She turned his way snarling, until recognition lit her eyes. Then she smiled at him, looking like a cat that had just laid a dead rat at its owner’s feet.
Renna rolled off the corpse, struggling to regain her feet before the other demons were upon her. She was covered in her own blood, though already she felt the flow decreasing as her stolen magic began to knit the wounds. Still, she felt in no state to keep fighting.
She snarled, refusing to give in, but when she raised her eyes there was only Arlen there, glowing brightly with magic like one of the Creator’s haloed seraphs. He was clad only in his loincloth, and he was beautiful, pale muscles rippling under the pulsing wards crawling across his skin. He wasn’t tall like Harl or bulky like Cobie, but Arlen exuded a strength those other men lacked. She beamed at him, flush with pride in her victory. Three wood demons!
“You all right?” he asked, but there was sternness in his voice, not pride.
“Ay,” she said. “Just need a moment to rest.”
He nodded. “Sit down and breathe deeply. Let the magic heal you.”
Renna did as she was told, feeling the deep cuts all over her body beginning to close. Soon most would be nothing but thin scars, and even those would fade quickly.
Arlen picked up the charred remains of one of her chestnuts. “Clever,” he grunted.
“Thanks,” Renna said, even the simple compliment sending a thrill through her.
“But clever wards or no, that was stupid of you, Ren,” he went on. “You could have set the forest on fire, not to mention the foolishness of taking on three wood demons at once.”
Renna felt like he’d punched her in the stomach. “Din’t ask them to stalk me.”
“But you did ignore me and go huntin’ ripping rock demon by yourself,” Arlen scolded. “And left your cloak back at the keep.”
“Cloak gets in the way when I hunt,” Renna said.
“Don’t care,” Arlen said. “That last demon nearly killed you, Ren. Your ground form against it was terrible. A nie’Sharum could have broken that hold.”
“What’s it matter?” Renna snapped, stung, even though she knew he was right. “I won.”
“It matters,” Arlen said, “because sooner or later, you won’t. Even a wood demon can get lucky and break a hold, Renna. Strong as you feel when the magic is jolting through you, you’re still not half as strong as they are. Forget that, cease to respect them even for an instant, and they’ll have you. That means you take every advantage you can get, and being invisible to demons is a big one.”
“Then why don’t you use it?” Renna asked.
“ ’Cause I gave it to you,” Arlen said.
“Demonshit,” Renna spat. “You were huntin’ through your bags for it like you hadn’t seen it in weeks. Bet you ent never worn it, either.”
“This ent about me,” Arlen said. “I been at this much longer than you, Ren. You’re getting drunk on the magic, and it ent safe. I know.”
“If that ent the night callin’ it black!” Renna shouted. “You do it, and you’re fine.”
“Corespawn it, Renna, I ent fine!” he shouted. “Night, I feel it changin’ me as we speak. The aggression, the disdain for day folk. It’s the magic talkin’. Demon magic. A little makes you strong. Too much makes you…feral.”
He held up his hand, covered in hundreds of tiny wards. “Ent natural, what I done. Made me crazy a good sight, and I don’t reckon I’m even half sane now.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t want it to happen to you, too.”
Renna took his face in her hands. “Thank you for caring,” she said. He smiled and tried to look down, but she held his face and kept eye contact. “But you ent my da or my husband, and even if you were, my body’s my own, and I’ll do with it as I will. Ent living my life how other people tell me no more. I’ll follow my own path from now on.”
Arlen scowled. “You following your own path, or have you just latched on to mine?”
Renna’s eyes bulged, and every muscle in her body screamed at her to leap upon him, kicking and clawing and biting until he…She shook her head, drawing a deep breath.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“Come back with me to the keep,” Arlen said.
“Damn your ripping keep!” she shrieked. “Leave me alone, you son of the Core!”
Arlen looked at her a long moment. “All right.”
Renna locked her jaw tight, refusing to cry as he walked away. She got to her feet, keeping her back straight despite the pain as she retrieved her knife from the charred remains of the demon. Despite the conflagration, the weapon was undamaged, and still tingled with residual magic as she wiped it off and returned it to its sheath on her hip.
She stood a long time after Arlen left, two sides warring within her. One wanted to scream and charge into the night, looking for demons to vent her rage upon. The other part wondered if Arlen was right, and threatened to drop her weeping to the ground at any moment.
She closed her eyes, embracing both the pain and the rage and stepping away from them. It was amazing how quickly she calmed.
Arlen was simply being overprotective. After all she had done, he still didn’t trust her.
In a place beyond feeling, she set her feet and began the first sharukin, flowing from one move to the next, trying to force the forms into her muscles so deeply that they would come without her even thinking of them. As she did, she recalled every moment of the night’s battles, searching for ways she could improve.
He might be the almighty Painted Man to others, but Renna knew he was just Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook, and she’d be corespawned if there was anything he could do that she couldn’t.
That went well, the Painted Man thought sarcastically as he walked away. He didn’t go far, sitting and putting his back to a tree, closing his eyes. His ears could hear the scraping of caterpillars on leaves. If Renna needed him, he would hear and come.
He cursed the childhood naïveté that had kept him from seeing Harl for what he was. When Ilain had offered herself to his father, he had thought her wicked beyond words, but she was just doing what she needed to survive, as he himself had done out on the Krasian Desert.
And Renna…if he’d gone back with his father instead of running off when his mother died, she would have come back to the farm with them, safe from her father and spared a death sentence. Their own children would be promising age by now.
But he had turned his back on Renna; another path to happiness abandoned, and her life had become a horror as a result.
He was wrong to have brought her with him. Selfish. He was thinking only of himself to damn her to this life just to keep himself sane. Renna was choosing his path because she felt she had nothing left to lose, but it wasn’t too late for her. She could never go back to the Brook, but if he could get her to Deliverer’s Hollow, she could see that there were still good folk in the world, folk willing to fight without giving up the very things that made them human.
But the Hollow, even if they took the straightest route possible, was still more than a week’s travel from their keep. He needed to return Renna to civilization immediately, before her new wildness became the only thing she knew.