Chapter 11
Graysen
Istopped for no one.
I pushed my Mustang as fast as it could go, barreling through Ascendria’s congested streets, tearing down the highway and out across open country roads like it was the Circuit de Monaco, until I roared up the winding drive to my family’s estate.
Just after crossing the drawbridge into the fortress, I slammed the car to a skidding halt.
Beneath my death grip, the Mustang’s steering wheel vibrated, and white smoke churned from its tires.
I was out of the car, practically hurling myself free.
My feet hit cobblestones hard as I burst across the courtyard in a streak of panic.
Though there were a few guards and soldiers striding toward the barracks or heading out for the night shift, the courtyard was unusually empty even for this hour.
My father was abroad, my aunt away, and my brothers were still dealing with the Widowmakers on the eastern seaboard.
They’d taken our warband with them, leaving behind a thin garrison to guard our home.
Nausea roiled inside my gut like the churning clouds above that obscured the moon in the night sky.
I almost felt lightheaded with it all. I’d driven from Ascendria trying to feel Nelle out.
All I could think about was what kind of sickness was ailing her, what could have made the link between us fade.
I was a blur of desperation, racing up the winding steps.
As I neared the top of the tower, voices carried downward.
A male voice, firm yet gentle, and a woman’s voice spilling over with dread.
“Penn, you’re doing good… That’s it…”
“Nothing’s happening. There’s no change in her heartbeat. We need to try something else…anything.”
“There is nothing more we can do, Penn.”
My heart lurched as I listened to the exchange.
Those gathered at the top of the landing drew back at my thunderous approach. I barely gave them a second glance. The door to my room was open wide, and I was inside, slamming to my knees, and everything spinning through my head evaporated the moment I saw Nelle.
She lay on the floor with her head on Penn’s lap. The delicate skin around her gray eyes was bruised purple, and she could barely open her eyelids. Her chest rose and fell in erratic, shallow breaths.
“What’s happened to her?”
Me, that’s who. I knew it before asking.
But what was going on? I’d left her a week ago, and she hadn’t been ill.
Gods, could it be Zrenyth’s collar?
Soft blankets were tucked beneath Nelle’s sickly, shivering body.
Low light glinted off the sweat on her pallid face and limbs, strands of her lank hair plastered to her forehead.
I carefully eased her onto my lap. Against my large hands, she felt frail and could shatter with the wrong pressure.
She’d lost weight in the past week. Her cheekbones were sharp, cheeks hollow, collarbones stark beneath her nightie.
That strange hum beneath my skin picked up in proximity to her, but I still couldn’t feel her the way I used to. The filaments of magic that connected us had become thin, insubstantial threads like mist, a faint, faded copy of what we once were.
A medical bag gaped wide, empty syringes and vials scattered over the carpet.
Penn pulled the stethoscope from her ears, her gaze swimming with pity.
“She was slowly coming down with something after you left. At first, I thought it was to do with the malaise of her situation…” Guilt stabbed my heart and I briefly squeezed my eyes shut.
“But it only got worse over the last few days.”
Our physician, a man in his sixties with silver-white hair and a friendly demeanor, squatted outside the doorway.
“I’ve only just arrived. Your brothers have almost routed the Widowmakers…
But it wasn’t easy…” He glanced at his hands, tensely rubbing his knees, before meeting my gaze once more.
And in that statement, I knew just how bad it had obviously been.
But right at this moment, I didn’t give a shit about the Widowmakers and selfishly couldn’t bring myself to wonder who hadn’t made it.
“Penn’s done everything I could have done for the girl. Whatever it is…” he shook his head, lifting a shoulder. “I can’t help.” In his faded blue eyes was an apology that wrenched my insides. “Whatever’s ailing her isn’t natural. There’s nothing else we can do. She’s dying.”
I shot to my feet, disbelief blustering through my being. “Like fuck she is!”
“She’s refusing to drink any fluids, nor broth or water. She’ll effectively starve to death, burn up with dehydration, but this unnatural fever… That’s what will kill her first when her heart gives out.”
The room was deathly quiet, broken only by Nelle’s struggle to breathe.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” I begged him.
He shook his head.
My grip tightened around Nelle. She felt like ice beneath my hands. “Leave,” I hissed, filled with rage. A feeling I could control. A feeling I could unleash.
Penn picked up the empty vials and syringes. The clink of glass and ceramic as they fell from her fingers into the medical bag. The slow metallic whir of a zipper. She rose, clutching the leather bag to her chest, and drew away with one last pitying glance over her shoulder.
Our physician’s retreating footfall was a series of heavy thuds as he followed Penn down the spiral staircase.
The noise of his footsteps kept time with my heart.
A slow, ponderous pace. And then my heart slowed down even further and skipped beats, faltered, then beat impossibly fast before stumbling.
Exactly as it always did when I was with Nelle, my heartbeat syncing with hers.
Nelle was too light in my arms. Her hair draped long, swaying in tangled knots, and her limbs dangled like a rag doll. She blinked sluggishly at me, and I bowed my head closer, whispering, “Nelle?”
She stared back with fever-glazed eyes. She might have mouthed my name, but I think it was more like—bastard. Her trembling hand rose, and I thought she was going to cup my cheek, but she—
Slapped me.
Not hard, because she was too weak for that. But a slap nevertheless. Her hand fell limply away.
A soft voice spoke from the open doorway. I hadn’t realized Ferne was here too. “Gray, we’re missing something obvious, I’m sure of it.”
I wasn’t able to help the cruelty in my tone. “Ferne.” She flinched. “I can’t… Just go.” I didn’t know what to do.
My sister retreated into the shadows of the inner stairwell, slowly edging to the first step.
Right as her foot drew downward, she froze.
Her black hair slid over a shoulder as she angled her head back toward us.
A deep, pensive expression crossed her features.
She suddenly spun around and took several quick steps closer, her mouth parting.
And I just couldn’t.
I was about to bark at her to leave, please, when she threw up her hand. “Shut it.”
Standing at the doorway, she spread her hands wide and trilled her fingers as if she were playing ivory keys on a piano, except she was feeling with her senses.
I felt them rush into the room, poking and probing.
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I can’t feel anything but the air-conditioning in here. ”
Half-twisting about, I glanced around the circular room. At the smooth expanse of stone. No windows, no doors to the outside, apart from the one I’d entered. Of course, there would be air conditioning flowing from the shafts above set into the vaulted ceiling.
“We’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. There’s no light in here, Gray. No natural light.”
“That’s because there aren’t any windows.”
“Please tell me you didn’t trap her in here in stone with nothing but man-made light?” Her voice was heavy with accusation. “Nelle’s a Wyrm.”
“She’s…” I was about to say, human. But that wasn’t technically correct either.
“Human, yes,” my sister replied, following my line of thought. “But with the power of a wyrm inside her. She’s a godsdamned wyrm, Gray, and that side of her needs to bask in—”
“Moonlight or sunlight.” I finished for her. Or in Nelle’s case, deep in my gut, I knew she needed both.
“By locking her up here and denying her natural light, you’re forcing the wyrm into hibernation.”
The word drowned out everything else inside my mind.
The last of the wyrms, including a few my family had freed after the Final War, were buried beneath the earth, not extinct as most of the Houses thought, but hibernating. Lost, forgotten and safe.
Apart from the one in my arms.
“How…?” I couldn’t quite get my head around it.
“Who the hells knows? Nelle’s something that’s never been born in our world before. She can’t handle being trapped in here because the beast inside her is a wyrm. And that’s what it would naturally do without either source of natural light to fuel it…go into hibernation.”
Oh my gods…
I was frozen to the spot trying to process it all when Ferne stamped a foot, shouting, “Do something! Open the godsdamned windows! The doors!”
I jerked into motion, carrying Nelle to the nearest wall, and spread a hand against the ancient stone veined with adamere, glittering like sunlight on snow.
The tower’s magic had been willed to my own.
All I had to do was close my eyes and think of how I wanted to change the space.
As I narrowed my thoughts and visualized the changes, the harsh grate of shifting stone scraped at my ears.
Brisk air swirled inside, grazing my skin with a bite of winter.
Opening my eyes, I withdrew my hand to cradle Nelle better. Evenly spaced arches ringed the tower. As I stepped onto the balcony, dread seized my lungs as I stared upward at the thick banks of clouds obscuring the moon.
The night sky was as dark as my soul. No moonlight.
Yet, part of me was still confused. “This didn’t happen to her when she was locked in the Tithe Prison.” Nelle hadn’t mentioned it to me when she’d shared her secret.