Serpent's Traitor (Four Kingdoms #2)

6. a deadly weapon (part 2)

Aydin stepped out of the tent he shared with Ren—a predicament he never thought he would find himself in. Most of the time they were at each other throats' and he would prefer to be far away from a person he disliked, especially when he was sleeping.

Ren was scowling darker than usual when he finally came into the tent after the epic failure of a banquet. The anger radiating off his body seemed to be related to something else. Aydin couldn't help connecting it to when Ren and Alethia had disappeared from the group when they were walking back.

Maybe the ice princess had given the man a run for his money. But whatever she had said to him had ruined the atmosphere in the tent. And Aydin needed a break from the stifling air Ren was cooking up so he decided to fill up his canteen at the well.

As he approached the water hole, he noticed a shadowy silhouette standing by it. Their pale, scarred palms outstretched toward the sand.

Getting closer, he began to notice the distinguishable features: long black hair, the red ribbon attached the hilt of her sword fluttering in the wind, and that jagged scar across her cheek.

By the goddess's lovely bones, I escaped one of them just to bump into the other.

Aydin groaned internally. Could he catch a break at some point?

Alethia turned her head at his arrival. Her eyes narrowed as she watched him intently. He focused on pulling the rope to the bucket, trying and failing to ignore her sharp attention.

He was filling up his canteen when she said, "Teach me."

"How about adding a please to the end of that sentence?" Aydin twisted on his heel to face her, leaning his back against the stone well. He crossed his arms and glared down at her. "And teach you what exactly?"

"Your advice...earlier," she tempered off and the words dangled between them. He quirked an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to finish her sentence. "It helped."

"Clearly," Aydin stated, nodding his head toward the tent where Ren was alive, breathing, and fuming like someone had kicked him in the balls. Aydin had given her the advice to heal the man, but he was left to live with his intolerable attitude.

Nothing good came out of that advice, that's for sure.

"Teach me," Alethia repeated, her lips flattening in a straight line. Aydin took the time to really look her over. He tried to avoid it whenever he could—looking at her.

The stinging pain in his chest that came from her familiar features was hard to overcome. It threw him back to that dreadful moment. The moment he had lost everything—his father, his crown, and his kingdom. She was a constant, walking reminder of what was taken from him. Even now, the flare of agony was almost unbearable and with it came that churning desire to numb it through any means necessary.

He shoved the feelings away, pulling at the threads of resolve he was finally able to muster up lately. He couldn't keep failing.

He was better than this.

So, he forced himself to truly see her—not the monstrous queen who'd murdered his father in cold blood, but Alethia. His keen eyes noticed the tension in her shoulders, the slight shake of her fingers which she clasped onto her trousers, and the downward curl of her lips.

Although her face was as unreadable as the scribbling of a frantic scholar, Aydin realized how hard this must be for her. He'd made his contempt for her clear at the start of their journey, and yet she was asking him for help.

If even someone as prideful as her could ask for help in such a situation, then shouldn't he be capable of overcoming his faults?

"Only if you say please," Aydin said again, but he gave her a grin.

She blinked at him and then spun around, speaking so quietly that if it wasn't for the wind throwing her words over her shoulder, he wouldn't have caught them.

"Either teach me or leave."

Her tone was flat, as it always was, but her shoulders gave her away. They slumped ever so slightly in defeat. Aydin felt a ting of empathy. He knew exactly what she was feeling. It was a type of self-degrading helplessness that sprung up on you when you least expected it to.

The type that crept up on him and strangled the breath out of him, choking him until panic clawed its way into his chest, sending his heart thundering. After the battle in Gera, it lurked in the crevices of his soul, leaping out at any moment to grip him.

For the first time, Aydin felt like he understood her.

He broke the thickening silence between them. "I'm not going anywhere."

He reached out and ruffled her hair. Alethia's hand moved in a blur as she smacked him away. A vicious sting radiated up his arm, but he laughed in spite of it.

Stormy grey eyes narrowed their sights on him. "Do you want to lose that hand?"

"One day, you'll understand all of that," Aydin said with amusement, ignoring the icy tone she'd used. He broke off from her as he jogged to reach Ren and Sephirah.

Alethia caught up to them, one of her scarred palms touching the top of her head briefly. Aydin grinned at her before slinging an arm around Ren, who tried to elbow him in the ribs.

Aydin moved out of the way with a chuckle. "Didn't I tell you that you need to loosen up, Renny?"

"For skies' sake, leave me the hell alone," Ren snapped. "Call me that one more bloody time and it'd be the last thing you ever say."

Aydin held up his hands in mock surrender although a cheeky grin stretched across his face. A flutter of content wrapped in his chest as he hummed an old song his soldiers used to sing in the barracks. The melody was a comforting reminder of the people he was fighting for.

His grief never disappeared over the years of training. But he'd learned how to hone it and sharpen it into a deadly weapon. Aydin was tired of being a failure. His training had given him extra strength and power.

Minerva, his teacher, had given him more than that. She taught him how to push past all his self-loathing and find his potential. He never wanted to fall back into the darkness that had entrapped him. There was no time to waste in the bleak depths of sadness.

Aydin was going to take back everything he lost and bring that despicable queen to her knees.

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