“There are those among my kind, and among the Trpaslík, who believe that the kiss is a gift, a sign of royalty. For four hundred years, they have systematically exterminated, not only the children who bare the kiss, but also the Vil?s who are the sole reason the marks exist in the first place.”
“Extermin…” My voice caught; I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word.
“Yes, Siln?, they kill them. The men who attacked you in your apartment were there for that reason.”
I knew the men were trying to kill me—they had made that blatantly clear—but that wasn’t why I found myself hyperventilating again; it wasn’t why I found my vision fading in and out so fast my eyesight was almost a flicker. There were others who had wanted to kill me beside those men, and if it wasn’t for Ryland, they would have. If it wasn’t for Ryland knowing about the mark, and what it meant, they all would have succeeded.
“Ryland,” I gasped, my weak voice shaking even more.
“I am not sure we should go over this right now,” Ilyan said.
“Ryland!” My strong voice bounced angrily around the room. Wyn said something, but I didn’t bother to look to see if she had woken this time. I didn’t dare let my eyes leave Ilyan. Ilyan sighed and looked hard at me as my breathing and heart rate continued to increase in tempo.
“Wyn’s brother is Cail. Wyn’s father is Timothy. They both follow the man who gave the extermination order for the children who bear a kiss on their skin; the man who bears the first kiss ever given—Ryland’s father, Edmund LaRue.”
Somehow, I knew; I had known from the beginning. I knew from the moment Ryland saw the mark on my skin. I knew when I saw his own mark, standing out so vividly on his back. I knew, but I simply didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to accept it.
My breathing reached a rate that couldn’t possibly keep me conscious. I looked into Ilyan’s pained face for only a moment more before my vision went black. The warmth from Ilyan’s hands filled me at an alarming rate, his magic seeping into me and allowing me to slip into sleep.
Nineteen
The sunlight streamed innocently in through the open window, saturating the faded carpet and white walls with the golden light of morning. A light breeze blew through the open patio door, bringing a sweet smell of flowers and grass into Wyn’s living room. My face was warm and felt swollen as if I had been crying the entire time I had been asleep, which I wouldn’t doubt, given the reason I was sleeping in the first place. I shifted my weight under the heavy blankets that covered me, surprised to feel only a slight ache in my joints.
My rested body and serene mood lasted only a moment until I realized the reason I had woken up in the first place. I could hear frantic yelling from the other room, the voices raised and lowered dramatically as they yelled at each other in Czech. Wyn and Ilyan were not angry though; they were panicked. The sound increased as a door opened and I watched Wyn walk out of the hall, a large bag draped over her back, an even bigger suitcase clenched in her other hand. The bags were so large in proportion to her body it looked like she would topple over at any moment. She caught sight of me staring at her and both parcels came crashing to the ground.
“Oh, thank all!” she sighed, her accented voice still sounding odd in my ears. She rushed over to me, placing her hand right against my cheek. I looked at her in confusion, still unable to take my eyes off her dark tattoos.
“Ilyan! She’s awake.” She looked at me sadly, realizing that I was looking more at the dark marks on her face than at her. “I would hide them, Jos, but it hurts too much and I need to be able to focus right now.”
“Good,” Ilyan’s voice carried from the other room. “Is it hotter than before?”
Wyn removed her hand from my cheek and moved the heavy pile of blankets from off my torso. The removal of the weight increased the soreness I felt.
“Sorry,” she cringed.
She placed her hand against my chest, pressing Ryland’s necklace against my skin. My jaw tightened as the hot stone made firm contact. How could I not have felt that before? The ruby burned against me, making my whole chest feel as if it was on fire. The second Wyn released the pressure of her hand, the heat lessened, but I could still feel the necklace’s intense warmth from within Ryland’s sweater that they had placed me in.
“It’s hotter,” Wyn called back down the hall where Ilyan was.
I heard Ilyan swear in English before he appeared at the end of the hall, his hair pulled back into a pony tail and the knees of his torn jeans caked with what looked like dirt and blood.
“We are out of time. Get that stuff to the car; I’ll be down with her in a minute.”
Wyn obeyed, grabbing the large bags as if they weighed nothing and disappearing out the door.
Ilyan rushed over to me and stripped the top most blanket off the pile that covered me and laid it on the floor. When he removed the blanket, the aches increased just as they had when Wyn removed half of them a moment before.