The bed moved as someone shifted their weight. I held still. I wasn’t sure I wanted to let them know I was awake just yet. Ovailia did not sound like someone I wanted to meet right now anyway.
“Here it is!” The sound on a television they had been watching was turned up, and someone shifted their weight again.
“We have a further development on the kidnapping of seventeen-year-old Joclyn Despain, who has been missing for twelve days. And in the murder of her mother, fifty-three-year-old Angela Despain.”
Murder.
I thought of her still body spread over the kitchen floor, her beautiful, yellow nails. Ilyan had said it before, and I felt the same destructive force move through me now as it had then. The dilapidated house that contained my soul ripped apart with a violent explosion that rushed over me in a torrent of depression so deep, I was drowning in it.
I was barely able to stabilize myself amongst the flow that swirled around me. I did though; I caught my breath and found a handhold somewhere deep inside. I was stable, but empty. I could tell automatically that this pain, this emptiness, would never leave me.
“Ryland LaRue, who was last seen with the young girl, and continues to claim his innocence in her disappearance, has stepped forward in a press conference this afternoon, offering a reward for information leading to her safe return.” The sound cut out as a video clip was loaded.
“Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen, and members of the press.”
I sat up the second I heard his voice.
Ryland.
His voice felt like an electrical current that shot through me. The blankets tumbled down around me as I sat, my body surprisingly not protesting the quick movements. The two women at the foot of the bed did not register my actions; they, too, were focused on the TV screen. I was vaguely aware of them; Wyn with her short, auburn hair, and Ovailia with an absolute sheet of sleek, honey blonde that fell well past her hips and cascaded over the grungy brown bed spread.
“I would like to address you today…” My ears did not hear another word. The sound of his voice faded away into the air around me.
At first glance, he looked like the Ryland I had always known, the Ryland I had always loved; dark curls falling over his face, strong jaw, strong body, bright blue eyes. However, once my heart stopped seeing and my mind was left to linger, I instantly felt the tears come.
He had been beaten.
His left eye was swollen and tinged with an ugly purple, a large gash ran from his cheek and down across his neck before disappearing underneath his shirt. A few more deep purple bruises were just visible from underneath his hair and around the collar of his shirt. Although he gestured with his left hand, his right and dominant arm hung loosely at his side. I could almost see the pain in his eyes, the strain in his face. I recognized the same pain in me, the same entrapment I had felt over the last few days as my body ached and tried to heal. He was in agony.
Then, he flinched. It was so subtle I almost didn’t catch it. His left arm moved toward his chest and then out again. I reached toward the image on the screen, my heart calling out to him. The bed lifted as Ovailia stood and took a step closer to the screen.
“You see it, too?” Wyn whispered.
I tried to focus on what Ryland was saying, but I couldn’t; my heart beat too hard in my chest. He seemed fine, until another twitch, this one bigger, caused him to stop. He paused and lowered his head, his chest heaving as he breathed. The clip played for only a second more before cutting back to the announcer and then the TV shut off.
“How much time does he have left?” Wyn asked.
I saw Ovailia’s mane of hair shake, her shoulders sagging.
“A week, maybe two, if we are lucky.”
I didn’t flinch at Ilyan’s voice, even though it was so close to me. He stood to my side, beyond my line of sight. I stayed still, my arm still extending toward the television screen.
“Why would he do something like that?” Ovailia snapped. “And to his own precious son, too.” The words dripped off her tongue like poison.
“It wouldn’t be the first time he has hurt his own children, Ovailia. You should know that better than anyone.”
I turned toward Ilyan at that, my arm finally dropping down to the bed. He stood at the side of the bed, his back leaning against the ugly brown and orange papered wall.
“But if he only has a few weeks before his mind is lost…” Wyn began, her unfinished thought fading into the steadily darkening room.
“It’s true then, everything he told me in the dream.” My voice was so quiet, my throat burning as I spoke. I looked to Ilyan who raised an eyebrow at my question. In my peripheral vision I could see both Wyn and Ovailia whip around to me in surprise.
“What dream, Joclyn?”
I looked at him skeptically, second guessing myself.
“He came to me… I thought it was a dream…”
“What dream?” Ilyan repeated.
I felt a heavy panic creeping through me, the reality of what was happening hitting me hard.
“When you held me under the water, Ryland was there…” My voice gained in intensity as the panic continued to grow.
“What did he say to you?”
My fear rose, knowing exactly what was going on. I knew why he was twitching, what was happening, because Ryland had told me.
“His father… he is deleting his mind. Edmund’s killing him, isn’t he?” I looked hard at Ilyan, my panic demanding the answers I desperately needed.
“He’s not going to kill him.”
My heart swelled in relief, until Ilyan’s tone, his desperation, sank in.
“A Vymȁzat is when someone uses their magic destructively on another person. In essence, they delete, or partially delete, that person’s mind. They remove all memories and personality. A Vymȁzat creates a shell of a person that can be molded to become what the one who uses the magic wishes them to become. In Ryland’s case, Edmund will not kill him; instead, he will delete all of him and turn his body and magic into a weapon.” Ilyan’s voice was so deep, it almost didn’t sound like him.
“No! We need to save him.” I went to remove the covers from me, fully intent on running to his aide; but my head swam so uncomfortably, I was sure I wouldn’t be moving anywhere soon.
“I don’t know if that’s possible, Joclyn. There is no known way to reverse it,” Wyn said.
“What else did he say in your dream?” Ilyan asked gently, pulling my attention from the other two.
“Only that…” I paused as I replayed the dream in my head, trying to pick out important pieces of information. I stopped as I recalled him writhing on the ground, my memory vividly showing me the small mark on his back. The mark he had kept hidden from me. My breathing picked up again.
“He had a mark like mine on his back.”
Ilyan only nodded in acknowledgment at me.
“Why did he have a mark?” I said to Ilyan in a panic when it became obvious he knew and wasn’t going to provide me with an explanation.
“Do you remember when I told you that Edmund and his servants have been hunting the Vilỳ, and that it is the Vilỳ that gives a kiss?”
I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
“Well, Edmund captures them and siphons off their poison. He’s been doing it for years, so that when his next child was born, he could create a child with such a large amount of magic that no one could defeat him.”
“Ryland?” It was obvious who he was talking about, my stomach turned in worry or excitement at just saying his name.
“Yes, Ryland. He injected him with the poison when he was two. He didn’t awake from the injection for eighteen months… it’s a miracle he survived.”
“How do you know this?” I asked, trying to ignore the bile churning its way up my throat.
“It doesn’t matter how he knows, little girl.” Ovailia’s voice was ice against my back.
“But you said I was unconscious for—”
“And yo
urs remains the longest natural awakening. Ryland’s mark was forced, and therefore, an unnatural anomaly,” Ilyan cut me off.
“Where were you in this dream?” Ilyan changed the subject as he came to sit next to me on the bed. I shifted away from him a bit, feeling uncomfortable with how close he was.
“I don’t know. It was all white. Ryland said it was some sort of shared consciousness.”
Ilyan smiled almost knowingly at my words, while Ovailia and Wyn gasped in unison.
“A Tȍuha?” Ovailia exclaimed. “How is that possible?”
“What is that?” I asked “A Tȍuha?”
“It is exactly what Ryland told you it was,” Ilyan commented quietly. “A Tȍuha is a place where your minds can go and be together, no matter how far apart you are in distance. It is normally only reserved for those who have gone through the Zȇlství, which is why it is so surprising that you shared one with Ryland.”
“Zȇlství?”
“He means bonded,” Wyn translated the word from Czech for me. “You would refer to it as a marriage.”
My jaw dropped.
“Marriage?”
“I had a feeling your connection with Ryland was stronger than any of us thought after you raised the highway into a mound when we escaped.” Ilyan’s eyes dug into mine sharply.
“I did that?” I asked.
“Yes, but not on your own,” Ilyan continued. “Ryland helped, too.”
A pin could have dropped and it would have sounded like a herd of elephants. I could only stare at him, my jaw dropped in awe.
“You don’t mean… the necklace?” Wyn asked, her voice almost a squeak of nerves.
Ilyan nodded in response to her question, his focus still on me.
“What necklace?” Ovailia scowled. “What have you been keeping from me, Ilyan?”
Ilyan finally released me from his gaze to stare down Ovailia with hard eyes.
“I keep from you whatever I deem, Ovailia.”
Ovailia wilted under his sharp gaze.
“You will have to excuse my sister,” Ilyan’s voice was impregnated with something akin to diplomatic anger. “She forgets her manners from time to time.”
“Or on a daily basis,” Wyn grumbled under her breath.
Ilyan chuckled at her comment while Ovailia only growled.
“Yes, because I am the one that behaves like a—”
“Ladies.” Ilyan’s one word was enough for the two of them to stand down.
I probably should have been more shocked, given how fuzzy my mind was when Ilyan told me that Wyn was not his sister. Looking between Ilyan and Ovailia right then, I felt supremely stupid for ever believing that Wyn and Ilyan were siblings in the first place. Wyn was so short and darkly colored; she looked out of place between Ilyan and Ovailia with their tall, fair beauty. So much was alike between them; their high cheek bones, the shade of their eyes, and the golden color of their long hair. Ovailia’s features were refined, her high cheek bones and cat-like eyes giving her the look of aristocratic beauty. Still, somehow, her attitude ruined it and turned some of her striking elegance into rubbish.
“Since you have chosen to keep things from me, do you wish to enlighten me now?” Ovailia waved one of her hands impatiently to the side, her long fingers extending like a dancers.
“Show her your necklace, Joclyn.”
“What does any of this have to do with my necklace?” I asked, clutching the ruby tightly through Ryland’s sweater.
“You are going to have to tell her, My Lord,” Wyn spoke, her weight shifting on the bed to face me.
He stood and began to pace, only moving a few steps in either direction as he ran his hands through his hair in agitation.
“Ilyan?” I asked after I could take no more of his uptight movements. He stopped at my voice and came to lean against the bed, his face only millimeters away from my own. I flinched back out of habit.
“The necklace is more than just a gift; Ryland has infused it with his own magic as a way to keep an eye on you, to protect you. Every time you have ever felt it grow warm, it signals to him that you are in danger.”
I nodded, remembering his sudden appearance at the Rugby field, and his apparent knowledge of my fight with Cynthia.
“But I am afraid it inadvertently became more than that. You see, the entire time you two have known each other, Ryland has been infusing you with his magic—to calm you, to heal you, to protect you, to comfort you.”
I nodded before looking down at my lap. “The warmth,” I sighed. “I pushed you out the first time you tried to heal me because Ryland’s m… magic…” I struggled to get the word out. “It had just left me and I was scared.”
“The day we went to the fire pit,” Wyn interrupted, her voice low, “he healed your hand after you hit him, he used his magic to calm you when you were jumping over the fire, and you… you used his magic to help you climb the tree.”
“What?”
“When you climbed the tree,” Wyn continued, “you drew his magic off him and used it to sharpen your senses. It’s why you are so fast. Why it feels so natural.”
“Ryland did it all without knowing that you possessed your own unharnessed power,” Ilyan continued. “So the more your magic mingled, the more they became dependent on each other, the more they became one. When Ryland gave you the necklace, he made it so that his magic would always be close to yours, and with that, he inadvertently sealed your fate. He permanently fused the magic, and in turn, your lives together.”
“What are you saying? That Edmund could infiltrate my mind as well?” I couldn’t keep the panic from seeping into my voice. I needed to save Ryland, but now it wasn’t just him—it was me as well.
“I do not think it will come to that,” Ilyan said. “Mostly what this means is that you can draw off each other. In essence, your magic cannot survive without his and vice-versa.”
“In the apartment,” Ilyan spoke solemnly, “it was Ryland controlling his magic through the necklace that saved you. In the alley, it was his magic that was taking the pain away. He consciously saved and protected you, even though his father was torturing him at the very same time.”
“Torturing him? But in the dream he looked okay… Why does he look like he has been beaten, Ilyan? What’s happened to him?” My thoughts strung together before settling on the brutal image of him that still flooded me.
“He has been beaten, Joclyn; possibly more than the television images show us. They can cast a spell on him, make it appear that he is not as injured as he is,” Wyn spoke plainly, the truth cutting me.
“What worries me the most,” Ilyan added, “is that Edmund is not allowing Ryland to be healed, or even allowing him to heal himself. He is kept in pain to weaken him, so that he doesn’t fight back.”
“Pain?” I asked, remembering my first assumption that he looked like I had felt the last few days.
“Yes, Joclyn, agonizing pain. Almost the same type of pain you felt when you first received your kiss. He feels that every second of every day and must live with it.”
“But he didn’t look like that… in the dream, I mean.”
“That’s because you were seeing with your heart.” I turned to Ovailia’s acidic voice. “If you had taken the time to see with your mind, you would have seen the true extent of his injuries. Then perhaps we could know with more certainty how much time he has left.”
“Enough, Ovailia,” Ilyan commanded, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from her.
“So, Ryland is dying inside. His father is trying to delete his mind. So when you say he has maybe two weeks—”
“I mean in a week, maybe two,” Ilyan whispered, “Ryland will be no more. He will only be a shell to be manipulated by his father.”
I clutched my necklace, pressing the cold stone against my chest. I felt my heart beat wildly against my fingers. Once again, the mark had destroyed everything, everything I needed and wanted within my life. However, this time I knew the truth; the mark had truly
given me the power to get everything back, the power to fix it.
“I will save him.” My voice was quiet, but still confident. I knew I would do whatever it would take to save Ryland, to honor my mother, to change my life.
“I know,” Ilyan whispered.
I turned to him, unsurprised to see that wild anticipation and crazy confidence he had had in the car. It wasn’t the joy I had originally mistaken it to be, though.
It was power.
Thirty-Three
Ryland
Everything felt cold. The air, my clothes. It was as though I had turned into my own personal freezer. My bones shook with it, my muscles tensed with it; the chill making each motion stiff and frozen.
Possibly because they were not my own.
‘Block, attack with iron.’
My father’s voice filled my mind, the dark hiss acting like a tether as my magic flared and followed his command; blocking Cail’s attack and sending another one his way.
Cail grinned and countered, sending my attack uselessly to the side.
‘Block on left. Attack with right. Try to kill him.’
My muscles pulled, my mind screaming as Cail sent one attack and then another after me. My body, my magic, did exactly as Edmund commanded it to. I attempted to fight it, my body twitching as I did.
It was pointless. My magic fired anyway, the attack a violent stream of smoke and flames that darted right toward Cail. He darted to the side, the attack streaming passed him to slam into the wall behind.
A boom rang in my ears as the attack hit home. My muscles sagged as I reverted to some kind of puppet on strings, forced to watch Cail, Timothy, and my father surround the aftermath.
“Nice.” Cail kicked a bit of the still smoldering rubble, sparks of flame following it like a tail. “We should have done this years ago.”
“Harness all of that power for our use? I agree, it’s a brilliant plan, sir.” Timothy said as they all turned to me, grinning with differing levels of malice.
Proud of controlling me.
Or destroying me.
They were getting ahead of themselves. Hadn’t he realized yet that I wasn’t going to go down so easily?
Imdalind Ruby Collection One: Kiss of Fire | Eyes of Ember | Scorched Treachery Page 24