Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ISLA
I don’t think I’ve ever been this groggy and weak in my life. My eyes feel as though there is so much sand in them that they’re intent on making a pearl. On top of that, my muscles ache everywhere and the pressure in my head is turning into a fiery roar of pain.
I try to sleep as Asher suggested, but it’s not easy. Estee and Dad sit nearby, watching me and whispering, discussing all the things they should and shouldn’t do if something is truly wrong with me. Yeah, not helpful.
Throwing the blankets off me, I ever-so-slowly roll over in bed and groan. “I’m taking a shower.”
“Oh, not by yourself, you’re not,” Estee replies, starting to walk toward me from the other side of the room. “I’m going to help…”
I don’t hear anything else she says. The pounding in my head drowns out the world and I squeeze my eyes closed, wobbling on the axis of the world.
This isn’t good.
My body is falling, yet my arms and legs refuse to do anything to prevent me from crashing into the hard ground.
With a heavy thud, I not only hit the floor, but my head on the bedframe. I expect another wave of agony to hit me or to even lose consciousness, but instead, the pain begins to recede. At least until I hear Estee’s screams and Dad’s growls.
“Asher’s going to kill us.”
“Not if he doesn’t find out.” Estee’s soft hands lift me up. “Is, wake up, damn it.”
“I’m trying.” My eyelids lift, then immediately close. “It’s bright in here.”
I hear shuffling, then the movement of the curtains as they’re drug across the rail. “That should be better,” Dad says.
Chancing the stabbing pain once again, I crack one eye open first. The room is much darker, but still, I don’t look for long. “I need to shower.”
“That’s not happening, little sister,” Estee says. “You need to stay in bed until we figure out what’s wrong with you.”
My skin starts to itch as I shake my head. “I’m telling you, I need a shower.”
I wince at the growl in my voice, but I can’t stay like this. I need to do something, to be clean, to rinse away whatever this is. I have no clue why, but the weight of this pressure and the weariness is too heavy, like a blanket trying to smother me. I have to make it go away any way that I can.
“Just take her before she tries to go by herself again,” Dad says .
I try to smile at him, but I’m rather sure it comes out as more of a grimace than anything else.
Estee keeps a tight hold on me, helping me walk toward the bathroom, and I’m forced to keep my eyes closed as a wave of nausea slams into me, making me groan.
My sister stops, but I growl at her and she mercifully keeps moving. I think she’s said something, but I can’t focus on anything other than keeping the vomit inside me.
The hard tile presses against my back as she sits me down. I hear more murmurs, but nothing is making sense. I don’t even have enough strength to keep my body upright and I start to slump to the side, allowing my cheek to rest against the cool floor.
I’m overheated. I need to be free of…everything.
Extending my fingers into claws, I begin to rip my clothes away, not caring when I end up cutting myself in the process. They have to go.
Estee’s hands grab on to me, but I kick her away forcefully. “Let me finish.”
I don’t hear her reply, but within another minute, I’m naked, lying curled into a ball on the floor. My chest heaves as I suck in rapid amounts of air. Maybe this wasn’t the right answer.
I can’t keep my lungs full. I can barely feel my body. Everything feels like it’s on…
“Fire!” Estee’s screech finally breaks through as she shoves me into the shower.
Looking back, my clothes are smoking dark black.
Dad bursts into the room, his gaze wide and his face going pale. “That’s not a fire. That’s dark magic. ”
He throws a towel over the clothes and picks the pile up, snarling as he takes them away. I don’t know where he’s going, but I know he’s right because the moment I’m free of them and the water is cascading over my naked body, I’m no longer feeling weighed down.
“How the hell did that happen?” Estee asks, but I can’t answer her.
Seconds pass and I begin to heal from nearly dying again. I don’t know how, but I feel rather confident that my body was slowly shutting down just then. With every new breath I take, my strength and memory return, but with that comes a soul-deep ache, a knowledge I almost wish I didn’t know.
Tears fall freely down my cheeks and I shake my head, not wanting to believe what I now remember.
Estee bends down, coming into the shower with me, still fully dressed. “Are you okay?”
“Physically, yes,” I manage to say, then I look up at her, my body shivering with the weight of this truth. “I know who’s behind our deaths.”
She tenses beside me. “How? Who?”
“When you took the dagger out of me, I felt like I was suspended in this weird in-between place,” I tell her. “There was pain and the call of death, and I felt so alone, but there was also light. Just as I began fighting harder to reach for it, there was this voice.”
She grabs my shoulders, fingers digging into my skin. “Who, Isla?”
The single word feels like razor blades being forced up my throat as I speak it. “Gideon.”
“Like Asher’s dad, Gideon?” Her eyes widen and her face pales. “You’re sure? ”
I nod, never more certain of anything before in my life. “He said the same thing to me when he was in the room after you stabbed me. ‘I’m going to fix everything.’ I don’t know what he’s trying to fix by killing me, but I don’t think he’s done.”
“We have to tell Asher,” she says, standing up, but I don’t move from the shower floor. “What’s wrong?”
“How am I supposed to tell my mate that his own father is responsible for hurting him in the worst way possible?” I shake my head, wishing I never would have pushed to find this information.
Sure, I’d love to fucking strangle Gideon right now, to pluck out his eyes and jab daggers into every inch of his body, but he’s not my father.
While he killed me and my sister, he betrayed his son, my mate. The man I care most about in the world is going to have his entire existence rocked.
So more than my fury, my heart is already breaking for what he’s going to go through once he finds out.
Asher will kill his father, no matter how fucked up that will be, no matter how much I intend to beg him to let me handle this. He’ll need to do this because he’ll feel responsible for Gideon’s actions.
So, not only will Asher be hurt, but he’ll also be branded with guilt, and for those two reasons most, I want to murder Gideon myself.
How could he have done this to his own son? It no longer matters that I lost centuries of my life. The scars this will leave on my mate are all that concern me.
“I need to find Asher.” I close my eyes and try to reach him through the bond, but there’s no answer there. I can still feel him and he doesn’t seem to be in distress, but it’s almost like he’s nowhere close to me. “Where did he say he was going?”
“He’s requesting a meeting with the gods,” she says, reaching for me again, but this time, I don’t fight her. “Come on. We’ll get him back here.”
As she pulls me from the shower and grabs a towel for each of us, I almost tell her we should just wait for him to come back on his own. Except that’s the part of me that’s terrified of hurting the most important person in all the worlds to me.
This truth can’t wait to be told. Asher needs to know, not because he deserves to, but because I’m now wondering, who else might Gideon have killed over the years because they didn’t fit into his plan?