Chapter 41
forty-one
I’d fallen on my ass, though I wasn’t sure when.
I didn’t feel it, didn’t feel anything, only continued to look at the seer.
The image on the steam was gone, disappeared just as fast as it had appeared, and though I felt the air going down my throat, I was also sure that I was suffocating at the same time.
Whispers began to leave her in a rush, and the seer was slowly moving to the side. At first, I thought it was on purpose, but then I realized that she was collapsing— slowly, like the air itself was trying to steady her but couldn’t.
Before I knew it, I’d crawled around the bowl and to her side, just as her body let go, and she was heavier than she seemed. So much heavier, in fact, that I couldn’t hold her up with my shaking arms. She fell against my legs and her head ended up on my thighs.
I drew in a deep breath and prepared to scream my guts out for help—when her hand closed round my ankle, and she squeezed so hard it hurt.
The scream caught in my throat. The seer was whispering with her eyes closed now, though they continued to bleed. Her lips were barely moving, and I couldn’t understand a word she said, but…
English .
She was whispering in English.
All the thoughts in my head, all that panic and terror took a pause. I leaned over, both to get her hand off my ankle—how in the fuck could she even grip me so hard?!—and to listen to what she was saying.
I actually understood.
She was repeating the same words over and over again: “ Pour this where the world forgets itself, where memories drown and names are swallowed. Pour this where the world forgets itself, where memories drown and names are swallowed…”
She let go of my ankle all by herself as I watched in disbelief, and her other hand was moving, reaching for the bowl. She had something between her fingers—a tiny glass vial with an attached wooden lid, and she was trying to fill it with the water of the bowl, I thought.
“Let me help you,” I said, so completely disoriented, and I took the vial and filled it for her, closed the lid and put it in her hand.
She didn’t take it.
“ Pour this where the world forgets itself,” she repeated—and I finally realized she meant that. The white liquid in the vial.
She was giving it to me.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please, can you sit up? I’m going to get help. Just hold on.” With the vial in my fist, I tried to push her up by the shoulders, but she could have weighed a fucking ton.
It wasn’t possible. I saw her size. She was tiny for fuck’s, sake—how in the hell was she so heavy? !
“There, where summer meets winter. There, Noxavira, there…”
“ HELP! ” I screamed at the top of my voice.
The seer was losing it, and she was still crying blood, and I needed someone to get her off me right now before I lost my fucking mind, too.
I thought I’d have to scream another few times for someone to come in here and find me, but suddenly the door opened all the way and in came a man I’d never seen before. Behind him was Lyall.
The man was big, huge, easily over six and a half feet, and he didn’t even look at me, only kneeled on the floor and grabbed the seer in his arms.
He moved her, pulled her up, though I could see by the way he gritted his teeth and the way his veins bulged on his neck and temple that he was having a very hard time doing it.
Which made absolutely no sense to me, yet it was happening right in front of my eyes.
The man pulled up the seer, and then he was moving, rushing out the door, and Lyall kneeled in front of me.
His hands were on my face. Don’t touch me !
“You’re okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay, Nilah. You will be just fine.”
I didn’t believe him.
His office felt even colder than before. I sat on one of the bigger couches on the far right, looking at the wall behind the desk. Lyall sat with me, encouraged me to drink the glass of water he’d put in my hand .
Meanwhile, the vial with that white liquid burned me through the pocket of my pants.
“What was it?” he asked when I finally took a sip. “What did she say? What did you see?”
I looked at Lyall. He seemed stressed. Nervous. Restless as he talked to me.
“She showed you something.”
I bit my tongue.
“She only cries blood when she conjures images. What did she show you?”
A thousand thoughts crossed my mind. “Me.”
Lyall paused. “You?”
“Yes. She showed me an image of me.”
How incredibly absurd was it that I wasn’t even lying?
Lyall could tell. That’s why he looked even more confused as he stared at his fingers for a moment.
“And? What else?”
He believed me.
“You heard, didn’t you? You must have.” That’s why he’d had his soldiers bring me here in the first place.
He’d wanted me to see the seer since the beginning—but not for me.
For him. He wanted to know what my deal was, too, because he knew something was off.
And when I refused , he’d made sure that I would see the seer anyway.
“Well, since you’re truthful with me,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t hear a lot, I’ll admit. Just that you’re not human.” Stabs at my gut. “And the rest?”
“Veren,” I said without batting an eye. “She whispered in Veren. Called me a word in Veren. Stars with N .”
Lyall raised his brows. Analyzed my face, as if expecting to catch a lie dancing on my skin. He wouldn’t—I made sure to tell him only truths.
“That’s it?” he finally asked, his face transformed, full of sharp edges now that only the light from the fireplace fell on him.
“Yes,” I said and took another sip of the water. “And if you’re done with your questions, Your Highness, I’d like to know why you would set me up like this when I told you that I didn’t want to see the seer.”
Lyall’s eyes zeroed in on my lips. “Those words belong on your tongue,” he whispered and raised every inch of my flesh in goose bumps—in a very, very bad way.
“Answer me, Lyall,” I demanded, and who gave a shit who he was right now? I certainly didn’t.
“Because I thought it would benefit you to know who you are. What you are.”
“An anomaly. That’s what I am—a fucking anomaly that you made when you saved me.”
He leaned his head to the side. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”
The tension in the air was so thick I felt it against my skin. “I don’t know yet.” Another truth, this one full. Complete.
Lyall smiled and looked at his legs when he crossed one over the other. “We can do another session. Seers always need a few tries to truly see.”
Except I was not about to let that happen, not if I lived another thousand years. I didn’t tell him that, though. Because soon it wouldn’t matter.
“Why did you save him, Lyall?” I asked.
His brows narrowed. “Who?”
“Rune.”
Something about what Rune said before. It had remained in my head, and now I wanted to look this man in the eyes when he answered me.
“Rune,” Lyall repeated. “You know, I thought you’d be devastated about Rune, but you’re holding up all right. ”
The way my palm itched to slap the shit out of him right now.
“Why?” I repeated, but I knew he wasn’t going to answer me. “Why did you save me ?”
“Because you needed saving,” he whispered.
I leaned closer. “And what did you need?”
Lyall paused for a good moment. “Nothing, Nilah. I just needed to heal you, make sure you were okay. I was just a boy.”
So why do your words sound so empty ?
I closed my eyes again, took in a deep breath, told myself that I was seeing things, that the more I stayed here, the more I was going to look for someone to blame, and maybe I wasn’t even being fair to Lyall.
Maybe he really was just trying to win me over or whatever the hell he was aiming for here—it didn’t matter.
“I want to do it,” I said, the words rolling off my tongue with ease. “I want to do the unbinding ceremony tonight.”
This definitely surprised him. He moved back instinctively as if my words had assaulted him. “Why?”
“Because I’m done,” I said. “I want to go home, Lyall. Whether someone will try to get rid of me after or not—I want to be done with it, and I want to go home where I belong.”
He closed his eyes and forced a smile—a bitter one. “ Done with it —you speak of our life bond as if it were a nuisance, nothing more.”
“No, it was. It was a lot more,” I said. “You saved my life. I saved yours. It’s time we parted ways.”
For a moment, that smile on his face froze and he just looked at me with unblinking eyes. “You never gave me a chance.”
“I did. ”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. Even after you planned and plotted behind my back, and even after you forced me to run from this palace, I stayed. I came to your games and your balls and I tried to be your friend?—”
But that’s as far as he let me go. “ Friend ,” he said, clapping his hands a couple of times, the bitter smile turned to laughter now. “It’s just a pretty word for someone you have no other use for, that’s all. Incredible how friendship ends right when convenience does.”
It was like a fist to my gut, and the words were at the tip of my tongue. Rune was your friend, wasn’t he? What use did you have for him ?
I kept myself under control, of course. Pissing Lyall off right now wouldn’t be smart. I still needed him to do the unbinding ceremony, and I still needed him to let me go without causing complications that would waste my time. Rune was out there, and I needed to find him.
“Not for me,” I chose to say in the end. “True friendship means the same thing as family to me.”
He leaned closer, looked at my hands on my lap like he was thinking about touching me. Thank God he thought again and kept his hands to himself.
“I don’t want to do the unbinding ceremony, Nilah.
I want you to stay. I want you spend time with me, as friends, as whatever you want to call it.
” My mouth opened, but he didn’t let me speak.
“I think this is where you belong, Nilah. Just the fact that the seer showed you your own self— this could be your home, not Earth. Maybe you belong here with me.”
Never. Every instinct in my body was on high alert all of the sudden at the mere idea of belonging with Lyall.
I couldn’t even tell you why it repulsed me so much, that thought, but I wanted to start running already, do anything in my power to prove to him and myself and the world that that was not true.
I didn’t belong in this place—nor with Lyall.
I belonged with Rune.
“I can give you everything. This court—this whole realm could be yours. All you have to do is ask, and you will have it. You belong here , Nilah!” He sounded more desperate with each word.
It cost me to keep my voice composed and my body language from showing him exactly what I was thinking, but I did.
“I don’t, Lyall. I belong with my family. I will be on my way back home when the unbinding is done. That way you don’t have to fear being hurt through me, and I don’t have to fear anybody coming after me to hurt you.”
The last part I said more for my benefit than his. Because if I was no longer tied to the prince, there would be no reason for anyone to come after me, would there? I could search for Rune in peace.
Lyall thought about it for a moment. “But we don’t even know what you are, Nilah. Surely you can wait for a little longer until we figure it out.”
The blood in my veins turned ice-cold all of a sudden. No, I most definitely don’t want you to figure out that I look like that painting of the very queen Rune was accused of killing when he was a kid…
And that thought made chills run down my spine, too. What were the fucking odds that that seer would know about that painting—and the whole image, too, not the half-torn canvas I’d seen in the Gallery of Time?
What were the odds that that woman wearing the emerald dress would whisper those words into my ear? The last woman who wore that face died screaming …Who in the world was she?!
“There’s nothing to figure out.” I looked down at my hands to make sure he couldn’t see how they were shaking. Because a voice in my head was suddenly asking questions, suggesting that maybe it was better if I stayed for real, and tried to find out what the hell was going on here.
Because something was.
Something was definitely off if I really looked so much like a dead fae queen.
Unless someone was trying to trick me. Fool me. Manipulate me.
Someone like this very man who sat in front of me now with those wide golden eyes. The same man who once saved me.
This was his palace, after all. His court. His fucking seer.
“Even you don’t believe that,” Lyall said.
“There is a lot to figure out and you know it.” He dragged himself closer but still kept his hands to himself.
“Nilah, you are not ordinary. You are not simply a human being—you’re far more than that.
Everybody feels it. It’s impossible to miss.
There’s something inside you…” He raised his hand and brought it almost all the way to my chest. It took everything in me not to jump back.
“ What is it, then? If everybody feels it, surely somebody would know what name to give… this. ” Because he was right. I knew there were things to figure out.
Whether whatever happened to me was real and normal, or whether Lyall was manipulating everything I saw and heard in this place—I still needed to figure it out.
“I don’t know. I’ll need time to?—”
“I don’t have time. I want to leave, Lyall. ”
“A day.” He straightened his shoulders. “Give me a day to try then.”
I shook my head. “What can you even do in a day that you couldn’t in the week I’ve been here?”
“I’ll try,” he repeated. “I’ll try for one last time.”
“And if you don’t find anything?”
Would it really be so bad if Lyall found out about the Ice Queen? Because God help me, I wanted to know. I needed to know the truth, even if it terrified me.
“Then we do the unbinding ceremony tomorrow at midnight. Then you’ll be free to do whatever you want—stay or leave. It will make no difference to me,” he said.
His words rang true, but I knew the ease with which he lied. I’d seen it in the Illusion Game with my own eyes, so I didn’t let myself believe him for a second.
“What if I say no?” Because I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to give me a choice, not really.
He paused for a good moment. “I’m afraid I must insist. It’s only a day, Nilah.”
Just like I thought.
“A day,” I forced myself to say because I knew perfectly well that trying to argue would be futile. “A day, and we do the ceremony.”
Lyall nodded, smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We have a deal.”