by Raine Thomas
It had gotten much, much worse since they left the Dark Lands.
“We need to try and reach Gren,” Kyr said levelly, not commenting on his disconnect. “Maybe he heard from Sem and knows what’s going on.”
The idea was logical, and so simple that he was irritated with himself for not thinking of it. The damn dream was screwing with his head. Meeting her gaze, he nodded.
Gren? Kyr sent out once they were connected.
Hey, Gren replied in a hazy way that indicated he’d been sleeping.
Sorry to bother you, Ty thought. We wanted to get updates from you and Sem now that we’re done for the day here.
And where is “here?”
The Wrym megai.
Ty took the time to fill Gren in on what he and Kyr had learned over the past couple of days. We tried to reach Sem to update him right before we tried you, he explained. He’s not responding.
When’s the last time you heard from him? Kyr asked.
Not since the last time we all connected, Gren responded, now fully alert. Right after you broke through the protections. We’ve been so busy trying to infiltrate the mine that I haven’t had time to think about anything else.
Ty felt Kyr’s worry blend with his own. Even Gren sounded concerned. There weren’t many reasons that none of them could connect with Sem.
If I hear from him, I’ll let you know, Gren assured them. SemDane thinks on his toes. He’ll be fine.
Thanks, Gren, Ty conveyed before deliberately turning his thoughts from his cousin. Have you had any success getting people into the mine so you can try to overtake it?
We’ve made some headway. Jenna and D’arl did a good job of screening prisoners so we know who might be strong enough to help our cause. A few of those we’ve rescued have agreed to go back in so we have more people on the inside. Still, if Vycor descends on us today, we’re woefully unprepared to face him.
Hang in there, Kyr told him. I know you’ve got a tough challenge ahead. We’ll do our best to keep Vycor’s attention on us without instigating a planet-wide battle.
She had tried to keep her tone light, but Ty felt her uncertainty and imagined Gren did, too. At this point, they were all walking a tightrope, and it could snap at any moment.
We’ll keep you updated, Ty thought. Let us know if you need anything or if you hear from Sem.
Will do, and same to you.
Once Gren closed the connection, Ty did the same. He heard Kyr issue an exasperated sigh in reaction as she walked over to the modest-sized bathing chamber attached to the guest suite. Since he had already inspected it, he didn’t worry about her being away from him for a few minutes. Still, when she closed the door firmly between them, he knew it represented to her the door he was keeping closed between their minds.
He would have to live with that.
She showered and cleansed her teeth, then climbed into bed while he visited the bathing chamber. He wasn’t comfortable showering and leaving her vulnerable, so he used a washcloth at the sink to clean up before heading back into the bedroom.
By all appearances, Kyr was asleep. Ty climbed into the bed and moved closer to her, wanting to draw comfort from her nearness. When he reached for her, though, she edged away from him.
He blinked in astonishment. She hadn’t ever pulled away from him.
Of course, he wasn’t a complete moron. He knew she was angry because he wasn’t sharing what troubled him. She was right that he would feel the same way in her place. But he was just as convinced that she would try to keep this from him, too, if their roles were reversed.
Accepting the pain in his chest as his due, he lay on his side of the bed and stared at Kyr’s back until she finally fell asleep. He stayed in the bed for a while, but when his eyes got heavy, he rose and paced. The dream hovered in his subconscious, waiting for the moment to spring. He hated that he was so defenseless against it.
Eventually, though, he couldn’t fight his fatigue any longer. He crawled back into the bed, and since Kyr wasn’t awake to stop him, he gathered her close and closed his eyes.
* * *
“Your cousin Sem is dead,” Vycor sneered.
Ty was aware enough in the dream now that he went immediately to work on trying to free himself. He knew he had a limited amount of time before the Mynders brought Kyr into the chamber. If he had to watch one more time as Vycor—
No.
Sweat beaded on his brow as he fought his bonds, but like always, they were taut and unyielding.
“He died screaming for mercy,” Vycor said as he laid out the implements beside the altar in the center of the chamber. “He cursed your name, TaeDane. He knew it was your fault that he suffered so long before death claimed him.”
Ty had learned not to speak in the dream. It didn’t stop the events from happening, but he felt less of an impact after he awoke if he didn’t interact with Vycor.
“Don’t believe me?” Vycor asked, unconcerned with Ty’s lack of response. “You haven’t heard from him in some time now.”
The new comment had Ty freezing and meeting Vycor’s gaze. The Advisor wore an unnatural smile.
“Not since your time in the Wrym megai,” Vycor continued. “That was when we started having some fun with SemDane. He lasted a long, long time.”
He waved his hand at the Mynder who walked over with the bloody basket. Ty couldn’t move as he watched the Mynder approach. Somehow, it all seemed more real than usual. He knew it was because he hadn’t been able to connect with Sem before he fell asleep.
That had to mean this was all true.
The basket turned over. Ty watched the head drop at his feet, heard the nauseating squish of flesh and blood striking stone. Saw the gory spatter cover his boots. Felt the bile rise in the back of his throat.
“Who the hell is that?” Vycor demanded.
As Ty watched, the face on the head at his feet grew indistinguishable. He could no longer tell if it was Sem.
The Mynder guard didn’t reply, walking wordlessly back to his post like he always did in the dream. Ty tried to clear his vision, figuring he’d gotten sweat in his eyes.
“He was still alive when we dismembered him,” Vycor said, returning to his usual role. Ty might have imaged it, but the Advisor didn’t sound as confident as usual. “In fact, his ‘member’ was one of the first things I cut off. I’ll have to be even more inventive when I kill you.”
Ty knew something was different, but he wasn’t sure what. He tried to keep his thoughts contained so Vycor didn’t pick them up.
“Oh, I’m hearing them,” Vycor assured him. “You can’t hide anything from me. I’m stronger now than you ever were. You’ll admit it before I’m done with you.”
Knowing what was coming next, Ty resumed his focus on freeing himself. His actions grew frantic. The pain in his arms radiated like flames devouring his skin.
“You are such a fool,” Vycor laughed. “I can’t wait to have you pleading and sniveling like your cousin did. I imagine you’ll feel as though you’ve died at least twice once I finish with your amanti. You do feel everything she does, don’t you?”
No! Ty silently protested, but his head lifted and turned as the chamber doors opened. His vision faded in and out with impotent rage as the Mynder guards entered with Kyr.
He couldn’t endure this again. Not again.
“Ah, here she is,” Vycor said, his gaze on the Mynder who placed Kyr’s unconscious form on the altar. “This will be fun.”
Despite his knowledge that this was a dream, Ty lost his composure as Vycor reached for the first fastening of Kyr’s armor. He opened his mouth to roar his fury, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good.
Suddenly, Kyr’s hand whipped out and grabbed Vycor’s wrist. She wrenched it hard enough that Ty heard the bone snap. Vycor’s face lost all of its color. Before Ty had even processed that, Kyr shoved off of the altar, grabbed one of the sharp implements from the table, and thrust it through Vycor’s eye straight into his brain.
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His body thudded soundlessly to the floor.
Ty’s mouth hung open as Kyr turned and looked at him. He forgot all about the Mynder guards in the room, none of whom moved a muscle.
“Is this what you’ve been keeping from me?” she asked, glancing around with a curious expression on her face as she approached him. Her eyes touched on the dismembered head. “Who is that supposed to be?”
“Sem,” he choked out.
She snorted. “How highly unoriginal.”
He expected her to untie him. Instead, she stopped in front of him and leaned against the back of one of the chamber’s seats. She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head as she studied him.
“You can’t hear my thoughts right now, can you?”
He shook his head.
“Hmm.”
She closed her eyes. He started to ask what she was doing, but then his scalp prickled. He felt a presence in his head and knew she was doing something to him. Because he was still in the midst of this terrible dream, he wondered if he had managed to create an enemy of Kyr because he refused to share the dream with her in real life. The dream had changed to play on his worries about Sem, so why wouldn’t it also morph to turn the woman he loved against him?
“I won’t ever turn against you, TaeDane,” Kyr said.
Her eyes remained closed, for which he was grateful. He was ashamed to have doubted her.
“How long have you been having this dream?” she asked after a few minutes.
“Since just after you found me in the Dark Lands.”
“And did you dream before that?”
He thought of the dreams that had haunted him every time he slept after he was deposited in the Dark Lands…revisiting the moment when Vycor forced him to kill Kyr again and again. The torturous scene where Kyr was still alive, but he couldn’t ever touch her. The scene where she blamed him for her death and left him with the ghastly image of her rotting corpse.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Kyr murmured, opening her eyes. “Your thoughts have shared enough. It’s time for you to wake up now.”
* * *
Ty drew in a sharp breath as he opened his eyes. He was once again in Halda’s guest room. Now, though, Kyr straddled him and had her hands on either side of his head. Her glowing eyes bathed the bed in soft blue light.
“You snuck into my head,” he accused.
“Yeah, well, you pissed me off,” she said in an unruffled tone. “And you don’t know me very well if you thought I’d be content watching you suffer.”
Even though he was still tense from the dream, her words made his mouth turn up at the corners. He had known, of course, that she would try to break through his defenses. He just hadn’t expected it this soon.
“Now I’m going to obliterate whatever the hell Vycor did to your head,” she said just as serenely. “So shut up and deal with it.”
He didn’t have time to protest even if he’d wanted to. She pulled his face closer and kissed him. The kiss was no-nonsense, open-mouthed, and hot. His blood started pounding in his head, then drained straight to his lower body.
Her hands stroked his bare chest, distracting him from her presence in his mind. She grabbed his arms to still them when he tried to touch her. He realized she didn’t need or even particularly want his participation.
She really was pissed.
This was no gentle and loving healing of the mind. This was a determined counteraction to whatever she perceived Vycor had done to him. This was Kyr demanding to be treated as his equal partner even when he feared she couldn’t handle it. This was her proving him a fool for ever doubting her.
My fool, she agreed as her mouth left his and moved to the side of his neck.
He hissed when her teeth nipped the flesh where his pulse hammered. Her hands moved to the waistband of his pants. She managed to get them unfastened while she alternated between licking and sucking his flesh. By the time she freed him to her touch, he was hard and aching.
She lifted the skirt of her gown and pressed her lower body against his. He discovered that she had already removed her undergarments. The feel of her slick flesh rubbing against him generated a low growl in his throat.
You’ll never doubt me again, Kyr thought.
No, he agreed.
Say it.
He ground his back teeth in frustration. “I’ll never doubt you again, Kyr.”
“No, you won’t.”
She slid along him again, but refused to take him inside her. Nearly beyond reason, he lifted his hands to grab her so he could claim her. She once again reached out and stopped him.
“Kyr.”
“No, Ty,” she whispered as her lips and tongue blazed a trail across his chest. She ran one of her hands up and down along his hard length. “You made me suffer. Now it’s your turn.”
He never realized when she found the part of his mind that Vycor had breached. She made him put his hands behind his head while she lowered herself to torture him with her mouth and tongue, thoroughly distracting him. He didn’t feel it when she used her abilities to work around the edges of the dark, malignant blight on his brain. All he felt was her drawing him deeply into her mouth, then denying him when he was about to find release.
She did it again and again and again. None of his Mynder training had prepared him for this kind of torment. Pain blended with exquisite pleasure until he was nearly incoherent, begging her to stop her teasing. He lost count of how many times she denied him.
Her smile was full of feminine power when she finally climbed back up and straddled him. She took her time about it, slowly bringing him to her beckoning entrance and lowering herself an inch at a time. She dug her nails into his shoulders to control her descent. The sharp bite of pain from her grip merely enhanced his arousal. He was sure he was going to die from the pleasure she was forcing on him.
When she allowed her full weight to drop her body the rest of the way down, they both moaned loudly. He knew she was just as close to coming as he was. If she moved even the slightest bit, he’d see stars.
Her hands moved from his shoulders to once again stroke the muscles of his chest. His jaw worked as he tried to control himself. He sensed her enter his mind again and tensed, knowing this wasn’t going to be pleasant.
Then everything happened at once.
Kyr’s abilities sliced like a knife into his mind. Before that pain could register, she pinched his nipples. Hard. That pain shot straight to his groin. He climaxed instantly.
He didn’t remember another thing until morning.
Chapter 14
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Ty woke up after Kyr. He had no idea where he was at first. His head pulsed with a dull ache. His body felt…used.
He propped himself up on his elbows. His gaze immediately fell on Kyr, who sat at a small table situated under the room’s only window on the right-hand side of the room. She was dressed in a forest-green gown that must have come from Halda, and was eating something off the plate in front of her. Steam rose from her teacup, indicating that it was fresh and hot.
A couple of thoughts occurred to him. One, she had allowed the Wrym to serve her food while he was still half-naked and asleep. And two, she was eating food that he hadn’t tasted first.
Her eyebrow lifted, but she didn’t look at him. He knew this was some kind of test, one he was too worn out to try and pass. Even in his diminished state, though, he was wise enough not to say a word as he got up and walked to the bathing chamber.
The Wrym were back in the room when Ty returned. Fortunately, he had thought to bring his shirt into the bathroom and was now dressed. He left the Wrym to change the bedding and joined Kyr at the small table.
As he took his seat, he studied Kyr. Her gaze was focused on the view outside the window. He noted the dark shadows under her eyes and debated whether to engage her in a conversation through their minds. After a moment, he sensed she wasn’t ready for that. The truth was, he wasn’t,
either. His head felt like it had been brutally violated. He supposed it had. If, as Kyr led him to believe the night before, Vycor had messed with his mind to force him to have nightmares every night, that was definitely a violation.
And yet another reason for him to want to savagely slaughter the Advisor with his bare hands.
Halda arrived as they finished their breakfast. She had arranged for them to take the council’s motorized land transport to help get them to the Dane megai more quickly. Ty wasn’t offended by the Wrym’s anxiety to be rid of them. He knew she just wanted to get protection for her people. Since he was worried about the fate of the entire planet, he could certainly empathize.
He refused to take a Wrym pilot along, not wanting to unnecessarily risk anyone’s life. After inspecting the transport himself, he deemed it safe for travel.
“Thank you for entertaining us during our visit, Councilor,” Kyr said before they boarded. “You’ll hear from us soon.”
“I hope so,” Halda said. “It was good to see you again, Kaya.”
All of them were aware of the eyes and ears observing the departure. Kyr turned and climbed onto the transport, not waiting for Ty’s assistance. He frowned, but didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the time or place to make a scene.
We’ll send help as soon as we can, Ty conveyed. He knew the thought was heard when Halda nodded. “Thank you,” he said out loud.
“Of course. Be safe,” she replied.
A few minutes later, Ty piloted the transport out of its small hangar and he and Kyr were on their way. They would have to pass through the Owar and Luja megais to get to the Dane megai. He figured it would take at least two days to make the passage, even with minimal stops. Halda had restocked their food and water supplies, so they were okay there. If they ran out of fuel, they still had the Gift. All in all, things were going more smoothly than he had anticipated.
He should have known better than to entertain that thought.
They encountered their first spot of trouble at the Owar border. A perimeter had been set up along the wide river that served as the megai boundary. The only passable bridge was now manned by Mynders. Their thoughts came through loud and clear…immediately informing Ty that they were looking for him and Kyr.