eyes wet, as he stared at her bent and hunched frame, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked herself, sobs tearing out of her.
Kilidare stood to the side, shifting on his feet, head low, keening sadly in his throat. Her back—narrow, dirty, scarred—shook with the force of her sobs.
Aryn’s nails bit into his skin.
He hadn’t made Tainan pay nearly enough.
Can we fetch his dark soul from hell and do it again?
It was an absent mental question, but he’d grown used to the enchanter, a near constant mental companion, providing silent commentary even to those random thoughts.
But there was only silence in his mind.
As Aryn reached out a hand to brush Tyriel’s hair back, he realized he was alone. Completely. Irian was not there at all.
“Tyriel.”
Chapter 17
That soft, deep voice rolled over her skin like a caress, but it wasn’t real.
Simply couldn’t be.
“Tyriel, sweet, open your eyes and look at me,” he whispered roughly as a callused, warm hand gently stroked the side of her arm before moving away.
She scuttled away from the touch. It was Tainan. Of course it was. It was always Tainan. Him or one of his monstrous guards.
“Love, he’s gone. Dead. He cannot touch you ever again, I swear.”
Gone? Dead?
She shook her head. It was too much. That voice was lying, sounding too much like the one she longed for, telling her things she had hoped and prayed for. It had to be a dream.
“You’re not here,” she whispered, her dry throat turning the words to a bare rasp.
“I am. Sweeting, open your eyes.” The voice was firmer now and two large, warm hands worked their way into her hair. They didn’t pull or yank, although there was a slow, inexorable force—nothing painful, but he didn’t stop up he had her chin lifted.
Stubbornly, she closed her eyes. If she didn’t look at this newest torment, it wouldn’t hurt as much when it all ended.
Oh, why wouldn’t death just take her?
“No!” he bit off, voice hardening. “You are not going to die and leave me, Tyriel. Do you hear me?”
Now his hands did tighten.
She flinched.
But instead of turning cruel, the man brought her against his chest. “Shhh…I’m sorry. I won’t yell. I won’t snap at you. I’m sorry. But you can’t say things like that. You’re breaking me, Tyriel.”
Why did he have to sound so like Aryn?
“I am Aryn.” He nuzzled her cheek. “Please…just look at me.”
She didn’t want to. But whatever magical compulsion Tainan had concocted this time, it was strong and she couldn’t resist the urge any longer.
Lifting her head, she opened her eyes and felt herself pinned by a gaze of such impossible blue.
“No.” Shaking her head, she squeezed her eyes closed again. “No. It’s not you. It’s illusion. You’re not real.”
“Oh, but I am, my lady,” he murmured, his lips soft against her cheek as he pressed a gentle kiss there. “Touch me. You’ll see. I’m quite real.”
“Illusion.”
“Then denounce me. Break the illusion,” he said, stroking his hands down her arms, running the tips of his fingers over her lips, the arch of her brows, as though he couldn’t stop touching her face. “Call up that wild magic of yours to break anything false that may lie here and we shall see what is real and what is illusion.”
Call my magic, she thought.
It was then that the bitter laughter started.
And nothing he said could make her stop. But eventually the bitter laughter turned into tears and she curled against him and wept.
At some point, she realized he might just be real and although relief kissed her like a welcome balm, there was pain, too, because the staggering, faltering rhythm of her heart still haunted her.
How little time left, she thought. Aryn had come, as she’d hoped, and she had next to no time left at all.
She wouldn’t tell him though.
Perhaps she’d explain some of it.
But not all.
Why trouble him when there was nothing he could do?
* * * * *
“The magic is gone.”
Jaren stared at her sleeping figure and tried to come to grips with what Aryn had told him. Such an act would have surely driven most, if not all, of the Kin truly insane. Or just simply killed them. Magic was part of their makeup, part of what they were inside, like their skin color, their hair, their blood.
Tyriel had cut her magic out, extinguished the fire that fueled the magic that made up the cells of who she was. It had been a sheer act of desperation.