I could hear Gavin on the phone.
“She’s fading Celian. Her skin has turned grey, her hair is falling out by the hand full, she has lost so much weight that she is a husk of who she once was, and her eyes. My Goddess I think she is blind. They are almost completely true white now. There is barely a whisper of the former vibrant jade that they once were.”
I listened hard, but he was quiet for a moment, listening to whoever was on the phone. Celian, he’d said.
“No I can’t get her to speak. I don’t think she can. She has been silent since we have been here.”
Pause.
“Is the clan still coming?” Gavin waited for an answer in silence.
I could hear him pacing the wood floors.
“What do you mean something has happened and you can’t make the trip?”
Pause.
“No I can’t bring her there! If I move her she might die!”
Silence and more pacing.
“Yes four days. I think at first it was voluntary. Now she can’t move. Let alone tell me anything that she’s experiencing.”
More silence.
“She isn’t one of your fucking science experiments to come and study old man! She is your Goddess damned grandchild!”
I could actually hear yelling from the other end of the line.
“Please. Help us,” Gavin begged.
And suddenly I could hear the person on the phone.
“You are weak. Just like your father. If you are begging for the life of someone you just met, then you have no place in this clan. Your mother’s line must have been defective to create such parasitic offspring.” My supposed grandfather hung up.
I heard Gavin throw his phone across the room and start to sob. My heart broke a little more. It wasn’t like my stoic brother to beg anyone. I needed to help him somehow. With the last of my reserve I concentrated on the person he was just speaking to. I focused my mind’s eye on them. I felt someone, or something. I needed to do something to help Gavin. And that meant I had to help myself.
I could hear faint thoughts coming from someone that was not Gavin. The person was scared and so very dark. He had the darkest soul that I had ever encountered. The thoughts I could hear inside his head were getting stronger. I could now hear them as clearly as if they were my own. Am I developing yet another one of my gifts? I thought. I wondered if I spoke through the strange connection, if he would hear me.
“I can feel you. I can hear your thoughts,” I said through the strange connection I had formed.
The person I was speaking to inside their head was startled. I could feel their physical responses also.
“You’re wrong about my brother and about me. I can see your soul. I can read your thoughts. Feel your fear. You are who is weak. Always have been, haven’t you?”
“Who is this? What gives you the right to steal into my head?” He finally deignedto respond to me.
“My blood is my right. I can see now what truly happened to my father. Why my mother had to separate us. Your hatred and jealousy knows no bounds. You wanted her for your own and she spurned you. You sick fuck!” With that I disconnected from his wretched mind. I felt sick and dirty. I wanted to rip my nails through my mind and wipe away all I had seen. Sick fuck was putting it mildly.
He’d had my father, his only son and heir, tortured, trying to find from him answers that he didn’t know. Even after my mother and father had true mated, he still wanted my mother, but my mother didn’t tell my father of her plans. She left in the dead of the night and ran with me. The old man wanted to drown me at my birth. His hatred toward all females knew no bounds. When he couldn’t get the answers he was seeking from his son, he killed him, making it look like an accident. Then he tried to twist Gavin, tried to make my brother into a monster just like him. He didn’t succeed though. For that I was glad. I’d caught something that had to do with Jaxx also, but I didn’t have enough strength to search his mind further.
A thought occurred to me. If I could talk to that foul soul through my mind I wondered if I could reach my brother also. I concentrated on him, trying to push through his barriers. They were strong, stronger than his grandfathers were. “Gavin,” I whispered in his mind.
I heard running. Then he was beside me. He was kneeling at the side of my bed. “Ella?”
I forced my body to move and shifted my head toward him. “Help me,” I whispered to his mind. The link was weak because of the strength I’d used to connect with our grandfather.
“Ella,” he said out loud, again. “I have tried. Please tell me what I can do.”
“Take my hand. Share yourself with me,” I urged.
“I wish I could, but it doesn’t work like that. You can only heal yourself with Jaxx.”
It hurt to hear his name spoken. “Please. Have to try. We are soul twins. Blood. Stronger than most anything.” I could feel the connection to him fading as was I.
Gavin took my hand.
My body started to soak up his strength like a sponge. I could feel myself rejuvenating. My body filling itself outward. I gained back my eye sight. I gasped at how wretched my brother looked. He hadn’t slept in days. He looked so tired, and was looking more tired by the moment. I shook my hand lose from his. I could suck him dry if I didn’t break the connection. “We are more connected to one another than we thought, brother.”
“Ella!” He grabbed me to him, holding me tight. “How did you know that we could do that?”
“We can do anything together, Gavin. We are more than mere siblings. Seb told me that twins born of two True Witch parents are rare. So rare no one has ever heard of it happening before. We are different.”
He smiled at that, crawling onto the bed and facing me. His arms were wrapped around me now and he looked like he was about to pass the fuck out. I was feeling stronger, but I had a long way to go before I was back to my old self. Then I had plans to make. People to find. Fences to mend and all that shit. I wrapped my arms around Gavin and I thought that we must look like we did when we had lain in my mother’s womb. Wrapped in each other.
“Forever,” he whispered to me. He still has a connection to mine. I could feel it now. That was going to get uncomfortable if Jaxx ever got his head out of his ass.
Gavin chuckled.
I lay silently beside him, wondering where we went from there. The horizon was a blank canvas. Eventually I heard him start to snore. I wrapped my arms tighter around him and drifted off in the first restful sleep I’d had in five days.
Chapter Sixteen
Reunion
I woke with a start. There was someone banging on the front door. Gavin was still snoring away, so I untangle myself from my brother and made my way slowly down the hall toward the front of the house. I was moving at a crawl. Goddess I hate being this weak, I thought. As I got closer to the front room the pounding on the door got louder and louder. Whoever it was, they were determined, I could say that for them.
Gavin caught up to me just as I made it to the living room. He led me over to the couch in front of the fireplace and made me sit down. “I have the house warded. No one can get in without my permission.”
“We can do that? Wards and such?”
Gavin shook his head. “You have so much still to learn sister.”
Gavin still looked haggard, he wasn’t at full strength. I stood back up and grabbed his hand.
He looked at me like I had lost it completely. “What in fiery hell do you think you are doing?”
“We are stronger together. I might be weak in body, but my mind is well again.”
Gavin shook his head again, clearly thinking I was delusional.
We made it to the front door still hand in hand, sharing our energy between us. Our free hands were glowing brightly with jade fire. I gasped as I looked at them. That was new. I knew I could make my hands glow, but not anything like this. Gavin looked just as amazed as I was.
Gavin opened the door and I gasped out loud letting go of his hand and
throwing myself at the door to get to the person that was on the other side. When I reached the door I didn’t move through the empty space as I was expecting to do. I bounce back, repelled by thin air. I looked at Gavin amazed.
Jaxx was standing outside the front entrance looking broken and bloody. I tried to get through the door again. This time I used my glowing palm as a sort of key to break through the bound space. It worked. I rush to Jaxx as fast as my weakened body would allow. I wanted to throw myself into his arms, but I was afraid to touch him. Not just because it might cause him pain, but I was afraid he would reject me.
Gavin grabbed me by the arms and planted me firmly behind him. As if Jaxx would physically hurt me. “What are you doing here? How did you find this place?” Gavin snarled at Jaxx. He was firing up his palms once more. Readying for a battle if he didn’t like the answer he got.
“I can follow my destined anywhere. You know this,” Jaxx answered weakly. He was swaying on his feet.
“Where have you been while your destined has been laying here dying?” Gavin demanded.
Jaxx paled even further.
“Let him inside, Gavin. Can’t you tell he has been through hell himself? He isn’t going to hurt me. I can feel his intent and his emotions. They are pure.” I looked Jaxx in the eye as I spoke.
“Fine. You may enter, but if you try to hurt her. I will finish you,” Gavin warned.
“Understood.”
Gavin walked back into the house leaving Jaxx and I alone. I stepped closer and grabbed his arm trying to make sure he wasn’t going to fall over. He was still unsteady. When I got close enough to touch him, Jaxx dropped to his knees and pulled me tightly to him. He shoved his face into my stomach and started to shake. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and look down into his face. Silent tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“Please for the love of the Goddess forgive my trespasses against you.”
“Of course I do, my love.” I dropped down onto my knees and faced him. “You don’t even have to ask. I love you. Always. We are forever.” I pulled him to his feet as I used the porch railing to reach mine. “Let’s get you inside,” I said, trying to lead him inside.
“I didn’t leave you, Ella. You have to believe me.”
I stopped dead. Stone still. “What? I saw you leave. You misted!” I was starting to get angry. I know I said I forgave him, but I would never forget the feeling of him leaving me. Not as long as I lived. Jaxx’s knees gave way beneath him. “Gavin, get your ass out here and help me with Jaxx!” I yelled. We heaved and got his huge frame onto the couch. “Answer me, Jaxx. What do you mean you didn’t leave me?” I looked at him in the face.
His eyes were dead serious. “I was pulled. I couldn’t control it. I was transported into a cavern. I don’t know where it is located, but it was deep in the earth, a long way from the surface.” He shuddered at the thought of it.
“What happened when you got there?” Gavin asked.
I sat down beside Jaxx and took his hand in mine, but he wasn’t having that. He pulled me into him, holding me tightly. I stiffened slightly.
He turned to me, his eyes pleading. “Listen to what I have to tell you. Please, pretty eyes.”
Tears began to stream down my face at his use of the nickname he’d given me.
“Talk,” Gavin said.
Jaxx nodded. “When I was pulled by an unseen force into the Cavern there were a lot of men there waiting for me. I was so disoriented from being forced through whatever it was they pulled me through, that they were able to capture me easily. They put me in chains that blocked my gifts. I was powerless.”
“Why would someone do that?” I whispered more to myself than anyone else.
“When they had me secured, they started to question me. They wanted to know about Ella.” He looked at me. “They wanted to know about your gifts, your strengths,” he said, turning back to Gavin. “Whether you and she were more powerful together or apart, they wanted to know what kind of connection the two of you have since you are twins.”
I looked at Gavin with horror in my eyes.
“I wouldn’t talk, so they tortured me.”
I stiffened, anger building in my chest. I could feel the first rumblings of the ground moving beneath my feet. “What-” I started to ask, but Jaxx cut me off.
“No, my love, I won’t tell you that part. I don’t want you to share my nightmares.” He looked at Gavin. “The man in charge went by the name Celian.”
Gavin exploded from his seat. “That son of a bitch! He knew about her all along! Now I know why he wouldn’t come here to help! That fucking son of a bitch!”
“There’s more,” Jaxx said. “Your father’s clan wants Ella dead. They think she will become too strong. That both of you will, because you were born twins. That in itself isn’t supposed to be possible, so they are running scared. I heard him talking to his men about sparing you, Gavin. He wants to mold you into someone he can control.” Jaxx leaned his head back onto the couch and winced. I could see that he was in a lot of pain still.
Gavin was up and back to pacing the floors. “Well that sick son of a bitch can’t have me!” Gavin snarled.
“Celian killed his son, your father. He took great delight in telling me that. He said if he could kill his own son, he would not have any trouble doing the same thing to me.”
I just sat silently watching them. I already knew all of this, but I kept it to myself.
“They were happy when you called, Gavin. When you told him that Ella was dying, he was enjoying his triumph and taunting me with the ways he was planning on killing me. But then something happened that scared him. Badly.” Jaxx looked in my eyes and I knew that he knew it was me. Somehow he must have felt my presence there in that dark and dank place. “They all left to go to some kind of meeting after that. I was trying to escape when someone came into the room where they were holding me.” Jaxx looked back at me apprehensively, pulling me closer to him and hugging me tighter, so that I couldn’t get away from him. “Ella, please don’t pull away. What I have to say won’t make you very happy at first, but please just listen until the end.”
I nodded still sitting stiffly in his arms, because I had a feeling he was about to bring up someone I did not want to hear about.
“It was Valkyrie. I was still in chains and injured. She just came sauntering into the cavern. To say I was surprised was an understatement.”
I started to pull away, not wanting to hear the rest.
“Ella, let him finish,” Gavin instructed.
I stilled.
“She started bragging that she and I had never been together. That she’d thought if I had defiled myself for my true mate that she could have me. Have me for herself.” Jaxx’s face twisted.
I was reeled by the news. He had never touched another as he had touched me. I was afraid to believe it, but I wanted so badly for it to be true. I turned to face him and gazed into his eyes and saw the truth for myself. My heart soared.
“But that didn’t work out for her so well. So she decided to help your grandfather as revenge toward me. She is the one that let me out of the chains. She had heard that you were most likely dead, but I knew because of our bond that you weren’t,” Jaxx said passionately. “That you were somehow getting stronger again, but she wasn’t aware of that. She was trying to seduce me for real this time, saying that since you were out of the way for good that we could be together!” Jaxx stormed as anger flooded his face and voice. “She was dead wrong.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I killed the bitch. I wrapped my hands around her throat and squeezed with all the strength I had in me. I left the evil, lying bitch lying there dead, her body cooling in the dirt, for your grandfather to find.” He looked at me, defiantly all most daring me to not accept what he’d done. “Ella, I’m not sorry for it. She could have ruined everything. She was feeding information about me to Celian. She caused all of this pain for the both of us. She deserved what she go
t,” he said earnestly, pleading with me to understand.
“He is right,” Gavin agreed.
“I’m glad she’s dead, Jaxx,” I said gently. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to carry that with you, my love. I’m sorry that she caused you pain. Thinking that you had shamed yourself in some way, but I would have forgiven you if you had. You have to know that. I would forgive anything, short of leaving me ever again.” We stared at each other as if we were the only ones in the room.
“And that is my clue to leave,” Gavin chuckled as he left the room.
We were alone at last. I was still all over the place at all of the new developments, but the only thing I wanted to do right then, was be as close to Jaxx as possible. “I need to heal you,” I said taking his hand in mine. “We need to heal each other.”
“In more ways than one, little raven.”
I climbed into his lap and snuggled to his chest, starting to cry. “I have missed you so very much. More than you can understand. Please don’t leave me again.”
“I swear it on my life. I will never,” he assured me fiercely, hugging me tighter to him. Jaxx pulled back from me and ran his fingers under my eyes, drying my tears.
“I want to feel you inside me. I want you so deep that you can’t ever be away from me again. You make me feel whole when we are connected like that.”
Jaxx stood up from the couch and pulled me up with him. He was still moving stiffly, but he was trying to hide how badly hurt he really was. “Where is your room?” he asked.
I grabbed his hand in answer and led him down the hall to my blue room. When we entered he looked around and caught the holes that had been pounded into the walls.
“We still have a lot to talk about, Ella.”
“Later.” I tugged him to the bed and made him sit on the edge. He reached for me, but I moved his arms back to his sides.
“Let me do this for you, baby. Let me make you feel good.” I started to unbutton his shirt, but I got impatient with my shaky hands and ripped the shirt open, buttons flew around the room, pinging on the floor.
Fated Truth (The True Witch Saga) Page 15