Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy)

Read all of
Charity’s books on Amazon Kindle:

Return
(book
1 in the Lady of Toryn trilogy)

Regret
(book
2 in the Lady of Toryn trilogy)

Redemption
(book 3 in the Lady of Toryn trilogy)

A Carol for Ben
(a contemporary holiday romance)

Copyright © 2013 by Charity Santiago. All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission from the author.

Events of Book 1 (
Return
)

Kresmir
is a land of magic- a realm where the planet’s power can be harnessed in small
gems known as
stanes,
and wielded by
those who have knowledge of the magic originally shared with humans by the
now-extinct race of Angels.

The
genocide of the peaceful Angels was orchestrated by the evil Lord Angelo, a
cruel dictator who used his powerful DEMON army to take control of the Free
Lands of Kresmir and build power plants to drain the natural energy from the
planet.

Three
years ago, a small group of rebels managed to overthrow Lord Angelo and
establish new leadership in the Free Lands of Kresmir. The Free Lands Democracy
(FLD) thrived, until a new enemy emerged- Lord Devlyn, adopted heir to the
western monarchy of Toryn.

The
youngest rebel and Elder Heir of Toryn, Ashlyn Li, had disappeared shortly
after Lord Angelo’s defeat and had long been presumed dead. In actuality,
Ashlyn had simply been wandering Kresmir, living the life of a commoner and avoiding
the responsibilities of her birthright. During her travels, Ashlyn crossed
paths with her old comrades and learned of the war that Lord Devlyn was waging
against the Free Lands Democracy. Although Ashlyn was still reluctant to take
her rightful place as Lady of Toryn, at the urging of FLD, she agreed to
challenge Devlyn to a Leadership Duel to save Kresmir from his tyrannical reign.

When
Ashlyn finally encountered Lord Devlyn, however, she learned that there was
more to the story than either she or her friends knew. Lord Devlyn, or Kou, as
he preferred to be called, claimed to be attempting to protect the Free Lands
of Kresmir from Ashlyn’s father, the Elder Lord of Toryn. According to Kou,
Lord Li had retreated to the southern half of Toryn Island after going insane
with the power of a newly-discovered shape-shifting magic called
shift.

Shift
spent thousands of years buried in the Toryn mountain
Na Michico, and eventually evolved so that only a Toryn from the Li bloodline
was able to wield its magic.
Shift
enabled
its user to shape-shift into the form of a powerful and bloodthirsty animal.

Although
Kou had initially presented himself to Ashlyn as her estranged half-brother,
Ashlyn later discovered that Kou and his younger brother, Tag, had been
injecting themselves with her father’s blood to enable them to use the
shift
magic
.
Tag was captured by FLD, but Kou attempted to escape. He was shot
and fell from Na Michico to the raging ocean below.

Though
she knew that love had no place in a time of war, Ashlyn had long harbored
feelings for one of her friends- the enigmatic vampire, Drake Lockhart. Shortly
after discovering Kou’s traitorous nature, Ashlyn finally mustered the courage
to confess her feelings to Drake, but the vampire spurned her advances. Ashlyn
turned for comfort to her former enemy Vargo, who had previously served as one
of Lord Angelo’s deadly Spartan assassins.

Heartbroken
with both Drake’s rejection and the consequences of her actions, and unsure of
her feelings for Vargo, Ashlyn decided to leave her friends, and the people of
Toryn, to face her father alone. She sneaked out of Toryn under cover of
darkness, hoping to finally end the battle that was tearing her kingdom apart.

Chapter 1

Barren

Flowers in the desert.

Could you get any more
contradictory than that? It was sort of ironic. Or maybe not, because she
didn’t really know what ironic meant, except that people usually said it to
explain strange coincidences.

Mostly she just thought flowers
in the desert were weirdly appropriate right at that moment because the whole
concept was a lot like
her
- a total
contradiction. A ditzy girl-woman with an attention span of about five seconds
for everything except being a bad-ass ninja, and that was really what she
excelled at, wasn’t it? Being
stunningly
shallow
and irresponsible, but kicking
serious
butt any time the opportunity presented itself.

Ashlyn Li, Elder Heir of Toryn, sniffled
pathetically into her own hands, tears squeezing out from between her fingers,
their initial comforting warmth fading and turning tepid in the chilly night
air as they trickled down her wrists.

It was
so unfair.
She’d tried to do everything right, she’d held in her
feelings and had avoided her birthright by living like a nomad for three years
straight, and yet- and yet…and yet it all went
wrong
, and this entire mess was her fault. As if the knowledge that
she’d inadvertently started a war in her own kingdom wasn’t enough, Drake had
rejected her, and…and…Ashlyn didn’t even know what. She’d never felt like this
before, because she’d never let anyone close enough to
hurt
her this way.

Three years ago, she had been
fifteen, hotheaded and sticky-fingered, ready to get out of Toryn and see the
world. What had begun as a spontaneous adventure, joining forces with Skye,
Restlyn and the rest of FLD had quickly become the turning point for her, the
moment in time where she finally grew up and realized that there was more to
life than thievery and sarcasm. And by the time Lord Angelo had killed the last
Angel, by the time FLD had defeated the warlord and saved the sun, Ashlyn had
realized two things.

One- she was crazy about Drake
Lockhart, a vampire who sometimes displayed less personality than a hunk of
driftwood, and someone she had no business being crazy about in the first
place, considering he was immortal, angst-ridden, painfully gorgeous, and
entirely
out of her league.

And two- she wasn’t ready to be
Lady of Toryn.

But there had been no one to pass
the responsibility off to, because she was the Elder Heir. The only heir.

At the time, running away had
seemed like a pretty good option.

Obviously running away three
years ago had set the tone for the rest of her life, because last night, Ashlyn
had run away again- only this time, she was running towards responsibility, not
away from it. She was determined to face her father and challenge him for
leadership of Toryn.

Ashlyn hiccupped, wiping her face
with the back of her hand and trying to blink through the tears as she stared
at her mother’s headstone. Her chin trembled as sobs threatened to overcome her
once more.

Susyn Li’s grave was at the end
of a long, lonely canyon, bordered on all sides by steep dirt walls. There were
no other graves, but Ashlyn had always liked it that way, preferring the solitude
of her mother’s final resting place to the busier location of the public Toryn
cemeteries.

It wasn’t technically in the
desert, but at this time of year it certainly looked that way. Toryns had
always called this place The Barrens, because in the winter it was pretty much
desolate, the heavy winds sweeping away dead vegetation in anticipation of the
coming spring. After the cold had passed, creeping vines with small blue
flowers would cover the cliff walls, turning the empty canyon into a beautiful
secret garden.

But right now, there was no hint
of color, no reprieve from the droll grayness of the canyon. Autumn was turning
its back on the island, and this area was one of the first to lose its foliage
to early freezes, hungry scavengers and the winds. The artificial cherry
blossom branches Ashlyn had brought with her from her home in the city looked
out of place in the bare canyon, and it felt even stranger to leave fake flowers
instead of real ones, but Ashlyn hadn’t had any time to be picky.

The cherry blossoms were pink,
but their centers were much darker, almost a deep red, reminiscent of Drake
Lockhart’s vermilion eyes. Ashlyn could still remember the conflicted look in
those eyes when she’d finally confessed her feelings last night, the mixture of
shame and despair.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she
whispered as she stood, shaking in the moonlight. “You made your feelings
pretty clear,
didn’t you, Drake?”

She didn’t have a right to be
angry, but she was. More than angry. Furious. At herself, at that idiot vampire
Drake Lockhart, at Vargo for stepping in at her most vulnerable moment and
confusing her with that kiss.

Nothing made sense anymore, and
she didn’t want to think about it.

She’d spent more time lingering
at the gravesite than she’d intended. Ashlyn quickly retraced her steps back to
the canyon’s entrance and set off again on her original path, following the
coast towards the southern half of the island. Pulling her mask up to cover the
lower half of her face again, she reached into her knapsack and withdrew a
gleaming orange gem- the
reveal
stane
she’d swiped off Skye when they’d parted ways three years ago.

She lifted the stane, intending
to slide it into a space in her armlet, then paused, realizing that there were
no empty slots. There were two spaces for stanes in her armlet, and she usually
kept a
heal
stane in one slot and
left the other one empty, but she’d completely forgotten about the
shift
stane she had taken from one of
her father’s soldiers during the battle for the pagoda. After some
deliberation, Ashlyn unstrapped her hira shuriken from her back, placing the
stane into one of the weapon’s empty slots instead.

She whispered a few words,
concentrating hard on the tiny orb, and tiny sparks erupted from the stane,
spiraling through the air before gently touching down on the sand. As she
watched, the swirling little fireflies formed a short path in front of her, extending
each time she took a step, and Ashlyn smiled in spite of herself.
Reveal
was one of the strongest and
rarest magics in existence. The sparks from the stane led its user directly
towards whatever it was they were seeking. There were some drawbacks to the
magic- such as the possibility of the sparks alerting your enemy that you were
approaching, or the magic’s tendency to take the most direct route, even if
said route was off a cliff or through a raging river. But it had proved
invaluable during their battle against Lord Angelo.

The moon was pulling itself
slowly to the east, so that Ashlyn’s shadow stretched out to her right, long
and thin, as she picked her way along the beach. She tried to stay on the
hard-packed dirt farthest from the water so that her tracks were less visible.
Here, on the center stretch of the island, there were no trees or dense foliage
to use as cover, so she had to move quickly. Ashlyn picked up her pace, sprinting
after the fireflies as the glittering path unfurled ahead of her.

She didn’t have much time before
FLD discovered that she was missing, but she’d made pretty good time moving
away from the city of Toryn, heading towards the southern half of the island.
Ashlyn wasn’t quite sure how FLD would react to the simple note she’d left
behind. She’d scrawled it hastily, her own thoughts and emotions too
complicated to convey in words.

I
have to face my father alone.

The events of the night had been
a serious blow to whatever stability Ashlyn had been clinging to in her mind-
and her heart. After finally working up the guts to tell Drake how she felt, he
had outright rejected her, and walked away.

For the last three years, Ashlyn
had kept her feelings for Drake a total secret. She’d swallowed her jealousy over
his somewhat confusing relationship with Trace, one of the Spartan assassins
who now worked for the president of FLD, and she’d told herself that her
ridiculous crush on the vampire would pass soon enough.