26. Ash

CHAPTER 26

Ash

The first bell rang, telling me it was time to get up and get to work. If I hadn’t been stuck pretending to be Ambrose the novice, I’d have headed straight to the practice yard and challenged every Guardsman there to a fight — and encouraged them to come at me two and three at a time. Rider wasn’t the only one who vented his frustration and anger through physical activity, although his need was usually a lot stronger than mine. It had been a long time since I’d needed a good fight to clear my head… not since that long year after I’d been burned and I’d realized I’d lost any chance of having a mate.

The memory of Red’s face illuminated by the red glow of her marks slammed into me.

She’d laid her head back on my shoulder, her eyes closed and her lips parted in pleasure, her expression one of absolute bliss and trust.

I had to tell Rider I couldn’t meet in the Garden anymore. It was the only way to save myself.

Except I had to go back to the Garden tonight to tell him that or risk revealing myself. And as much as a part of me thought telling Rider I was Ambrose was worth it to stop the torture of seeing Red, if he started treating me differently because he knew the truth, I could lose Mikel’s trust and then I’d have no idea when or how he and his friends were going to turn Sawyer into a man.

Which meant I had to keep making my reports in the Garden whether I wanted to or not.

Goddess be damned. I hadn’t hated my life this much since I’d been burned.

What I wouldn’t give to go back to the Jerika family’s attempts to murder each other to control the family’s small but wealthy march. There were enough players in that mess to keep me fully distracted and on my toes watching out for assassins and poisoned food.

Footsteps hurrying in the hall outside my bedroom reminded me that I needed to get up, get something to eat, and get to my morning chores. Because I was supposed to be a soldier, I’d been assigned to the smithy for this rotation’s duties along with Lander, the smith. He’d had three young children and a wife when his name had been drawn in the human’s lottery that selected their Guardsmen and was another one of the novices that Rider, Talon, and Quill were concerned about.

I’d been thrilled to be assigned morning chores with him just to keep an eye on him, since — because no one knew who I really was — I usually wasn’t assigned chores with the men I needed to keep an eye on. Lander was a skilled smith, so he’d been assigned helping Heath, the Black Tower’s senior smith, but I’d been stuck with sitting outside the forge sharpening weapons and mending hilts and handles which wasn’t physically aggressive enough for my current mood.

I got dressed, grabbed my breakfast, and sat with Mikel, Durand, and Hamelin. Bramwell joined us a few minutes later, his blond hair damp and dripping onto the shoulders of his jerkin.

He, like the others — and most of the men around me for that matter — had an orange on his tray, the Guard’s attempt to silently remind Lord Sawyer of Herstind March of his place at the Black Tower. Someone had noticed the boy had had an orange with every meal and they’d decided that was one pleasure he wasn’t going to get again. It was a small act, but on top of the not-so-accidental bumps and the snide comments, it was going to wear down whatever spark the boy had .

The thought of sparks made me think of Red and the spark she’d let me glimpse when we’d flirted.

Which wasn’t something I should be thinking about.

“Did you see the lord in the baths?” Durand asked, his dark gaze sweeping over the men in line waiting to enter the kitchen.

“No.” Bramwell dug his nail into his orange and pulled back a chunk of peel. “Do you think he’s still lounging in his room on the Lord Commander’s orders?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Mikel huffed as the boy in question quietly stepped into the great hall and joined the line. “Well, look who looks absolutely fine.”

My pulse leaped at the sight of his red hair even though it wasn’t as vibrant as Red’s, and I strained to focus on the boy and not think of her.

Goddess, please. I have to stop thinking of her.

The men in front of Sawyer glanced down at him, making the boy stiffen, but he met the Guardsman’s gaze head on and squared his shoulders instead of dropping his gaze like he had on his first day here. The much larger human Guardsman rolled his eyes at him then turned to face forward again.

“He still hasn’t learned his lesson,” Hamelin said with a sigh. “A little respect would go a long way.”

Except I doubted that. It didn’t matter what Sawyer did, the men were going to make sure he knew they were pissed at him and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. And while the others probably saw an arrogant, defiant young lord in that exchange, I saw a boy determined to make the best of a bad situation.

I also saw pain in his expression when he’d straightened.

It was subtle, hidden behind an emotionally flat mask that verged on arrogant, but it was there, and when the line moved forward and he moved two steps with it, it was obvious that he was in pain. The kind of pain that came from too much exertion and not enough rest.

Of course, like most novices, he probably wasn’t used to the physical demands of being a Guardsman. That was why most novices were given the easier chores to help them build their endurance during their first few rotations.

But Sawyer had been assigned one of the more physically demanding chores and, added to the rigors of combat training, he was probably sore in places he’d never been sore before.

“Looks like he’s recovered from whatever his condition was yesterday,” Durand said, his tone clear that he hadn’t believed there was anything wrong with him despite seeing the boy on the ground white as a sheet and looking like he was going to puke.

“I’m told Rider will bring the bags of rocks again,” Mikel said around a mouthful of bread. “We need to make sure it’s Sawyer running the extra lap.”

The others nodded their agreement.

“Easiest way to do that is to make sure he doesn’t cross the log over the stream,” Durand said. “The banks are too tall and steep for him to climb up without help, so he’ll have to go up or down stream to find his way out.”

Sawyer and his red hair vanished into the kitchen and my gaze leaped to the other side, waiting for him to step back into sight.

“How are we making sure he doesn’t cross?” Hamelin asked. “So far, he’s made it across every time we’ve run the trail.”

“One of us will have to bump him in,” Mikel said.

They continued talking about how Sawyer’s arrogance disgusted them and what they thought Rider was going to be testing and training us on that afternoon. I dragged my attention away from the boy and tried to listen to their conversation, but my mind kept jumping back to Red and her sounds and how she felt and how my soul now felt empty and cold.

The second bell rang and I headed to the forge to do a morning of odd jobs. Lander was even more withdrawn than yesterday, his eyes empty as he went through the movements of repairing broken and chipped blades under Heath’s supervision. I hadn’t seen him at the morning meal, but then I hadn’t seen much of anything at the morning meal, although from his gaunt expression and gray complexion, I suspected he hadn’t eaten. And he likely hadn’t eaten the evening meal last night, either.

He stepped out of the forge and added a newly mended broadsword to my pile. His gaze slid blankly over the dozen men working in the baily then landed on Sawyer struggling with a wheelbarrow filled with soiled hay. The boy moved at half the speed he had his first official morning as a novice and struggled to keep the wheelbarrow from tipping over as he pushed it across the bailey.

“My nephew is twelve and he’s as big as that boy,” Lander said, his voice heavy with resignation. “I’d bet everything I have that he’s not sixteen.” He released a heavy sigh. “Or I suppose he spent most of his childhood sick. Pypa spent her first four years so sick we thought everyday that we were going to lose her. She’s better, but she’s smaller than the other girls her age.”

Lander went back inside the forge without waiting for a response, but I would have bet everything I had that Lander’s first assumption was right. Except if the boy wasn’t going to come out and tell the truth, there wasn’t anything Rider could do about it.

For the rest of the morning, I tried to focus on my real and fake-novice jobs, watching the novices and looking out for trouble among the ranks, but my mind kept returning to Red over and over again and by the time the third bell had rung announcing the midday meal, my cock was so hard it hurt.

Frustrated, I hurried back up to my room and jerked off again. But while that managed to deal with the pain in my cock, it didn’t do anything for the root of the problem: the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about Red, about how she felt and sounded and?—

Goddess damned fucking shadows!