Chapter 34
Bressen
It was almost dark when we returned to the ship, this time with Praya and Ariel accompanying us.
We’d taken the rowboat to get to the island because the wards didn’t allow us to portal, but there was no need to take the boat all the way back.
Praya dropped the wards long enough for Cyra to create a portal from the beach onto the ship, and we dragged the boat back through after we were all on board.
We settled Praya and Ariel in a cabin after they’d taken a long last look at the island that had been their home for the last four hundred years, and then I went to check in with the captain.
Cyra veered off toward the prow of the ship, and I kept half an eye on her while I spoke with the captain about how long it would be until we were home.
With Cyra’s ability to control the wind and water currents, we’d been able to get out to the island far faster than an unassisted vessel would’ve been able to, but the journey had still taken several days.
When I was finally finished with the captain, I headed toward the prow.
I stopped several feet behind Cyra and just watched her for a moment.
What I felt for her always made it harder to breathe, and I just watched her now, transfixed by the way the wind blew her hair out behind her as she stood up straight at the railing looking out over the ocean.
She’d been quiet since she’d found me talking with Praya, but whatever she wasn’t telling me, I’d get it out of her tonight.
I let my mind slip into hers, careful not to disturb her thoughts.
She stared into the dark water as the ship cut lithely through it, and I frowned at the seriousness of her mood.
She was recalling the last time we were here when she’d been down under those waves with Axenus, far below the surface in the icy, inky depths of the water.
I felt the chill and the nearly crushing weight of the water as her power left her while she fought the kraken.
I felt her ready herself to succumb to the oblivion of death.
No, not succumb. Embrace…
I surged forward and grabbed her around the waist to pull her away from the railing. She shrieked in surprise as I spun her around, but her body eased as she realized it was me.
Her hands wrapped around my biceps to steady herself. “Bressen, what are-”
“Cyra, what in the three hells are you doing?” I interrupted her. My heart thundered in my chest as I realized she’d been considering what it might be like to jump into that black water and…
She couldn’t be thinking what I was afraid she’d been thinking. Axenus had taken her down into the water again recently, so perhaps she’d just started to enjoy the feeling of being down there, of the calmness beneath the churning ocean. I held desperately to the thought.
“Answer me,” I said, shaking her. “What were you thinking of doing just now?”
The look of guilt on her face told me everything I needed to know, and I crushed her to me.
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, wrapping my arms tightly around her. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“I…I wasn’t going to,” she said, so softly I could barely hear her.
I pulled back to look down at her. Tears glistened in her eyes.
“We need to talk. Now,” I said. “It’s time for you to tell me what happened, what you’ve been hiding.”
I’d pry her mind open if necessary. I didn’t tell her that because threats wouldn’t help right now, but I’d do it.
I took Cyra’s hand and pulled her toward our cabin. She didn’t resist, and I tried not to drag her across the deck in my eagerness to get her below, away from the pull of that water, away from danger.
I locked the door when we were alone in our cabin and turned to her. She stood in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around her shoulders.
Gods, I was an idiot. She was cold. She’d been standing at the prow of the ship without a cloak on. She hadn’t worn one onto the island, but it had gotten colder out with the sun down.
I went to the chest at the foot of the bed and pulled a blanket out. I wrapped it around her shoulders and settled her on the bed before I sat down next to her.
“Cyra, what’s going on?” I asked. “You haven’t been the same since I got back. What happened while I was gone? You need to tell me.”
Her mouth worked as if she were trying to force the words up her throat, but they wouldn’t come.
“What happened in that battle, Cyra?” I tried again. “You found Magdalene, didn’t you. What did she say to you?”
Whatever it was, it had to do with Magdalene. I knew that much. We’d been separated during the battle, and we’d heard Cyra scream, but no one had seen what happened to her.
Samhail told me Cyra had incinerated the area after Talyn had taken me, and yes, Cyra would’ve been angry, worried about me, but her reaction still seemed far too extreme. The last time Cyra had been that destructive, she’d been in pain.
I reached across and took her hand in mine. “Cyra, please.”
Her eyes were wet with tears again when she looked up at me.
“I killed Aramis,” she said, barely above a whisper.
I let out a deep breath. “Cyra, you can’t blame yourself for Aramis’s death. Magdalene-”
“Magdalene didn’t kill him,” she cut in. “I did. My lightning killed him. That’s what Magdalene told me.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment as I just stared at her. Then I shook my head. “No, she’s lying. We saw the frost-”
“She wasn’t lying,” Cyra said. Her voice cracked as the sobs started to break through.
“Trust me, I looked for any hint of a red glow on her skin, any flush of color whatsoever. She wasn’t lying.
She told me she iced over his body after he was…
already dead because she knew I’d come looking for her.
It was her way to get me to come to her. ”
She was nearly choking on her tears by the time she finished, and I pulled her onto my lap to cradle her against me.
She buried her face in my chest, and her hands fisted in my shirt as she sobbed uncontrollably.
I rocked her gently as she repeated, “I killed him. I killed him,” over and over again.
My heart cracked open at her pain, and I felt every stab of guilt and grief she did.
It was a familiar pain given that I still blamed myself for my own father’s death, for not telling him sooner what my mother had been doing behind his back.
I’d figured it would hurt him more to know the truth, but in the end, my silence had killed him.
I pulled Cyra tighter and laid my head on hers.
“It was an accident,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”
Cyra lifted her head from my chest. “Couldn’t have known what?” she said. “Couldn’t have known that when I sent an entire storm’s worth of lightning through an enclosed space I might hurt someone? Might kill someone?”
She launched herself off my lap. I grabbed for her, but she pulled away. I stood as well, but she stepped back from me.
“Do you know what else Magdalene told me?” she asked. Her voice still shook, but it had grown harder.
“Cyra,” I said placatingly.
“Do you remember that army of symbionts?” she said. “She told me that was only one part of the vision. She let me see that part, but there was more. She left out the part of the vision where I kill them all.”
She spat the last part out as if she had something bitter in her mouth.
“She let me see the rest of it that day in the clearing,” she said. “She showed me that I kill them all.”
I shook my head. “You’re not a killer. Not the kind of killer who would murder thousands for no reason,” I corrected when she opened her mouth to remind me she had in fact killed before.
“Maybe there’s a reason,” she said. “Maybe it’s the only way to stop the army.” She shook her head. “Or maybe I finally snap at some point and become more of a monster than those creatures ever were.”
I closed the distance between us in two strides and grabbed her upper arms. She winced at the force of my hold, but I couldn’t loosen my grip.
“Listen to me,” I told her. “You’re not a monster, and you never will be. We’ve learned by now that these visions never work out the way we expect them to. There has to be some kind of catch, something that explains what you saw.”
“Or maybe this time, what we see is what we get,” she said quietly.
“I refuse to believe that.”
“She’s counting on me to kill them,” Cyra went on. “It’s part of Magdalene’s plan to wipe out as many mortals as she can, and she wants to use me to do it.”
I let go of her and raked a hand through my hair. There had to be more to Magdalene’s vision than what she’d shown Cyra, or there was some trick to the vision we weren’t yet seeing, but I’d be damned if I could figure out what it was.
“At the railing, when I was looking down into the ocean,” she said, staring at the floor as if she was again seeing that black water, “I just thought…maybe if I wasn’t here, she couldn’t use me. Maybe…”
It would have hurt less if she’d stabbed me in the heart. I pulled her against me again, crushing her body to mine so hard I heard her breath punch out of her.
“Don’t you ever think anything of the kind,” I said, and this time I let her hear the threat in my voice. “Don’t you ever fucking think this world would be better off without you.”
“Bressen, I-”
I moved my hands up so I gripped her face between them, and I forced her to look at me.
“Don’t you dare fucking leave me like that,” I said, and now my own voice broke. “Not after I just found you. Not after I waited over a hundred years to finally feel whole. Don’t leave me alone in this world again, because I won’t survive. Please.”
I barely managed to get the last word out before my voice failed. Tears poured down my own cheeks as I laid my forehead against hers and tried not to consider what a world without Cyra would be like. The third level of hell would be nothing compared to such a place.
“Please,” I said again, forcing the word up my throat and past my lips on a whisper of air.
She shook her forehead against mine. “I won’t. I promise.”
Cyra