3. Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Dynalya
D yna stepped out into the hall and the door thudded shut behind her. It took every effort to control her shaky breaths. Why was Klyde apologizing for what that one had done to her? Gods, she couldn’t even think of his name without her entire body spasming with pain. She shut her eyes and willed away the tears threatening to spill.
Stumbling down the hall, Dyna headed toward her bedroom but paused at the threshold.
She hated that room.
Her mate was gone. He had erased himself. He took everything that was his and everything he ever gave her. Her crown was gone, her gowns, her ring, her sword, even the headboard with his scorched handprints. He removed every trace of himself, including his scent.
But her memories? She still had those.
Leave you? That will never happen…
Liar.
Dyna took a step in but could go no further. The were curtains drawn against the sun, leaving the room dark and gray. His ghost remained, regardless of all his efforts. Because she saw him in every corner and heard his voice in the shadows as if he were still there.
“All but a dream,” she whispered to the empty space. Now we have to wake up.
A soft light emitted from the nightstand drawer. Dyna pulled it open, finding her crystal necklace glowing on a bed of black feathers.
The feathers were the one thing he hadn’t known she kept. Dyna banished away the reminder of how she got them, refusing to think about the last night they were together. But the necklace—that had been left behind on purpose. He had fabricated a new memory of her father giving it to her instead.
How absurd.
She couldn’t stand to wear it anymore.
Dyna slammed the drawer shut so hard it rattled.
Glancing at the scorched floor, she smirked bitterly at the false memory used to explain it. What other memories had he planted?
Dyna retreated into the brightly lit corridor. Golden sunlight streamed through the tall windows and spread across the floor. It was a new day and a new life.
Her only purpose now was to reach Mount Ida at any cost once the snow melted. If that included a tentative alliance with the Captain of the Skelling Mercenaries, then she would do it. Because nothing else mattered.
The steady clack of her boots rebounded against the walls as she wandered down the corridor. Whatever the past, her focus would only be her future. That required recovering her magic first.
Dyna looked down at her hands as she tried to call on her Essence. But it was contained tightly behind a thick wall. Solid and heavy, without a single crack.
She broke the barrier before. She would do it again.
Eventually, Dyna found herself on the fourth floor in front of King Yoel’s bedchamber. The door was slightly ajar. Icy air whistled past the thin opening, caressing her cheeks.
She didn’t know why she came here.
Maybe she subconsciously searching for signs of him. Maybe she only needed confirmation that some part of the dream had been real. But what could be more real than the remains of her shattered soul?
All the pieces had scattered like glass at her feet, and she would never put them back together again.
Dyna hesitated before pushing on the door. It creaked loudly as it slowly swung open. The harsh gust blowing through the broken windows, wailed like a tortured spirit, sending a shiver down her back.
The room was destroyed.
Furniture was overturned, tattered curtains billowed in the wind, with strewn glass, and torn books everywhere. Her eyes fell on a small dark red stain on the floor by the open balcony doors.
Dyna’s aching heart withered further as she imagined King Yoel cut down. Zev had told her Amriel had killed him. But she had no false memory of this room. There was no attempt to hide what happened here.
He had been in too much of a hurry to leave.
Or he hated this room as much as she hated theirs and couldn’t stand to be in it, even to clean up the evidence of his father’s assassination.
If Yoel had lived, would things have turned out differently?
Sighing, Dyna turned to go, but she noticed something at the foot of the bed. A long rectangular box. She knew immediately what it was and who it was for.
I’m sorry, King Yoel. I won’t be able to give him your gift after all.
And yet Dyna kneeled to retrieve the box when something else caught her eye. Beneath an overturned chair, the edge of something glinted in the light. She moved the chair and sucked in a soft breath at the sight of a flat silver bowl, scalloped like a seashell. Dyna carefully picked up the water mirror. It felt heavy in her hands as she turned it over. Iridescent mother-of-pearl lined the inside.
How could Lord Jophiel leave this behind?
Dyna stood at the rush of footsteps thudding down the hall. Soon her friends entered the room.
“Here you are,” Zev said with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t as if she could go anywhere else. “What are you doing in here?”
“I’m not sure…” Dyna replied, thoughtfully frowning at the mirror. But coming here may have been a good thing, after all.
“What is that, my lady?” Rawn asked her.
“Nothing of importance.” Dyna turned to them. “Well? Does he have it?”
They nodded. Though Lucenna looked furious.
“He has a dagger honed from the talon of a Skelling,” Rawn confirmed.
Dyna looked out to the sleepy town of Skelling Rise and smiled. “Good.”
Tarn wasn’t immortal yet, nor did he have J?kull’s full power, so they may not need the talon. But it would be her contingency plan in case he made it to the island before her.
It was about time she got ahead of her enemies.
“Don’t tell me you’re truly considering his request,” Lucenna said.
“I am.”
Zev frowned. “Why?”
“Because he may help us turn the tide against Tarn,” Dyna said, watching the snow flurries drifting down.
“I don’t like it.”
She closed her eyes against the sharp wind streaming through the windows, letting it blow against her numb cheeks. “You don’t have to like it, Zev. This is happening whether you agree or not.”
Before, others told her where to go and what to do. They told her what she was capable of and what she lacked. Letting others decide her path is what brought her here.
Well, she was making the decisions now.
“This is a bad idea,” Lucenna said. “We can’t trust him.”
Dyna whirled around, snarling through her teeth, “ I trust no one.”
It didn’t occur to her how venomous the words sounded until she saw the hurt and shock on their faces.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice broke, and she rushed to them with her arms extended. “Of course, I don’t mean you. You’re all I have.”
They gathered her in an embrace, and she buried her face in Zev’s chest. His warm arms wrapped around her. “You won’t leave me, will you?” she whispered.
Because she couldn’t withstand losing anyone else.
He squeezed her tight. “Never.”
Come back... Dyna cried out, but she couldn’t give sound to the words. Please stay!
Her voice was locked away in her throat as he walked away from her. She threw out her hand, but her fingers missed the edge of his black wings by inches.
Don’t leave me!
He walked away and not once did he look back. Her blurred vision stayed on his retreating form, her cries echoing around her.
His wings caught the fading light as he stepped out of their bedroom into the hallway, and the door began to creak close. Once it shut, it would be the end of them.
Wild desperation took over, and Dyna scrambled to her feet. She ran after him, begging and weeping, reaching for him. But the room stretched and stretched, and everything tilted.
Cassiel!
She tore open the door and skidded to a halt. The threshold ended at the edge of a cliff. It stood hundreds of feet high, with only blackness at the bottom. Something rammed hard into her back and shoved her out.
There was no one left to catch her. No hope. No safety. Nothing but a void as she plummeted through the dark.
Her body slammed into the ground with a sickening crack.
Dyna jolted up in bed. Frantic screams tore from her throat as she clawed at her head, checking for breaks in her skull and the blood that wasn’t there. The sensation of every bone and organ in her body bursting had followed her to consciousness.
And she felt those hands.
Firm and ruthless against her back. Thrusting her into the darkness. Over and over again.
Someone grabbed her, and she shrieked, swinging at them.
“Dyna! Dyna, it’s all right!”
“No!” she wailed.
“It’s all right, it’s all right. I’ve got you.” Lucenna wrapped her arms around her tightly and rocked her as she sobbed. “Shhh … it was just a dream. Only a dream.”
Dyna shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears. It wasn’t. It wasn’t just a dream. Because it kept plaguing her every night for the past week.
It was always the same.
With her falling to her death.
Dyna sucked several gasping breaths, shaking violently, sweat slicking her clammy skin. No matter how hard she tried to wake herself, she couldn’t stop experiencing the fall.
Not even the crystal could stop her nightmares.
It glowed softly in the open drawer of their shared nightstand, completely useless.
Zev and Rawn stood outside of Lucenna’s bedroom door, their faces grim and exhausted. None of them have had a good night’s rest because of her. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them what her nightmares were about.
But they knew.
Growling, her cousin stormed away. Glass shattered in the other room. “Damn him!” The walls rattled with another crash. “Damn him!” Zev’s enraged shout broke at the end. “Damn him…”
Dyna curled on the bed, shutting her wet eyes. She wasn’t the only one ... left behind.
“I am sorry, my lady,” Rawn said softly, then he went to calm Zev. But any attempts to pacify the situation were drowned out by another bang.
Lucenna cursed under her breath and quickly stepped out. “Stop it! This isn’t helping her!”
“What would help her?” Zev shouted.
“Oi,” Klyde joined in. “Keep your voices down. Do you mind not destroying the manor—” He was cut off by a crack of splitting wood.
“Tell me what would help her, Lucenna? He haunts her every hour of every damn day, and I can’t stop it! How is she supposed to forget this?”
Maybe it would have been better to forget. To forget about Cassiel, to forget who he had been to her, to forget what he had done.
Yet she put a spell in place to remember.
And she … she regretted it. Dyna buried her face in her pillow, soaking it with her tears.
“Please,” Rawn cut in. “We must calm ourselves?—”
“I have no mind for your lectures right now, Lord Norrlen. I want to tear him apart for what he did to her, but I can’t!”
“Oi, put the chair down. Don’t break the?—”
“When she’s not screaming from her nightmares she sits in her room like a ghost! She doesn’t move, doesn’t eat. She only stares at the sky. We all know what she’s waiting for but he’s never coming back.”
Dyna flinched.
Never coming back.
Another crash of glass came, with it the rise of angry shouts. Each one battered against her head, and she couldn’t stand it anymore.
Snatching up the crystal necklace, she sprinted out of her room and down the hall.
“Dyna!” Zev called after her as she darted down the stairs.
Her legs pumped with every beat of her heart. She burst out of the backdoors of the manor, running into the courtyard. The harsh cold pricked her skin, the wind tugging at her nightgown and hair. The call of voices sent her sprinting into the woods. Sleet whipped past Dyna’s eyes, blinding her, as she fled through the trees.
It was the same as nine years ago.
Back then, she had run toward the Hyalus tree.
Where was she running to now? She didn’t know.
She simply had to run.
Her bare feet slid over the snow as she ran and ran from the emptiness in her chest. From the well of anger and pain. From every damn memory in that manor. She ran from the fact that she couldn’t sleep without him. Couldn’t breathe without him.
Dyna kept running until she reached the lake.
And she screamed.
The sound tore out of her throat as she simply let it all out with a heart-wrenching cry. Pitching back her arm, she flung the crystal necklace with all her might. It sailed through the night sky like a shooting star and plinked into the black depths of the lake.
It belonged with the version of her that died there.
With the girl who had been so in love, who had yet to be betrayed by the one person whom she thought never would.
Cassiel deserted her.
He left her stuck in a place where she couldn’t follow him because he thought her too weak. He had always thought that. And every single word he had said to her that day were branded on the crushed pieces of her heart.
You don’t belong in my world. I don’t want you in it…
I don’t want you.
I don’t want you.
I don’t want you.
Dyna tripped and fell against a tree, breaking down in the snow. The harsh winter air coated her lungs with every gasping sob. How could she let go of the one person who felt like home? Because without him, she was dying.
Everything hurt. Getting out of bed hurt. Every beat of her heart hurt. Living. Breathing. Time. It was all so painful, she wanted to crawl into a hole, deteriorate into the earth, and fade away.
Yet life went on, even for her.