had no such reservations.
Soaked in sweat, no water break in hours, Skye was on her side in the dirt, gasping for breath after being slammed in the stomach. Aiden’s sword pressed into her upper arm. “Get up.” His voice was a raging growl.
Her skin dimpled. The sword was close to drawing blood.
“Get the hell up, Skye.”
A trickle of red bubbled around the tip of the sword. Skye tried to catch her breath.
“Hey, take it easy, A.” Triaten yelled.
Aiden didn’t take his eyes off Skye. “Not your call, Tri.”
His blade pushed deeper into Skye. She gasped. “Get to your feet.”
Triaten wedged himself between Aiden and Skye on the ground. Anger laced his words. “Aiden, you need to lay off.”
The two scowled at each other. Aiden lorded his extra inches over his friend, but Triaten wasn’t going to move.
Blade off of Skye, Aiden took a step back.
Triaten stood ground in front of her, legs apart, warrior stance.
Skye took a moment, finally caught her breath, and sat up. The blood on her arm trickled down. “Triaten, it’s okay. I’m okay.” She grabbed her sword, getting to her shaky legs. She glared at Aiden around Triaten’s frame. “Let’s go.”
