Chapter 30 Thayla
Thayla
Petrified voices pierce my mind, and air rushes into my lungs.
My hand flies to my heart as I try to catch my breath, but it’s impossible as the sensations of their souls continue to engulf me.
“Enough,” I croak out.
It’s barely audible, but Creed understands and commands the others to stop what they’re doing.
“What’s wrong?”
“What happened?”
“What the fuck did the Amethyst do?”
Their questions continue to assault my ears, but I can’t process them other than release the gem locked in my palm.
I flip my body over, forcing myself to all fours as I rock back and forth, desperate to draw in a full breath of air. Their hands grip me, caressing me, but I shake my head.
“I can’t think.”
Fuck, what is happening?
A bright flash of light appears on my pillow and I slam my eyes back shut.
“Everyone, give her some space. Everything is okay, Thayla girl.”
“V, make it stop.”
“There’s no stopping it, my Vedae. You just have to let it settle. Riven, give her a touch of your harmony. Don’t overwhelm her. She has to process this.”
“Process what?” he asks, but he listens nonetheless.
His power wraps around me gently, enough for me to take a gasping breath of air, but it’s not enough. I need more.
I shake my head to try to clear the dizziness, but all it does is make the images appear even more clearly in my mind. I groan loudly as it feels like pressure is building in my skull.
“V, please.”
“Listen to me, Thayla,” Seismet calls gently. “Don’t speak, just breathe and rock.”
Breathe and rock.
Breathe and rock.
I can’t. It’s too much.
“Boys, touch her soul again. Very softly,” Verlet suddenly commands.
“What the fuck is happening if all of you are chiming in right now?” Riven asks.
A shuddering breath falls from my lungs as their souls touch mine and a shiver skirts its way across my skin.
The embarrassing little whimper that escapes me has the four of them inching closer toward me on the bed.
“Someone answer us, please.” Kyzen’s soft request is delivered through gritted teeth. The strain from his worry leaks through me.
“She just received a message.”
V’s words send the room into silence and I soak up what I can of the calm.
The images become clearer in my mind even though I try to shake them away.
Dark water.
A boat.
Creatures.
Treasure.
Derivius’s voice, “Anything that is lost can be found.”
Lambrit and I sitting in the Oddian library. I’m reenacting a scene he read to me. He’s shushing me.
“Someone go get Lambrit.”
“Tell us what’s going on,” Amick orders, but I shake my head.
“Please, someone go get Lambrit.”
None of them have time to get up or move before our bedroom door flies open.
“What’s wrong? V said Thayla received a message.”
I snort at the undertone of excitement in Lambrit’s tone, then immediately groan when black spots dance behind my eyes.
“Fuck, I’m so dizzy.”
With grace and ease, Creed turns me over until I’m positioned sitting between his legs. He leans against the bed frame and brushes my hair from my eyes as my body shimmies down until my head rests against his heart.
“Kyzen, go get her some water.”
The thought of drinking water makes me cringe, but my dry mouth begs me for it.
“Thay, you okay?” Lambrit asks as he approaches the end of the bed.
The excitement is gone from his voice, and I give him a small smile.
“I can see now why Mellcom claimed his head was pounding the whole next day after his dream. My skull feels like it’s splitting open.”
“One of the gods spoke to you?” His eyes grow wide.
“Which one?” Riven asks darkly.
I shake my head against Creed’s chest, soaking up the feeling of his soul completely soothing mine. That quote, rope, as we’ve named it, is consumed by all things him.
Kyzen appears at my side, glass of water in hand, but as I try to reach for it, he pulls it back.
“Let me.”
He doesn’t allow me to chug the entire cup in one go as I normally would. The small sips he lets me take are just enough to fix my dry mouth and the swirling in my mind.
I clear my throat, gaining everyone’s attention. “A god didn’t speak to me. It was…I don’t know. Pictures. I did hear Derivius’s voice, but he wasn’t speaking to me. It was a repeat of what he said when we left.” I tell them what he said, and their brows crease.
“I didn’t bring it up before now because at the time it didn’t seem like he was giving me an ominous message, but more so encouragement. I’m trying to piece everything together, but I don’t understand why I was shown a moment, years and years ago, of Lambrit and me in the library back in Oddian.”
“We spent a lot of time in the library. Anything more specific than that?”
I release a breath and settle deeper into Creed. My eyes draw down as I both latch onto that picture in my mind and try to remember what it was we read that day that would be relevant now.
“You had just read something to me, and I hopped up from the floor and started reenacting the scene. I was laughing. So were you, sort of. You kept shushing me and reading. I kept reenacting.”
He taps his fingers against his lips, trying to recall it as well. This was honestly a lifetime ago. In the moving picture in my mind, we were teenagers.
“You also did that a lot. Especially when I read things with an adventurous storyline,” he snorts and I groan.
I push myself out of Creed’s lap and sway as I get my balance after I sling my legs over the side of the bed.
“I was doing this.”
I proceed to twirl in my spot and plunge my arm through the air as though I’m sword fighting. I had no intention of falling like I did in the past, but sure enough, I spin too hard and my legs come out from underneath me.
Before my head hits the ground, a hand is tucked in my hair and Riven’s laughing eyes gaze into mine.
“Beautiful show. Ten out of ten.”
I snort, but Lambrit’s unrestrained laughter steals our attention.
“Gods, how do you not remember that book, Thay? You hated it at first. You kept trying to stop reading it, but I told you, you hadn’t even got to the exciting part yet.
The female made you mad, and you were done.
Remember? It was the mortal love story about the woman whose ship had wrecked at sea.
She fell in love with the pirate who saved her, but one day she woke up and he had left her on the shore.
She swore she’d hunt the sea until she found him.
It made you mad that she was chasing a man down after he left her. ”
I chuckle as the story comes back to me. All the eyes in the room give me an ‘of course that’s why you didn’t like it’ look, but my smile stays on my lips because I actually ended up loving it.
I can’t believe I forgot about it.
“Well, did she find him?” Riven asks as he gets himself comfortable on the floor beside me, causing Kyzen to chuckle.
“She did. After searching every island, she finally found a map to a rumored city beneath the sea. It was said that the city had jewels, gold, and treasures and everything that was lost to the sea came there. The plot twist was the pirate she fell in love with was an immortal who’d been tasked with watching over the sea.
“He was responsible for finding lost things and taking care of them until they were returned where they belonged. She wasn’t an object, though, she was human, so he had to return her to land, where she belonged.
The only way she could stay with him was if she found her way back to him, then he never had to let her go.
When she found him, though, she tried to attack him with her sword.
She nearly fell off the cliff, and he caught her, told her she could be mad at him all she wanted, but he wasn’t letting her go again. It was so romantic.”
I sigh dreamily. This is probably a prime example of why I loved all things nonmagical so much. The mortals had a way of romanticizing everything and the works they wrote were so entertaining.
“Pull yourself out of dreamland and put the pieces together.” Seismet huffs and I tilt my head to the side.
“Put everything the Messenger gave you together, Thayla,” V adds, deepening my confusion.
The Messenger…
The images play across my mind again the second I think of the being.
It takes me a moment, but once it clicks, I suck in a sharp gasp and put a death grip on Riven’s arm.
“Oh my gods. There’s no way. That’s impossible.”
“What?” everyone barks.
“The Binding is in the Lost Sea.”
Their eyes cloud in disbelief, but the second the words come out of my mouth, I know it’s true. A…correctness settles across my mind like a thin blanket has been lifted. I didn’t notice it until now, but there had been a faint buzz in the air that’s completely gone now.
My head whips toward V, seeing if he did something weird, but the guys are all looking around as well.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Power receding from the Amethyst,” Amick states, picking up the stone I left on the bed. “The Messenger was with her that whole time, weren’t they, V?”
“Yes. They stayed until she fully understood their message.”
Holy shit.
“I thought you weren’t going to reach out to them?” Kyzen asks.
“Well…I didn’t really reach out, or at least I didn’t mean to. I kinda forgot my shit-talking has powers. A couple of times now, I may or may not have said something along the lines of some help would be nice. I just didn’t say it that nice.”
“Bad little burden. Talking shit to a being directly created from the Valories. You’re trying to get us killed.”
“I am not. How was I supposed to know they’d be listening or actually hear me?”
“I told you they would.”
Eh, V has a point.
“So they showed you the book to what? Connect the dots to the sea? What else did they show you?”
Both calculation and hesitation to believe this color Creed’s words and a sliver of doubt creeps its way inside of me. This is a big stretch of an assumption and if I’m wrong, then it not only puts us in danger, but also wastes a lot of time we don’t have.