86. Chapter 86
Nelle
Stupidly, I realized Graysen had never said his mother had died. I first heard it from my mother, and, like the rest of the Houses, believed that a car crash had killed Tabitha Crowther. My parents knew the truth behind Tabitha’s death because they’d betrayed the Crowthers. And though Graysen had said the Horned Gods had come for her that night, he’d never once said that his mother had actually died.
She was alive.
And she was suffering.
For twelve long years.
What would I do if it were one of my family?
How far would I go, if it were Lise or Evvie?
I’d almost ended Corné for Evvie…
And I knew my answer.
Hopelessness fell heavily through me with the awful truth that my life had never been mine to live. “I was never going to be free,” I said quietly, my hand falling away from Graysen’s chest where my palm had pressed above his heart. I dipped my chin toward the rope he clutched between his fingers. “Do it.”
Whatever that thing is, just do it.
His gaze was bleak when they slid my way and his hands trembled as he raised the looped rope to the crown of my head. He was repeating something under his breath, so quietly I could barely hear it. But I listened closely and I discerned the words he softly chanted. “My mother needs me…I’m sorry, Nelle, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
He stilled, blinking rapidly, his black eyes shining too brightly.
I squared my shoulders and steeled myself. “Do it, Graysen. ”
He squeezed his eyes shut, and still, he didn’t make a move.
I took his shaky hands and guided that thing over the top of my own head, feeling the coarse rope skim along my forehead and scrape against my cheeks as it slipped downwards to ensnare my throat.
From the corner of my eye, I saw my wyrm fade, then wink out.
Zrenyth’s ropes and chains fell to the ground with a heavy rattle.
As soon as the rope settled around my neck, I felt it, heard it—the roaring and yowling—as the wyrm inside me was driven down deep to some dank recess until I could only hear it faintly mewling to me.
Until—
I heard it no more.
He’d trapped my magic. He’d trapped me.
And I was just a girl.
A girl, no more or less than any other.
Suddenly, I was airborne as Graysen swept me up in his arms and held me close. Surging forward in a blur of speed, we left behind the death and destruction I’d wrought.
With the speed he ran, it was impossible not to sling my arms around his neck and hold tight. I squinted into the rush of a headwind as my hair flailed and his heaving breath washed against my chilled cheek. His boots pounded across the hard-packed earth, crunching down the driveway as he followed its length, plunging through the gloomy copse of trees before we emerged, bathing once more in dying sunshine. All the while, our twin-hearts pulsed with sorrow. We arrived at the Crowthers’ formidable family home with its towers and turrets, ramparts, and arrow slits, Graysen slamming to a halt. Ferne and Valarie stood beside one another on the terrace, clearly awaiting our arrival, expecting it.
Graysen gently placed me to my feet on the cobblestones at the base of the steps. He held me steady as I swayed dizzily from the onslaught of manic speed.
I barely noticed Valarie, the way her eyes flashed with triumph before she turned her back on us, guiding Ferne into the house—I was too busy frantically searching inside for the creature that had been with me since birth.
It differed completely from whatever dust Danne had blown into my lungs. Then I could still feel the thing , the wyrm, I now could say.
This time, I was utterly devoid of the creature. There was nothing inside me. Nothing at all.
I’d never felt this empty or alone before.
And pure panic squeezed the air from my lungs .
My fingers went straight to the rope around my neck, but it wouldn’t come free. My breaths became hysterical-edged pants.
“It’s tied to me. To my will,” Graysen explained. To prove it, without touching me and using his will alone, the rope cinched tighter, but not tight enough to cut off my circulation and deny my lungs of oxygen. His point made, the collared rope relaxed once more. “It will also prevent you from leaving the estate. My ancestors used it to bind the Wyrm’s powers.” He gently brushed my hair over my shoulder, a perversely tender move that belied what he’d done to me.
But this thing around my throat was more than that. I knew it deep in my bones. He could have knotted the rope about my wrist, or an ankle perhaps. Instead, he’d purposely tied it around my neck.
“It’s a message,” I breathed, shocked.
Guilt shadowed his gaze. “Yes.”
“For my father. You want to remind him you hold his life and all my family at your will… So you collared me, like a dog?”
I felt sick. Icy fear warred with utter rage and disbelief that he would do this to me, that he would choose this thing that vaguely resembled a noose to collar me with. To send a godsdamned message to my father this way.
His mouth tipped up—not quite a smile. “We need him. And he needs to know what will happen to every single Wychthorn if we choose to reveal him.”
It was the last shred of hope for us.
And my heart…what was left of my aching, sorrowful heart caved in.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, moving closer, reaching for me.
But I skipped back, raising my hands in warning to stay away. “Sorry,” I repeated, and to my own ears, my voice resembled his aunt’s cold, hateful one. “Such an empty, worthless word.”
He flinched.
“And what about me? Here, with your family? Your aunt?”
His eyes blazed with fierce determination and I watched in wary fascination as silver flooded the black until it was my eyes looking back at me. His voice was a deep rumble, almost a snarl. Definitely territorial. “No one will touch you.”
I took several hurried and fearful steps backward, and the silver in his irises quickly faded into black. His gaze snapped to mine, filled with confusion. “Nelle?”
I shook my head, my mouth a resolute line. “You can’t promise me that.” Gods, he couldn’t promise me anything. A bitter laugh barked from me, at me, at my stupidity, at my foolishness. I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t forgive him.
“The Uzrek was right.” I dragged in a deep breath, fortifying myself against him. His lips parted, and I supposed he might have been about to ask what I meant, but I carried on, my voice frosty and full of contempt. “Thief. Death-dealer. Spinner of deceit.” I stalked up to him, craning my neck to meet his wary gaze. “You stole my heart and crushed it with your lies. There is nothing in here for you.” I spread my fingers across my chest, over my heart, and I repeated his own words back to him. “I have no heart, only ash in the space it should be.”
Agony and despair carved deep lines into his features, and panic flashed through those obsidian eyes. I saw everything he felt on his face. His heartache and wretchedness. But on mine, he would see nothing, nothing at all.
Because I felt nothing.
“I’ll never forgive you,” I hissed.
He swallowed hard. His mouth was a grim line as he nodded, his hair ruffling with the movement.
He half-twisted away to stare down the driveway to the thicket of trees, murky with shadows now that the sun was sliding below the horizon. My gaze slid over his profile as he slowly straightened his shoulders, muscles flexing with tension under the adamere armor, and a tic twitching in his jaw. He turned back and I met the face I knew all too well. Cold. Impassive. Empty. And dark, fathomless eyes.
But my expression matched his perfectly.
He stepped around me, a lethal graceful movement. His broad hand at the small of my back pushed me forward. I stumbled a little, righting myself, and I walked up those stone steps, up, up, up, to the massive wooden doors cast open, and entered House Crowther.
I was a bird—one of my mother’s thrushes—my wingtips had beaten against a cage of metal and flesh. I’d flown free, soaring against a bright blue sky, a taste of freedom and of sun-soaked rays, only to fly from one cage to another.
And the moment House Crowther swallowed me up in its shadowed, ruthless depth, and I felt the loss of the dying sun’s warmth on my skin, I vowed I’d find freedom again. Even if it meant tearing through Graysen and leaving him broken and bloodied at my feet.
For I was a Wychthorn, and I would bow to no one.
Thank you for reading BOUND IN INKED FLAME!