Then, they changed. He second-guessed himself somewhere along the way, his emotions withdrawing and his insecurities taking their place.
As his doubts and fears took hold of him, they also seeped into me. I moved away from him. I wanted that feeling back, that love that I had felt emanating from him only a moment ago. I felt my heart hunger for it, need it.
What’s wrong? I asked, unable to keep my worry inside of me, not wanting to let it change into something else if I held it back.
I should have tried harder to keep my thoughts at bay. Ilyan looked at me with pain in his eyes, his mind pouring out his sadness before his mouth even opened. His first word brought the panic I had kept at bay until this point.
“Ryland has asked me…”
“No!” My voice caught him off guard, his eyes widening at the power behind my one word.
I couldn’t stop the panic that flowed through my body. I moaned as I curled into the blanket, every nerve ending tensing in agony, in fear of what was to come. I felt Ilyan’s magic surge into me and my own magic joining his as I attempted to calm myself, to take the fear away.
I could see Ilyan’s thoughts in front of me, his worry for his brother and his friend and his desperate need for me, and I could hear Ryland’s words in his head. I tensed as they hit my mind, my body tightly wound before Ilyan’s magic was able to calm me again.
I will not see him. I answered the unasked question inside his head. I will kill him if I see him. I want to kill him.
I narrowed my eyes at him, my jaw tensing at the calm agony his eyes showed me. I curled into the wall, my mind fighting against my better judgment as it begged me to run away.
“You won’t kill him,” Ilyan said as calmly as he could, and I felt my anger rise and my magic pulse. For one fleeting second it was stronger than the crazed anxiety that still overtook me.
I will.
“No, Jos,” he whispered, and I couldn’t help the thunk of my heart at my nickname on his lips. “You don’t want that, not really.”
I do, Ilyan. I begged him. I begged through the panic, the fear. I needed him to understand this. To understand my need. The anger was a fire inside of me, the need for revenge fanning it ever higher. He hurt me… he…
My thoughts stopped as Ilyan’s hand moved against my neck, the sharp jolt as his skin made contact with my mark stopping my words. I sighed at the sensation, at the pleasurable heat it gave me, before staring into Ilyan, knowing it had been his intention to stop me.
“You don’t want to hurt him. You don’t want to kill him. It’s not really you that feels that way. You think it is because you are still so scared and confused at what has happened. You were hurt, Joclyn, but not by him.”
His eyes dug into me as he spoke, his words pleading with me to believe him. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see beyond the panic and pain. It consumed me. A part of me wanted it to. In some ways, the pain and the anxiety made me remember that I was alive.
It was him. I spat as I pushed Ilyan away, as I let the anxiety mix with the hate. I could feel my magic surge and pulse, but it wasn’t like when I had healed Wyn; this was uncontrollable, like I myself was the danger, as if I would explode.
“No, my love,” Ilyan said calmly, his eyes scanning me as I continued to try to move into myself and my breathing picked up. “It was a farce, a projection in Cail’s mind meant to confuse you so that you would kill him if you ever got the chance.”
I could feel Ilyan’s magic move into me and take away the frayed edges of my panic. I wanted to hold it to me, and relax in the pain, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tear my mind away from what Ilyan was saying, what he was trying so foolishly to get me to believe.
I couldn’t ignore the pulse of anger that moved through me. I couldn’t ignore the way that just talking about him was awakening my panic, causing my body to shake and curl into itself. Ryland needed to pay for what he had done to me.
It was him, Ilyan. I know…
“How do you know it was?” The desperation in his words stopped me, my eyes widening. Why did he doubt me? Why was he pushing me? What had Ryland told him? What had my father said?
I had shown Ilyan everything; I had filled his mind with those memories. Why couldn’t he see that I knew? I knew by the way that he had walked, the way that his hair curled. I could have admitted that there had been something different about him, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I didn’t want to.
I twitched as I focused on the memories, the images letting that strong fear back into my heart. My body moved even further into the wall as I tried to keep the fear at bay, as I tried to hold onto reality.
How do you know that it wasn’t? I countered, my voice snide in his head.