ONE
“Darcon Leah,” Ajin said, calm and composed, ignoring the sword at her throat.
A look of surprise flickered across Dar’s lean features. Ajin sensed he was having trouble comprehending who she was. Or more likely, what she was. She was certain that whomever he had expected to find beneath her war helmet once it was removed, it wasn’t a woman.
But she was used to such looks. When dressed in full armor with her dazzling white cloak draped across her shoulders, she presented an unlikely picture. Even now, ragged as she was from the night’s battles, she was imposing. She was a woman who fought alongside men as an equal, a woman who led them in battle. In her Skaar homeland, she was regarded with awe and reverence.
Yet she was also a princess, the only daughter of her nation’s ruling family, the firstborn of a king and a queen. A prime birthing, although her mother’s replacement—the pretender, as Ajin insisted on calling her, though never to her face—had been quick enough to give him a pair of boy children once the former queen was banished. The pretender would have loved to banish the daughter, too—preferably to a burial plot—but Ajin was hard to kill. Just ask Dar Leah.
She waited patiently for him to say something, but he seemed unable to find the words. He simply stood there staring with the point of his blade at her throat and his expression unreadable.
“Not what you expected?” she asked. She gave him an encouraging smile, enjoying the moment.
“Who are you?” he managed finally.
Her smile broadened. She was tall and strong and beautiful, blond in the manner of most Skaar, her hair curled about her face in tight ringlets, framing startling blue eyes and fair skin. Seeing nothing more, you might still have thought her well bred and educated, but you would have missed much by looking no further. Only twenty-two years of age, she was a warrior skilled in combat arts and battlefield tactics. She had been born to it, her talents obvious even at an early age. Realizing the precariousness of her situation, with her mother gone and the pretender sitting on the throne with her father, Ajin had quickly decided to reinvent herself.
So she had joined the Skaar army. She had asked to be called only by her given name and not be accorded any special treatment. She was given none. She was harassed and abused, but she never complained. She was athletic to begin with, and she had refined her natural ability as she trained. Her willingness to place herself at risk and to suffer whatever hardships were required had endeared her to the soldiers who supervised her training or trained with her—all of whom were quick to tell others of her commitment. Her father, watching from afar, was one of those who paid attention. Ajin’s perseverance—even in the face of her mother’s banishment and the animosity of the pretender—only deepened his feelings for her. He was impressed by her determination and skill. She had excelled at everything asked of her and had evidenced an extraordinary understanding and appreciation of the lessons she was being taught. She advanced quickly through the army’s ranks, becoming a battalion commander at eighteen. For her first assignment, she was tasked with leading a small number of Skaar soldiers into an outback country in Eurodia that had risen in revolt. She led from the front—she never asked anything of her soldiers that she would not do herself—and crushed the uprising in three days.
By then she had gained sufficient support from her father and the Skaar military that she was safe from the pretender’s malevolent scheming. It was a bitter pill for the pretender to swallow, and that made Ajin all the happier.
One day, she might reveal all this to Dar Leah, should circumstances change. But lives were complicated and personal histories were not to be shared too hastily, so this day she would keep her story to herself. It was not the time or place for anything quite so intimate yet.
“My name is Ajin d’Amphere,” she said. “I am a princess of the Skaar people.”
Her words hung in the cool silence of the predawn darkness, joining shadows that rippled and shivered with changes of light as clouds passed across the moon. Even with the sword point at her throat, Ajin felt no fear or panic. Although Dar Leah did not yet fully understand it, she sensed there was a bond between them. He would not hurt her, nor would she hurt him. They had crossed paths three times now, and once she had held his life in her hands as he now held her life in his. To her way of thinking, they were warriors of equal stature, and she could not believe he would kill her while she was helpless and fully aware of how recently she had spared him.
“I heard your name inside the Keep,” he said. “I heard them call out, ‘Ajin, Ajin.’ A victory cry, I’m guessing. But it was really a massacre, wasn’t it? A slaughter.” He shook his head in disgust. “How do you know my name?”
“From my Penetrator, Kol’Dre. You know him as Kassen.”
“I know him—and if I find him alive, I will remedy the situation immediately. All the Druids of Paranor are dead because of him!”
She shrugged. “And all my brave Skaar soldiers are dead, too.”
“Is that supposed to balance out? I suppose you think so. Should I mention the Druids and the Troll guards and crew your airship destroyed?”
“Or I the two Skaar airships you destroyed first?”
For a minute neither spoke.
Then she gave him a questioning look. “The woman, the female Druid. She was special to you, wasn’t she?”
He hesitated before nodding. “Once.”
He looked as if he might say something more, but then he went still again.
“And are you responsible for what happened in the Keep?” she pressed. “Was that your doing? Was it you who freed that thing inside the walls—that monster and its poisonous mist—so it could feed on my soldiers?”
He shook his head, a dark look shading his expression. “That was another’s choice. But what was the point of any of it? You killed all of us; we killed all of you. Now everyone’s dead—and all for nothing.”
“Not from where I’m standing. Paranor was our greatest threat, so we had to destroy it and the Druids. Now Paranor is gone, and I will not mourn it or its residents.”
“No, I don’t suppose you will.” He gave her a none-too-gentle push. “Move back into the trees so we aren’t standing out in the open, in case someone else from your little band of cutthroats survived. And don’t even think about trying to run.”
She walked into the forest, back where the darkness was so complete she could see almost nothing, the sword point prodding her along, removing her from any hope of finding help. The trees closed about her, Paranor’s moonlit rise disappeared, and she was alone with the Blade.
“What do you intend to do with me?” she asked, once he had found a place he liked and brought them to a halt.