Scorched Treachery (22 page)

A few more days and she would wake.

If Edmund had already sent Trpaslíks after us, then Ovailia couldn’t be more than a day behind. Soon, I would wake her.

If Edmund had sent Ovailia at all.

I wiped the thought from my mind. The stress that such a small idea gave me was overwhelming. I straightened my back and walked away from her, towards the window.

I could still feel the need to be near her, but for now, I needed to prove that I was stronger than my desire. I had to remind myself that she would not be mine for many years to come. The breeze that came in through the high arches of the windows swirled around me, the mingled magic of the men who stood around us in preparation for attack evident to me now. The power was weak, but it was there. I could feel their anticipation, the nerves, and excitement.

The danger had followed us to our door once again, but I knew what the Trpaslíks who guarded us did not. The time was coming, closer and closer. I could feel the tick in my blood, beating like a clock, signaling its arrival.

The hairs on my arms prickled as my energy rippled over my skin, my alert power prickling, desperate to be used. I always kept so much of my magic restrained, for safety reasons. It was only in battle that I could freely feel my magic flow through me, that I could be free. My energy rippled now; the maniacal energy setting me on fire in eager anticipation.

The final battle was knocking on our door. The sight had shown me that.

We just needed sleeping beauty to wake.

“
He will tear us apart. Pokud si přejete, aby viděl konec, dej mi své srdce.” I spoke the words of Joclyn’s sight silently, the words sounding like a deep prayer of mass when whispered in Czech.

Give me your heart.

Hadn’t I done that already? Hadn’t I promised her every beat that it possessed when I first held her in my arms eight hundred years ago?

Yes, but I had also taken it away.

I had taken away her claim on me when I made the decision not to break the bond between her and her mate. My brother. Could I break that bond now, after all I had sacrificed, after all I had promised her? No, it was not in me to be so cruel.

My back was still toward her as my heart beat for her. I felt love and confusion swell inside of me. I didn’t need to look at her to feel my conviction continue to cement itself within me. I could see her beauty, her strength, her power. I could see her weakness and the hold it had on her vanishing slowly every day.
I could hear her laugh and see the way she wrinkled her nose. I could see the flash of her silver eyes when she was upset.

She was amazing.

I would do anything to protect her, to help her, to let her become what she wanted and needed to be. I would give her my heart, if that were required. She had it until it beat its last.

The tops of the trees reached toward the moon, the shadows dark and deep. I loved this view, the natural beauty of the world that modern man had destroyed. There were so few places on earth where you could find that peace anymore. Places that I had walked through, loved, worshiped, and explored through my hundreds of years had all been overrun with what others were calling progress. I could feel the energy of the earth radiate from the ground, the natural force strong here, whereas in the cities of the world, the natural power was covered and poisoned until it no longer existed.

The thought came to me before I could stop it, the desire to hold Joclyn as we looked out at this beautiful view, as we felt the magic of the earth together, because I knew she could. So many of our kind never could, but she would. I wanted to see her face when she did.

I wanted to show her the beauty in the world, not just the sadness. I wanted to give her my heart openly, and I wanted her to take it.

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 of love. 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 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.

She had been trapped in her prison for ten days. We had escaped the cave in Italy only for her to remain trapped in her solitary prison. 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 were 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 monas
tery and find inner peace. Sadly, 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 e
bb and flow to the air around me. I breathed it in, adding it to my own.

The crunching of Thom’s feet against the destroyed bits of the chapel came closer, 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 první.”

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 but feel his worry was misplaced. I could handle my own issues.

“I’m fine, Thom. Jen jsem...” 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 is 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 began to open up to Joclyn, when I began to tell 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. I could feel 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 beside me at my words. I had overheard him talking to Dramin last night, his fears about the inaccuracy of sight spoken aloud. It may have been wrong to eavesdrop, it may 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 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 in anxiety the second I finished talking. I had spoken too plainly, opened myself up too much to him. The words had come unbidden from my mouth, and now I was to face the consequences.

“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 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,” I said.

“When she was three, Wynifr
ed and I used to take her to visit the serfs in the country side.” Thom’s voice was distant, his mind lost in his memories. I could feel my heart tense at what was coming. I may 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. She had been the most powerful of the Trpaslíks, chosen specifically for Edmund’s first experiment. 

“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. But, 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. 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. The blue eyes. The sign of royalty. The sign of Edmund’s lineage. So many of my siblings had never had a chance
to live simply because they were born without his eyes. His obsession was over something that meant nothing, leaving a trail of blood behind it.

“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. 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 quickly, 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 let him seek his revenge, to let him find a way to fill the hole in his heart.

He deserved that, we all did.