Chapter 23
Rylee
Erin sits atop her thin mattress, her back pressed against the wood-planked wall of our hovel, slivers of the setting sun slipping through the various cracks.
Her brow is furrowed, her blue eyes on the paper in the small leather notebook perched against her legs, a piece of broken charcoal pinched between her fingers.
My heart warms at the sight. I’d found that leather sketchbook in an earl’s garbage barrel while sneaking around borders with Ivy and Layce.
There’s a split in the leather on the front of the binding that makes it look less pristine—likely the reason the earl had tossed it in the first place—but it was perfectly usable; beautiful, even.
Especially now, after Erin started filling it with her drawings.
I rarely got the chance to give my sister gifts, but this had been a special treat.
“Staring is considered impolite,” Erin says without looking up from her work.
I laugh as I sink onto the bed, careful not to mess her up. “Since when have you ever been concerned with what is and isn’t polite?”
“I care,” she says, then laughs as she pauses her work to look at me. “Sometimes.”
“Sure,” I say, then nod to her sketchbook. “Can I see?”
Erin quickly closes the book. “It’s not ready yet.”
She never likes to show me her work until it’s finished, and sometimes her pieces take weeks. They’re always stunning, though. Her paintings should be hung in the palace for how good they are. No, scratch that. The pompous royal dictators don’t deserve her work.
“Find anything interesting today?” she asks, shifting off the bed.
I follow her lead, crossing the small space to settle on my identical mattress, watching as she lifts hers.
She wiggles a loose piece of wood from the floor and tucks her sketchbook safely into the hiding space before sitting on her bed again.
“A few minerals,” I say, resisting the urge to wipe at the layer of grime coating my skin. I’d been forced to work a double shift today after one of the enforcers caught me trying to take an extra ration of water on my break. It hadn’t been for me. A boy had almost passed out right next to me.
“Did they force you to work with those imported stones again?” Erin asks.
“No, they didn’t,” I answer, thinking about the stones.
I only worked with them once when the enforcers ordered me to break them down.
They made me so nauseous, I could barely stand.
I swiped one and took it to Ivy, hoping she could figure out why it made me sick, but before she did, they switched me to the mines.
The mines didn’t make me ill, just exhausted.
“You look tired, Rylee.”
I lean my head back against the wall. “I’m always tired.”
“Do you ever think about taking me up on my offer?”
A mixture of anticipation and fear swirls together.
“Sometimes,” I say, looking at her. She’s not covered in grime, but she wasn’t assigned to the mines like me.
I’m pretty sure they kept her in the sorting stables to keep us apart as much as possible.
We tend to get into trouble whenever we’re allowed to work together.
“It would be easy,” she says.
“For you, it is,” I counter. “A snap of your fingers and poof, you’re gone.”
Erin laughs, flickering in and out of sight on the mattress to show off.
“Not all of us were blessed with such a gift,” I continue. I curl my fingers, conjuring a soft breeze that brings relief from the stifling heat inside our little home.
“You don’t need the gift of blending into shadows to escape.”
Erin can basically evaporate. The enforcers don’t even notice when she’s gone.
But I notice. She deserves her adventures. If I had her ability, I’d probably run off any chance I got.
“Where did you go last time?” I ask, referencing her adventure a few months ago. She’d been gone for a week.
“The Emerald Wood,” she says. “I wish you could’ve seen it, Ry.” Her eyes light up. “Everything is so green there. And the main city? It’s stunning. People sit in tea shops for hours just reading and eating.”
“Sounds like a dream,” I say a little bitterly. I’m happy she gets to experience such things. I really am.
Erin’s shoulders drop. “Please come with me.” She hops up, crossing the small space to my bed and plopping down next to me. She grabs my hand. “We’re going to the Choosing next week. You have to come this time. Please?”
“I’d sooner visit one of the goddesses’ temples and curse them than spend one minute among the nobles and royals.”
“Ugh,” Erin groans. “Come on. It’s worth it. The food and the jewels. You need to go at least once.”
“Bring me back a treat like you always do,” I say.
Erin shakes her head. “You really won’t come with us?”
“There are very few places I won’t follow you, sister,” I say, arching a brow. “But into the royal palace of Lumathyst, among the kings and the Legends of Chaos, is most certainly one of them. You’ll be fine with Ivy and Layce.”
“I know I will be,” she says, rolling her eyes. “But you miss out on all the fun.”
“Your idea of fun and mine are vastly different.” They always have been. Erin is a feather drifting on the wind, going wherever her instincts take her. I’m a mountain of stone, doing my best to stay grounded and not crumble after every storm.
Erin releases my hand, accepting my refusal. “I’ll make sure to bring you back something extra special this time,” she says, returning to her bed.
A soft mewing sounds outside the door, and she’s up and swinging it open before I can move.
A black cat slinks inside. He’s rail thin, weaving between her legs as she shuts the door.
“Hello, Ash,” she coos. “No food today,” she continues as they head back to her bed. The thing settles in her lap as she strokes its wild fur.
“I’ll see Layce tomorrow,” I say, looking down at the stray that has somehow become another mouth for us to feed. “I’ll grab something for him then.”
“Thanks,” Erin says. “He looks skinnier than the last time he turned up.”
“Nothing will kill that cat,” I say, eyeing the numerous scars inlaid in his black fur. He’s missing half his left ear, too. “Certainly not starvation.”
Erin laughs, nodding. “He’s as stubborn as you are.”
I shrug. She’s not wrong. Even if it’s a jab about not going to the upcoming Choosing with her.
I should go.
I should go with her.
Because when I don’t, she’ll never come back—
A throbbing ache pierces my mind . . .
“Rylee?” Erin asks, her hand slowing on the cat’s back. “Rylee?”
I look around the room, suddenly feeling as if I’m seeing everything in slow motion. My heart races in my chest.
This is wrong.
Am I dreaming?
Footsteps echo to my left, toward the back of the home that has no entry.
“Pierce,” I say, relief uncoiling my tight chest at the sight of him standing there, his hands tucked into the pockets of his emerald green dress pants. His matching suit coat is unbuttoned, his brown eyes on me.
“Rylee.” His tone is so soft, so understanding.
“I did it again.” I motion toward my sister, who is now frozen on her bed, one hand on the cat’s back, eyes open and unblinking.
“It takes practice. It takes time.”
I shove off the bed. “We don’t have time,” I say, stopping next to him.
He looks at my sister. “I know you didn’t mean for me to venture into this memory with you,” he says, returning his focus to me. “But I’m honored to have seen it. The bond you two have . . .”
“It’s not . . .” I cut him off, a pain like a knife in my chest. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Pierce slides his hand over my cheek, calm and comforting.
I look up at him, unable to resist.
“You can still love the pieces of the sister you knew while having questions about the ones you don’t understand.”
Tears well in my eyes. Unwelcome tears, but I can’t stop them. Not when he’s offering such support when he has grounds to hate my sister for what she is. What she represents.
“I’m sorry I got sidetracked,” I say, sliding my arms around him.
“Don’t be.” He embraces me and tucks his chin atop my head.
“You’re doing marvelously. When I first came into my power, I slipped into everyone’s mind constantly and could barely hold myself in one place for long.
Then other times, I’d trip up and create different realities for people.
Once, I made Jax believe he was stranded atop a snowy mountain for a full hour.
I didn’t mean to. It was just part of the learning process. It almost drove me mad.”
“I bet it drove Jax more mad.” I smile, looking up at him.
Pierce laughs. “He rather enjoyed it, I think. Took it as a break from feeling everything at once.” He sighs. “We all struggled back then.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Do you want me to show you?” he asks. “Or would you like to take a break and return home?”
Exhaustion weighs me down. Before I fell into this memory, we’d been training for hours. Working on my ability to shift in and out of his mind, to block out his thoughts, to manipulate his reality.
I glance at the image of Erin and the cat on the bed. What if she’s returned home or left clues as to where she is?
“He looks friendly,” Pierce teases.
“He’s anything but, I assure you,” I say, happy to slip into an easier space.
Pierce chuckles, squeezing me tighter. “Home?”
I nod. “Home.”
“Close your eyes,” he whispers.
I do as I’m told, the action effectively blotting out the scene around us. Something tugs at me through my middle, a force that drags me up from the deepest well.
“Open,” he says.
I part my lids, blinking a few times to reorient myself in the real world.
Pierce sits across from me, mimicking my seated position—legs crossed, arms resting gently on our knees, back straight.
The emerald floor beneath us is cool and grounding, the sound of trickling water from a stream soothing through the open windows.
The smell of pine drifts on the wind, and the rustling of the trees provides a calming backdrop to our training.