“I hold no hatred for you in my heart, Ovi,” Sain said.
“Don’t call me that,” Ovailia snapped as she led Sain out of his cell, his hands still shackled and chained.
“I am happy to see your love life has improved,” Sain said, his voice light, as if he was talking to a long lost friend and not his former lover. “Cail is a much better match for you.”
“Anyone is better for me then you were.” Ovailia turned on him, her finger sparking as she shoved one long nailed pointer in his face. I would have expected Sain to flinch away, but he stood still, his eyes focused on her and not the warning that flared only millimeters from his face.
“I quite agree; Angela Despain was a remarkable woman.”
Ovailia’s finger sparked; her face hardening as she jerked on his chains. His torso jolted down until her finger pressed against the skin between his eyes.
“Leave my love life alone, Sain.”
“Then leave my daughter alone,” he replied. Ovailia released her hold on Sain. I would have assumed the strength in Sain’s voice to startle her, but I knew better.
“Haven’t you been listening?” she asked, moving her face closer to him. “Ryland is going to take care of her for us. Well, after he kills Ilyan anyway.”
“We’ll see,” Sain whispered, his calm voice not missing a beat.
Ovailia’s eyes widened for a just a moment before they softened. “You act like you actually control your sight, Sain.” Ovailia laughed at the idea and left the cell, dragging the old man behind her.
“Oh,” Cail scoffed once the sound of Sain’s chains had ebbed away to nothing, “I almost forgot.”
He laughed and threw something at me as the light began to fade. I stared at the loaf of bread he had tossed into my cell, unable to move toward it, my stomach rolling with need.
“Bon appétit, Wynifred,” Cail spoke from the steps, his body already disappearing around the stairs. The shackles around my wrists opened, sending me tumbling down, and I landed on my chest right in front of the dinner-plate sized loaf of bread. The stale, mostly green surface crawled with maggots.
Bon appétit, indeed. I reached toward the loaf, my weak fingers curling around what was sure to be the only food I would see for another week.
Ilyan
Chapter Ten
I could hear her. Joclyn’s voice echoed within my head from the memory I had had since the first day I heard it, eight hundred years ago. The rise and fall of her tone, the way she said her r’s – it was an accent I wouldn’t hear for hundreds of years after that day.
I had dwelled on her voice for centuries, allowed the memory of her to be my light in my darkest times, and hundreds of years later, I had basked in her voice when I heard it in my ears again. It came as no surprise that the first thing I could remember thinking about, that the first thing I had heard when the darkness came after the stutter had injured me, was her voice.
Trapped in the blackness of my subconscious, my thoughts were only on her. I wondered if I had been able to get her away from Ryland alive, wondered if my foolish attempt at taking her with me through the stutter had worked.
I had felt the warmth of someone healing me, but the touch was wrong. It wasn’t her, and that only worried me more.
Until I heard her. Through the darkness that my body kept me in, I had heard her.
I heard her beg for me to live, and I wanted to tell her I was right there, beside her. I wanted to hold her and let her know that I would never leave her.
I had never been injured in this way. I had always been too strong to be hurt for long, and not being able to be there for her triggered my need, my determination, to leave the darkness. To protect her,
I listened to her voice. I listened to her fears, knowing that soon I would be able to calm them.
Every night since I had awoken, the memory of her words filled me. I heard her voice while I slept with her in my arms, and it calmed me, the way she had calmed me in Isola Santa two nights before – the way that no one had ever done. It was there I had felt her magic inside of me, mingling with mine. I had never felt that before, and the sensation was addicting. I wished I could keep that pleasant spark of her magic inside me forever.
I was so used to hearing Joclyn’s voice in my dreams that when she woke me up, by a simple call of my name, I heard her and my eyes opened. She looked at me with a face that I had memorized, and I blinked, waiting for my mind to clue me in to whether this was a dream or reality. It felt like a dream. Every morning, when I woke with her in my arms after so many years of waiting, it all felt like a dream.
I could feel the warmth of our body heat trapped against our skin and the cold of the cave against my cheek. I could feel her hand against my bare chest, her warm breath flowing over my skin. I could have died right there from the joy I felt.