A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,8

and unruly, they all had shaven heads apart from a single thick-bound braid. Until recently Bleda had always had close-cropped hair, as had Riv, emulating the appearance of the White-Wings, Drassil’s elite warriors. Riv brushed a hand over her own fair hair. It had grown since the day she had collapsed in the warrior field as her wings had begun to grow, and now it was almost as long as Bleda’s. As she thought about it, she was surprised to realize that she had no urge or desire to cut it back to the White-Wings uniform style.

The Ben-Elim control me no longer.

“Finally—thank Elyon above,” Vald said.

“Aye,” Jost agreed wholeheartedly. He stood up in his stirrups and groaned, rubbing his backside. “Arrgh, but my arse feels like Balur One-Eye’s pounded on it with his war-hammer. Why do you have to fly so damn far?”

Riv just grinned at him.

One of the Sirak riders guided his mount to loom over Riv and Bleda, an older man, grey-haired and looking like a wind-blasted tree, skin dark and cracked with deep lines. Ellac, the captain of Bleda’s honour guard. His reins were wrapped around a leather gauntlet strapped to the stump of his wrist, his right hand lost in some long-ago battle. He was frowning.

Riv felt her smile wilt; something about the old man was intimidating. A glance at Bleda and she saw his cold-face was back in place.

“You should not fly so far out of our range,” Ellac said to Riv, his tone flat, as if he were stating an uncontested truth.

“I was just telling her that,” Bleda said.

Thanks a lot, Riv thought.

“And you should not ride so far ahead of the rest of us.” Ellac turned his flat gaze upon Bleda.

“I just told Bleda that same thing,” Riv said.

Give as thou receive, Riv intoned silently from Elyon’s Lore.

Bleda’s mouth twitched.

“You should not disregard your kin so,” Ellac said to Bleda, holding his gaze, the hint of humour in Bleda’s face nowhere to be seen now. He hung his head.

“The blame is mine,” Riv said, a pulse from her wings as they spread wide helping her to rise effortlessly to her feet.

“Not yours alone,” Ellac said. He sucked in a deep breath. “It is over a ten-night since you awoke,” he said to Riv, “and closer to a moon has passed since Kol slew Israfil. The world is changing, and we are still here.” He looked up at the silent forest about them, branches soughing in a cold wind, crows cawing from the shadows of Forn. “When you awoke, you said we would make things right.”

“I did,” Riv said, remembering that moment, the rage coursing through her at the memory of her mam’s death, of Kol’s murderous rebellion. “We will.”

“When? How?” Ellac said bluntly.

“Soon,” Riv snarled and burst into the air, wings beating powerfully, the blast of it rocking Ellac in his saddle. She rose quickly into the sky, a tight spiral.

“No, not again,” she heard Jost groan.

“Back to Fia’s cabin,” Riv shouted down to them, and even as she sped into the wide sky she felt a weight settle upon her shoulders.

“I will make things right,” she snarled at the birds and clouds.

I just wish I knew how.

Fia’s cottage came into sight, a wisp of smoke guiding Riv long before she saw the slight thinning of trees that marked the old woodsman’s cabin. Her flight home had not been a good one, in her head. Ellac’s prodding had set her to thinking about the future, but also about the past. A myriad of questions swirled through her mind, all of them impossible to answer.

Who is my father?

Her mam and sister had always told Riv that her father’s name was Lorin, that he was a White-Wing warrior who had served under Dalmae’s hundred. That he had died in battle during a campaign in the south, before Riv was born.

But that must have been a lie. My father was Ben-Elim. My mam lied to me.

She felt a bloom of rage at that thought, born of hurt, but frustrated and shame-tinged as well. Frustrated that she could never ask her mam the truth of it, and ashamed for feeling such anger towards her mother, who had died trying to protect her.

But she lied to me.

Did Aphra know? Perhaps, she was no bairn when I was born, already seventeen summers and a warrior in the White-Wings herself. Has she lied to me my whole life, too?

Riv pushed that thought away. All her life she had idolized her