AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. After all that, she was again accusing me of being selfish. Again. The accusation brought all of my flame to the surface until I was boiling as much as she was.
“What the hell, Lyani? I thought of you, I got you the Tak.”
“At what cost?” She pushed the bottle against me, shoving me back.
“Three silver coins by the looks of it.” At least that was what I had thought I had seen her put on the bar before she stormed out.
“That’s what it cost today, but what about tomorrow when they come to get retribution. Or two weeks from now when they follow us and attack in the middle of the night?” That fear from before came flooding back, a pain and panic I didn’t understand filling her eyes.
“They won’t be doing any of that.” I promised, although I didn’t know why I did. I couldn’t promise that. Looking at her now, I didn’t know why I didn’t think of any of that before. They were scared for a reason, they had come in a group, in pairs. She had quivered like a leaf as she walked toward the tavern. This beautiful, spunky, powerful woman, had been genuinely scared.
I might as well have prodded that army they were all afraid of to come running.
“Why? Because you did more than just glare at them? That was all you were supposed to do, Caspyn. Glare. Protect. But… that…” she gestured wildly toward the tavern, the bottles clacking together in her arms. “That will get us all killed.”
The cold chill that accompanied those words should not have frozen me as they did. They should not have incited the rage at the thought of her body cold and dead against blood soaked dirt. I slammed my eyes shut, forcing the image away.
“I won’t let them hurt you.” I said it before I could stop myself, before I could even think on why I would say such a ridiculous thing. Any fire that had been boiling under my skin reduced to a simmer as I held my hand out to her. She stepped away from it as though it was poison.
“What about the rest of us? I sure hope that whatever trick you pulled in there can save us all when they come to make us pay for you humiliating them. Because they will.” She spat those last words, leaning into me as her jaw tensed and pulled, all the hatred that she had spread in her words flashing through those eyes.
“You think only of yourself, Caspyn,” she snarled the same words as before. Just like last time, they boiled right up to the surface. The accusation of what I was, of what I would never be.
“I do not. You have no idea what I have given up. What I have lost. What I have done.” She would never know, but I couldn’t let her spout those lies again and again. “I have given up my entire life to save all of you. To save everyone from what is coming.” I yelled right back at her, all my fury matching hers as we glared and scowled and snarled.
“What do you mean ‘to save us from what is coming’?” The fury was still there, the heat of it reducing a simmer as she took another step back. “What have you done, Caspyn?”
“I haven’t done anything.” I didn’t know how to explain the cold chill of panic that ran over me, the icy flood of worry at the look on her face. At what I had almost revealed.
For one shiny moment I had wanted her to know what I had given up, what I lost, what I had done to save them all. I wanted her to know everything about me.
But knowing everything about me came with a million more, much darker, truths. Truths I could never reveal.
Truths I never wanted her to know.
Perhaps she was better off thinking of me as a selfish monster.
“Then how are you going to save us? Did you do that on purpose so that you could save us?” She gestured toward the tavern, all of that rage coming back.
That cool panic continued to wash over me in waves, drowning the fiery heat of my magic that had been rippling over me only seconds before.
“No. They will not come for you. I will not let them.”
“Let them?” She was laughing again, the bite of her mockery washing away some of that icy fear and letting the fire return. “So, you do think you are going to save us?”
She didn’t even care what I had let slip, she was more concerned for her people, and for what she assumed my actions would bring to the Lightens.
She knew nothing of the dangers outside of their precious circle of wagons. Not really. They feared angry villagers when death was coming. The death that I devoted my entire life to stopping.
We did not have Lightens when I was a boy, because they had all been wiped out.
They had never been on my list to save, but perhaps now they were. Perhaps now she was.
She had saved me after all, I was doing nothing more than returning the favor.
“Yes, Lyani. I will save you… I will save everyone, I mean. I hope you never find out the true dangers that are waiting for you out there. Let us all hope that I stop what’s coming.”
“We will have to see, won’t we Caspyn Light Bringer. Let’s see if you can actually think of someone besides yourself when the time comes.” The slice of her words cut through me before she stormed off to where all the others stood, some carrying bushels of wilted vegetables or grain, others with nothing.
