“No, Ryland,” Sain soothed again, the way he always had.
His voice was only enough to pull me out of the words, if not the movement. I still rocked myself into the stone, the heavy thumps of pressure feeling comforting somehow.
“You don’t want that.”
Table. Window. Fireplace. Thom.
Go!
“If I can’t have her,” I growled as I rocked, “then no one can.”
“You don’t mean that, Ryland.”
“Need … Now.”
Now.
“Now.”
Now.
“Now. Kill.”
Kill.
“Ryland,” Sain whispered.
My focus darted right back over to him, my body jerking at the thunderous roar that broke from the sky before my focus began darting around once before going back to him. Although I tried to keep my focus on him, it was hard. It was hard to control my body, hard to control my mind.
“They are nowhere near here. The blade is nowhere near here. You are safe.”
You are never safe.
But, he said…
Never.
Not from me.
“You are safe,” Sain repeated as if he could hear the battle raging within me.
Safe.
The foreign word that my heart clung to like a lifeline pulled me out of the frantic motions and right back to the man who hovered before me, his dark green eyes plunging into me like an anchor, one I clung to with all my might. It was another thing I knew, something else my father couldn’t quite take away.
I stared at him, my eyes focusing for the first time as I rejoiced in what I knew at once to be freedom, to be safety. The panicked breathing slowed as he looked at me, his hand pressing against my bicep in a firm reminder of the reality we were in.
We merely stared at each other as my breathing mellowed, the same way we had done so many times before, every day when he had pulled me from the insanity Cail had placed me in. Usually, it didn’t seem to hold. Usually, it was a fine line that I always fell from easily. While I knew this time was no different, it felt sturdier somehow, as though I was balancing on a wooden plank instead of only a high wire.
Sain realized it, too.
“You are safe, Ryland.”
My hand shook as I placed it against his arm, my fingers leaving streaks of blood on his elbow as I pulled him toward me.
“It’s okay.”
“I want to kill her.” We both jerked at my statement, at the calm mellow of the words, at the simple statement that cut through the air with blood and fire as the voice in my head began to laugh.
I hadn’t meant to say that.
Other words had been forming in my mind, yet those were the ones that had come out.
Sain’s face blanched as the pressure of his hand against me increased. I could feel his pulse through my skin, feel it accelerate as mine did, as my body tensed and tightened at what was coming. I pressed myself against the wall in fear, almost wishing there was a place I could escape to, that there was any place on the earth that was safe for me.
However, I knew better.
Joyful laughter was already filling my head, and the sounds grew the more I tried to push them away, to focus on what I knew to be real, to stay astride that narrow plank that splintered underneath me.
“I want to kill her.” The words felt sane as they seeped from me. My voice wasn’t pulled into the depth of my madness, yet I knew they had been wrought in the same subconscious place. I knew they were real.
And it scared me.
That’s my boy.
I flinched at the familiarity of his voice, at the feigned love that oozed through it. My heart sped up at the acceptance I had always wanted, despite knowing what that meant.
Kill.
“Kill,” I hissed.
Sain’s lips pressed into a tight white line. He knew what was coming as much as I did.
“I want to kill her.”
“Ryland,” Sain pleaded through the flickering light of his magic, but I knew at once his plea was useless.
“Kill!” It was a roar the echoed round us, the light fading to black for a moment as my magic smothered it. “I want to kill her.”
“No, you don’t.” I jumped at the new voice as much as the snake that lived inside me did, the slimy creature retreating into my belly like a heavy lead weight.
My body tensed as I pushed myself into the wall again, and a bright orange light joined Sain’s green one, leaving us sitting in a puke-filled room as Wyn slowly walked toward us.
A pained smile on her face as she leaned against the table then the wall and, finally, Thom. I had almost forgotten he was there, as quiet as he was.
My magic flared with a violent spark, as if it was reacting to an enemy, one who had awakened the dragon of my madness I had been trying so hard to restrain.
“I need to,” I hissed through gritted teeth, wishing there was a way I could restrain it, wishing I wanted to.
Then go.
I need to go.
“No, Ryland, you don’t,” Wyn’s face was wrinkled in a pained grimace as Thom helped her to sit, gently leaning her against him when he sat beside her.
I looked at her as I shook, as my back hit against the wall, as we sat in the darkened, stone room the way we always had.