Descending Darkness (The Prophesized #3) (19 page)

With a simple head nod, Jane motions for us to head back to the others. I quickly wipe the evidence of my tears away and follow her. We enter the kitchen, and I automatically walk over to Colton. He instantly wraps an arm around my shoulders. I watch as Jane walks back over to Ross. Looking at Tom, who must have entered the kitchen while we were outside, she says, “Thank you for letting us stay here last night, and thank you all for coming to save us.” Ross nods, silently agreeing. Jane looks at Larkin and signals that it’s time for them to go.

I run toward Jane again and hug her tightly. “Please be safe,” I whisper to her.

“You too, Ryanne. You too.” I bite my lip and step away. I can’t keep her here if she doesn’t want to be. Ross smiles at me, and I nod back. I never got to know Ross very well, but he makes Jane happy, so I like him. Leaning back against Colton, I watch as Larkin walks over to them and transports them out of the room.

“You okay?” Colton asks me.

“Yeah, I just didn’t realize how much I missed her until now,” I tell him as we walk toward the couch.

“You’ll see her again. That wasn’t a goodbye.”

“I know.” Colton lets go of my hand to grab Tom’s folded up pillow and blanket. I watch him as he walks up the stairs to puts them back in the closet at the end of the hall. I walk over to the end of the couch and sit down next to Liam. I look toward the kitchen; no one else is coming in here.

“Hey, Liam.” I smile at him.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Hey, Ryanne.” Goodness, he’s already suspicious.

“So…Natalie’s really pretty, isn’t she?” I lean toward him.

“I know what you’re doing. It’s not going to work.”

“I’m not doing anything, Liam. Why would you assume that?”

“Because you have that meddling gleam in your eyes that all girls get when they’re trying to set someone up.” I’ve never seen this meddling gleam before. I’ll have to pay more attention to someone when they meddle from now on.

“I already know you like her,” I tell him.

“Have you been reading my thoughts,” he asks. Does no one trust me? How many times do I have to tell everyone that I don’t read their thoughts before they believe me?

“You all have very little faith in me, and thank you for basically admitting it. No, I have not read your thoughts, but I’m observant...sometimes. I’ve seen the way you look at her when she’s not looking, and you don’t look at someone like that unless you like them. As in
like
like, not friend like. I’ve seen you try to hide a smile when you’re around her. I’ve even seen you get a little possessive over her, and I know it upset you when she was talking about her ex-boyfriend.”

He is staring at me. I know that Liam isn’t really an emotional guy. Besides Bragden, I’m probably the one person that’s gotten really close to him. I feel a connection with Liam. Like he can with me, sometimes I can tell what he is feeling. Right now, he is fighting with himself. He doesn’t know if he wants to tell me anything. His gaze flickers from me to the kitchen. I turn around and see Colton standing in there, pretending not to be watching us. Natalie is laughing at something Emma said.

He reaches up and runs a hand through his long hair. I lean forward and push the messed up hair back into its normal position. “I’m trying to ignore what I feel for her, Ryanne. Right now is not the time for a relationship. It’s safer for both of us if I keep things platonic between us,” he whispers.

“What if you don’t get another chance? What if right now is the perfect time? I had to watch Colton die before I admitted to myself that I couldn’t ignore my feelings anymore. Sometimes there’s no better time than the present because you don’t know if you’ll get a future. There’s no guarantee of a tomorrow. We’re lucky to get another chance. I know she likes you too, Liam.”

“What? She does?” I nod. I really want Liam to be happy. He deserves that much, especially after everything he’s been through because of me. He starts shaking his head. “It doesn’t change anything. I can’t risk it.”

“I just want you to be happy, Liam. You do whatever you think is right. Just remember that a girl won’t wait forever.” I look over toward Kyril. Natalie doesn’t like Kyril like that, but my glance is enough to startle Liam. I pat his knee and leave him pondering on the couch.

Going upstairs, I go into our bedroom and grab my iPod and sketchbook off the nightstand. When I come back downstairs, everyone is seated on the couch. I walk over to Colton and sit down beside him. I lean into his side and open the sketchbook.

I put my headphones in and click shuffle. The first song that pops up is “Amazing” by Matt Cardle. This isn’t a song that I can just listen to. I quietly hum along with the music. Absolutely no inspiration is coming to me as I stare down at the blank page, so I start drawing spirals across the paper. If something ends up appearing in the drawing...of course, it was intentional. I start bobbing along with the music.

Two of my swirls that overlap each other look like an eye, giving me an idea. I mirror that image on the page, drawing a face in the middle of the swirls. The face blends into the background. You’ll have to look at the picture pretty intently to see anything. When the song ends, I am still adding details to the drawing, but I feel like everyone is watching me. Looking up, I confirm the feeling. Yanking the right headphone out, I ask, “Was I singing again?”

“How are you not famous yet?” Natalie says. I blush a little and look up at Colton.

“Was I really loud?” I ask him. I seriously hope I wasn’t singing that loud.

“Not at first. You got louder the more you got into the song.” Shoot. I can’t turn my music up loud anymore. I can’t hear how loud I’m being. “Don’t be embarrassed, Ry. You have a beautiful singing voice.”

“Do you know Sara Bareilles?” Natalie asks.

“Oh goodness, of course she likes Sara Bareilles,” Emma mumbles.

“Do I know her? She’s my favorite artist.” Natalie jumps up and grabs my hand, pulling me off the couch. She runs up the stairs, dragging me after her. We stop at her room, and she grabs an iPod docking station. Exiting the room, I see everyone walking up the stairs. “What are you doing?”

She pulls me into the music room and forces me to sit down on the piano seat. “You’re going to play.”

“Why does everyone keep doing this to me?” I jump back up. “I’m not going to play. I didn’t mean to sing for everyone. I don’t want to play for everyone either. I hate having the attention on me, Natalie.”

“Then I’ll sing with you. It’ll be on me too!” I turn around and see everyone filing into the room. I start shaking my head. I turn around to walk out of the room, when Natalie grabs onto my hand. All the nerves I have start to fade away.

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t play fair,” she mimics me. “Now you’re not nervous. It should be a piece of cake.”

“You know I could just shock you and walk out of here.”

“But you won’t because I know you want to play that piano. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let me drag you in here. You’re small, but you’re strong. You could have stopped me.” She has a point there. I look past her back to the piano. I
do
want to play it.

“Wait, she plays the piano?” Kyril asks.

“Yeah, she sings, plays, draws, dances, does gymnastics, runs, remembers random facts, reads minds, manifests weather elements, kicks butt…need I go on?” Emma says. I turn around and glare at Emma. Colton walks up behind me and slowly pushes me toward the piano. I let him because I already know that I am going to play.

“What am I playing?” I ask Natalie as I sit down at the piano. I place my hands on the keys. It just feels right sitting here. Music has always been a part of my life. I feel so comfortable sitting on a piano bench…not so comfortable when people are watching me play, or sing.

“Umm…how about “Love Song?” Can you play that?”

I scoff. Can I play that? I place my fingers on the correct keys and press down, getting familiar to the weight of the keys. When I enter the first chord, I look up at Natalie. She is going to sing first. “Head underwater…” she starts off. Wow, she can sing too. Her voice is closer to Sara Bareilles’s voice than mine is.

She stops singing, and I join in on the second verse. Looking down at the piano briefly, I make sure my fingers stay on the correct chords. We both sing on the chorus. Natalie leans on the piano and smiles at me. This is fun. I’ve sung with Colton a couple times, but besides him, no one else will sing with me. I let Natalie have more solos, while I sing most of the background voices.

When the song ends, I look up at Natalie and laugh. She is smiling widely at me. “You have a great voice,” I tell her.

“Am I the only girl mage that wasn’t blessed with any musical abilities? Really?”

“Play something else. You have a much better voice than I do. More of a range.” Natalie says. I shake my head and start scooting the bench back. “Please.”

I hear a chorus behind me, telling me to sing something else. “Guys, I only know slow songs on the piano…” I am hoping that that will be enough to get me out of this.

Colton pushes me back in the chair again. “Play something, Ryanne. Please.”

“That’s not fair. You guys can’t use Colton to get your way! That’s a whole new level of peer pressure.” Gosh, darn it. “Ugh, fine, but this is the last song. And I need to listen to it while I play.” I lean forward and plug my iPod into the dock. I turn the music down, so I can barely hear it over the piano.

I place my hands on the keys and close my eyes. I love this song, but I’m not as familiar with it on the piano. This is one of those songs where you get lost in the music. You have to feel it to do it justice. I start singing quietly, gradually singing louder as I get further into the song.

When I get to the chorus, I am thinking only of the song. The room around me disappears. It is just me and the piano. This song quickly picks up speed, and there are so many spots where I could mess up. I sing out the chorus, letting my voice flow out of my mouth–the words mingling with the air around me. I start moving along with the song, feeling the rhythm beneath my fingertips as they move across the cool keys. Taking a deep breath, I sing the chorus holding the last note out. This section is repeated four times.

My fingers hit the last notes as my voice slowly crescendos to silence. Everyone is standing around the piano now. I bite my lip and turn to Colton. Why are they all looking at me like that?

“What?”

“How do you do that?” Natalie asks me.

“Sing? Everyone can sing.”

“No no, it’s not that. I don’t know what it is exactly,” she pauses. “You feel the song. When I sing, I’m still aware of everything around me. I don’t get lost in the song like you do. You completely tune out your surroundings and focus only on the music. It’s fascinating to watch.” I stare at Natalie. Everyone feels a song in some way or another. It’s not that big of a deal.

I stand up from the piano bench and walk over toward Colton. As I get closer, a low buzzing fills the air, and the room starts tilting. I reach a hand out and grab onto the edge of the piano, steadying myself, waiting for the dizzy sensation to pass. Colton reaches out and grabs onto my arm. “Are you alright?”

I blink a couple of times, and everything stops spinning. “Yeah, sorry. I get clumsy when I’m embarrassed.”

Colton narrows his eyes at me. “Are you sure?”

“You know how much I hate attention,” I cover. That’s weird. Maybe my anemia is coming back. When I was little, I had anemia, which often made me dizzy when I stood up. I used to have to take pills to keep my iron levels normal, but Logan assured me that it shouldn’t come back now that I have my magic.

“What song was that?” Emma asks.

“The one I just played? “A Million More Years” by Olly Murs. It would have sounded better if I had all the background instruments as well.”

“It sounded great, Ry,” Colton says to me. I refuse to look up at him, because I know he is still giving me that awed expression. I reach out and grab his arm. Tilting my head so I can read his watch, I check the time.

“Can we train now? Or at least do something else, so everyone will stop looking at me.” Colton laughs and grabs my hand, pulling me out of the room.

“Training it is.”

Colton

“Why was everyone staring at me like that?” Ryanne asks me as I bring her into our room. I lean back against the closed door and watch her. “Like that! Why are you staring at me like that?”

“Because you’re amazing,” I tell her. Shaking her head, she turns around and grabs some work-out clothes. “Maybe you
should
be reading some of their minds in moments like that. You’ll see what everyone else sees.” She throws her clothes on the bed and faces me.