“Why are you scared, Ryland?” Her voice was calm, and I wanted to trust her. But truth be told, I didn’t know her. She was my sister, but since I had met her she had done nothing but hurt me. Just like all the others.
‘Because it is all you deserve.’
“I’m… I’m…”
“Aren’t you excited to see Ilyan?”
Again, that one word sliced through me, any hope of recovering even a piece of my sanity slipping away.
“Kill!” I screamed, raging as Ovailia smiled.
“Timothy is right, you know, they won't let you get close to him like this. Good thing I have a plan.” Ovailia kneeled before me, her eyes not leaving mine as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a scrap of cloth.
I didn’t need her to unwrap it, I already knew what it was.
I could feel it.
I could feel the pain. The suffering. I could hear her screams. I could hear my own now too. My soul was part of the blade as well.
“No! No!”
“Yes.” She pinched the tiny shard of blade between her fingers, looking at it with a grin that would haunt dreams before she pressed it against my chest, and stabbed me with it, pressing the blade all the way in, and embedding it inside my heart.
“There are other ways to control, Ryland.”
She stood, leaving the blade inside of me. I could already feel my magic close the skin around it, feel my soul breathe as part of me was returned. I felt closer to me, the shadows not so loud in my head.
I was me. I was free.
And then everything got so much worse.
One Hundred Twenty-Three
Ilyan
For hundreds of years, this abbey had housed the brethren that came to worship their own silent God. They farmed, they prayed, and they worshiped until the year the troops drove them away, leaving my beautiful home abandoned. It had been ransacked, the stained glass windows were destroyed, the gorgeous pews burned, and the stone walls carved with crude declarations. What had been my home, my personal place of sanctuary, was now only a discarded, forgotten place.
I could see one of the carvings now, a roughly drawn heart and an unintelligible figure carved amongst it. It was bright against the stone in the evening light, the last of the day’s sun bouncing off the angles of the ruins like glittering jewels. I stared at it as I sat on the rubble strewn floor, my legs crossed in front of me in a style more common amongst the Chinese worshipers.
I had always intended to restore this portion of the building, giving life to the ancient arches and restoring the glass back to what it had once been. Now, it seemed to be too late. What could be rebuilt would only be ruined and destroyed within a matter of days.
I breathed in the smell of earth that lingered heavily in the air, the density of it filling my lungs before dispersing throughout my body, the heavy earth magic lingering with my own.
My feet had brought me here after the nerve endings in the base of Joclyn’s neck had been severed from her spine. I had felt them snap, one by one, my magic working tirelessly to repair them as her heart began to go into cardiac arrest. If I hadn’t been singing to her at the time, I would have missed it. She would have died in my arms as I slept.
My heart longed to stay next to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t look into her face and not blame myself for being unable to release her from her prison.
Ten days.
For her, it had been more than a month, more than a month of what I could only assume would be consistent torture.
My hands lay on my knees in meditation, my thoughts focused on the desires of my heart while my power focused on the natural magic that surrounded me. It was the only religion I knew, the only deity I had found in this world—the magic in the earth.
I had to hope it was enough. I breathed it into me, pulling the heavy ancient power through me only to transfer it to Joclyn, to move it through the Štít and into her.
When I first came to this place, almost a thousand years ago, my heart was heavy, broken and guilty. I had taken a life, and part of me felt power in that. A wicked ribbon of black that I could feel attempting to infect my soul. If my father had gotten his way, it would have. But I had seen that maniacal light in his eyes then, the joy at what I was able to accomplish, and the look scared me. If I had any wisdom at the time, I would have seen what he was capable of then, and I would have stopped him, but I was only a child.
A child who ran away from home, ran from what I was supposed to become, to build a monastery and find inner peace. I was still not sure I had ever found it.
“Ilyan?” I kept my eyes closed at Thom’s voice, his magic adding its own ebb and flow to the air.
Thom’s steps crunched against the destroyed bits of the chapel, his magic heavy with insecurity and yet steady, always steady. He sat down next to me, and while I still did not move, I opened my eyes, hoping the small gesture could be taken in greeting.
“Dramin told me what happened.” I could only nod, not sure I wanted to talk about it, not sure what to say. “He’s on guard now, but... I wanted to see if you needed anything nejdřív.”
I kept my vision forward, although my magic flared to Joclyn, covering her through the Štít as I reconfirmed her safety. She still slept, her body continuing to heal as she lay.
I couldn’t be mad at Dramin for leaving her, although part of me wanted to be. If we didn’t keep someone on guard at all times, we would soon be overrun. Trpaslík camps had been popping up every night, each one bringing our enemy closer to us, each one giving us less time before they would attack.
“Ilyan? Můj Pane?”
I sighed and looked at him out of the corner of my eye, one quick glance before returning to stare at the graffiti on the wall. He obviously wasn’t going to leave me alone. He was worried, but I couldn’t help feeling his worry was misplaced. I could handle my own issues.
“I’m fine, Thom. Já jen...” I stopped. I never opened myself up to anyone. It exposed too many weaknesses, too many weapons that could be used against me. I had heard the mortals use the phrase ‘skeletons in the closet’ for hundreds of years, and that was sometimes how I felt—as if I had skeletons in my closet. Except it wasn’t one or two hung up on a coat rack, it was an armada. If I could ever control them, I could take over the whole world.
I had surprised myself when I had begun to open up to Joclyn, when I had told her of my past. The only people who knew such things about me were those who had been present my whole life: Dramin, Ovailia, Sain and Talon. Even they did not know the whole picture, but Joclyn, I wanted Joclyn to know everything. I wanted Joclyn to understand me, to trust me, so that when the time came for her to rely on me and trust in my judgment, she would do so without question. I didn’t want to have to command her magically as I sometimes did all the others. I had done so once, after she had first lost Ryland, and I still regretted it.
Thom continued to look at me expectantly, his eyes burning into me. I stayed still, my vision forward, my breathing even. As much as I trusted Thom, as much as I loved my brother, I didn’t want to let him inside my head.
“You’ll find a way to get her out.” I couldn’t help but smile at Thom’s words, at his easy confidence. After all, he had been so set on simply destroying her not long before.
“You believe that, do you?” I could almost feel him twitch. I had overheard him talking to Dramin last night, his fears about the inaccuracy of sight spoken aloud. It might have been wrong to eavesdrop, it might have been wrong to bring up what I had heard, but my regal blood demanded one thing, while my logic another. The distinction was never clear to me anymore.
“You know I only fear our father,” he said, the wavering in his voice surprising.
“Vím že.” I know that. I suddenly felt bad for bringing it up. “I do, too, which is why I am still alive and why I can’t bring myself to look past the terror that Joclyn is trapped in.”
My muscles tensed; the words had come unbidden from my mouth, and now I was to face the conseque
nces.
“Do you remember Rosy?”
Thom’s quiet voice caught me off guard, the subject matter startling. Rosy was never spoken about, least of all by Thom. I had never met her, but I had heard the story, saw the terrors from Thom’s memories. Unsurprisingly, Thom was now looking intently at the crude carving in the stone before us.
“Ano.”
“When she was three, Wynifred and I used to take her to visit the serfs in the countryside.” Thom’s voice was distant, his mind lost in his memories. I could feel my heart tense at what was coming. I might not know the whole story, but I did know the outcome.
“It probably wasn’t the best day trip for a child,” he laughed, “but she enjoyed playing with the other small children. I could watch that smile on her face for days. She looked so much like Wynifred. Those crazy dark eyes; they would shine more than you would ever think possible.”
I cringed, but stayed silent. Edmund had not allowed Thom to bond himself to Wynifred, and they were left separated for much of the time.
“I loved to watch her dance. She was so graceful—we all thought so, even Edmund. His first grandchild. He was so proud. Except...”
Thom’s words faded as the memory grew darker. I could see everything in my head, everything Thom had told me when he arrived under my protection. Rosy was the way he had to explain his allegiance for me; the pain over the torture and murder of his small daughter the reason for his defection. In coming to me for help, he had also given me something more, a link to Rosy’s mother. I knew she would stop at nothing to get her revenge. I still remembered my anxiety at meeting face to face with Wynifred for the first time. I sighed heavily, the reason for Rosy’s death almost too simple to even comprehend.
“She didn’t have his blue eyes,” I finished for him.
“I was so lost in what our father was doing to her, to my child, that I couldn’t see beyond it. I couldn’t focus. It became just another way for him to control me, but I didn’t see it before it was too late. Suddenly, she was gone, my willpower tied to her life. When she was gone, all I had left was my anger, and it covered me. If it weren’t for Sain, I would have been killed, too. The way...”
I knew he was about to mention Wynifred, how he had left her behind. She couldn’t leave Rosy’s memory behind. Her soul had been tied to what Edmund had done and he had left without her.
I reached up and clapped him hard on the back, needing to comfort him as a brother, not as a leader.
“He’s doing the same to you, Ilyan,” Thom said, looking straight at me.
“I know, bratr.” I couldn’t say much more than that, the tight restriction in my chest wouldn’t let me.
“Don’t let him.”
“You are a wise man, Thom,” I said, feeling humbled by the strangely perfect lesson I had just been taught by my younger brother.
“I’ve had a lot of years to perfect it.”
I could only nod. After all my years on this earth, after all my lessons, studying, and worshiping, my younger brother had become wiser than me. He saw the world in the way I always wanted to.
“Well, you’ve done well.”
“Not really,” he said, surprising me with a rare laugh. “Sometimes, the things you need to hear have to come from others. You can’t give yourself good advice, after all.”
I turned to him, stunned. He looked at me for only a moment before looking away, obviously embarrassed.
“You’ve done it again, Thom.”
“Whatever,” he said grumpily, the modern word sounding odd in Czech.
He stood, his stalky frame unraveling awkwardly. I looked back toward the crudely carved heart as Thom’s ebbing magic signaled his departure, his direction making it clear he would sit with Joclyn until my return.
He left without another word from either of us, neither knowing what to say. Someday I would thank him for everything. I would find a way to help him seek his revenge, to let him find a way to fill the hole in his heart.
He deserved that, we all did.
One Hundred Twenty-Four
Joclyn
The words were funny, but they calmed me. The strange words belonged to a song, a beautiful song that warmed my heart. I sang the song, the melody one that still lived somewhere deep inside me. I sang it to put myself to sleep every night in the only place I knew. In this room, against the toilet; I stayed here because I could see when they were coming for me. It was the only safe place in this terrifying space.
Ryland was hunting me.
He was determined to kill me. He tried to every day. Every day for forty-two days, I had made marks on the floor by the toilet to track the days, all the days he hunted me. The lines of my blood told me how many days he had hurt me. Forty-two days.
Forty-two days of Cail taunting me before Ryland came. Ryland hurts. Cail didn’t hurt; Cail warned.
Cail came first.
Cail always came first.
I felt the drip, drip, drip, against my neck, and that strange warmth flared again. I clawed at it, the same way I had for weeks, the skin now raw and broken in places. I scratched again, trying to get it out of me, but only my own blood ever came.
Blood wasn’t comforting. Ryland showed me that every day.
But this warmth was supposed to be comforting. I knew that somewhere deep inside of me.
I knew.
It was like the song; the one with the funny words. I knew they were the same. I knew because of how the song made me feel; how fear slowed when I heard it. I knew the warmth was supposed to be the same.
I knew I was missing something.
If only I could figure out what it was, then I could get out of here.
Go…
Clunk
I froze.
He always tried to find me at night, but he hadn’t found this place. Not yet. The only place I was safe was in here. I had hidden here every night during the times I should have been sleeping. Nights, I sat. Days, I ran.
Forty-two days.
Like the marks on the floor.
I had forgotten why I was keeping track. Why did the days matter? I had forgotten what the lines meant, yet still I marked them. Every day a new line. Every day a new mark. I was sure they were supposed to mean something, but I had forgotten.
I forgot everything.
Except the song.
Clunk
I knew he was close. The clunk was closer. I had to move. If he found me here, I would have nowhere to hide.
I stood and ran, not willing to see if he had found me. My foot dragged. It didn’t work right after encountering Ryland yesterday. I held onto walls, keeping myself steady, and moved as fast as I could.
I ran from the safe place, through the hall of doors, through the door that led me to what looked like a school, and beyond that a library. The biggest one I had ever seen. I could be safe in the library, but I kept going.
I jumped at all the noises. I cringed away from the rats that watched me run. But I kept going until I reached the room where the desk was. I hid underneath it, hoping it was far enough.
My heart beat loudly, and my breath came hard. I couldn’t stop the pounding in my ears. I knew Cail was right behind me.
The door opened before I could stand and find another spot. Cail’s heavy footfalls entered. I hid behind the desk, trying to ignore the deafening sound of my pulse in my ears.
He had found me.
I tried to keep my breathing even, yet I knew it was no use. He was looking right at me. I stood slowly, my hand slipping against the side of the desk.
“Y...y...you ca...can’t have m...me.” I stuttered the words out slowly. It only increased his smile. He shook his head at me dejectedly, looking at me like I was the disgusting filth I knew he saw me as.
I moved my chin toward my collar bone, my nerves catching at his stare, my eyes not quite willing to leave him. I began to twitch and his smile grew.
“Oh, Joclyn,” he mocked. I had to remind myself that he was using my name.
I twitched at his words, my eyes darting around. A week? Wasn’t it longer? It felt longer, much longer. Forty-two marks, weren’t those the days? I looked at Cail questioningly, but he only smiled more.
“No one is coming for you, Joclyn. It’s time to end the game.”
Was I expecting someone? I couldn’t remember. The warmth in my shoulder grew again, and I instinctively moved to scratch at it.
“Wh...wh…who?” I managed to get the one word out, but I could instantly tell that Cail was playing with me. There was no one there to help me, there never was.
“You can’t even remember? I wonder what you can remember. I wonder what you are holding onto.” He looked at me again, and I twitched away.
Clunk
I jumped and Cail smiled at my movement. More noises could only mean one thing. Ryland was coming. Ryland hurt. I knew nothing other than pain from Ryland. Somewhere deep inside me something yelled at me that there had once been more, but I couldn’t remember what it was anymore. It had been forgotten like everything else. Only one thing mattered.
Ryland hurt.
I knew I needed to run. I moved out from behind the large desk, my eyes getting wider as the sound increased. I jumped at each thump, my eyes so wide they burned. My leg dragged from where they had caught it in the doorframe yesterday. I could see Cail smile when he saw it still hurt.
I didn’t wait.
I just moved. I went through the door that would take me through the apartment, then the hall with the fingers. Cail watched me as I went. Cail never hurt.
He just came first.
One Hundred Twenty-Five
Wyn
“Why didn’t you tell me, Sain?” They were the first words I had spoken since waking up, since Edmund had left with the last piece of the puzzle, the thing he needed to prompt Cail to kill Joclyn faster and give him even more power over my brother.
Imdalind Ruby Collection One: Kiss of Fire | Eyes of Ember | Scorched Treachery Page 92