I let my magic surge once more, the pulse strong, but I could tell at once that my nerves had depleted the strength. It wasn’t enough.
“Come on, Jos, don’t be a wuss,” I scolded myself as I closed my eyes, ready to try again.
Only to have another form of magic stop me in my tracks.
Every nerve in my spine jolted in fear as magic the color of ice, and just as cold, struck my body.
The wet chill of the unfamiliar magic wound down my spine as my heart shuddered in my chest. I gasped and tensed, my power surging as my magic bolted through my brother in a torrent of force. It should have been enough to end his life, but instead it did what I had been trying to do all along. Dramin’s magic ignited at the potent surge, his magic catching fire as the pulse of power spread through his body.
I glanced at the dark room around me, expecting to find the source of the icy magic. Nothing was there, nothing but the heat of Dramin’s magic. I ran my magic through him, checking for injury, failing organs, anything. I felt nothing other than his magic as it coursed through him.
I only hoped it would stay that way this time.
I bit my lip as I stood, my hands unwinding from Dramin’s warming fingers. My breath remained captive in the expectation that his magic would flicker and die with the lost contact, but it stayed strong as I released him, the heavy flow warm and welcoming in the air around me. A powerful pulse of life now wound through him.
I had done it; I had healed him.
I didn’t dare move as I waited for him to wake and be whole, but he didn’t move; his magic didn’t flare. He just lay as still as stone, the same deathly sheen on his face.
I clenched my hands together as I stared at him, not wanting to accept that after everything, I had failed, that even though his magic was alive, Dramin was still destined to die.
I could feel my magic buzz through my fingers as thunder rumbled around me—desperate to try again—when the same icy magic I had felt minutes before shot through me again, the touch cold and painful.
My magic surged in an attempt to find where the terrifying jolt had come from, to find out who was coming, but as quickly as the magic had come, it left.
I stood still in the room, trying to steady my breathing as I scanned the dark, my magic soaring down dark hallways as I searched, only to find no one. I stretched out to the very edges of the abbey, but still, I felt nothing. No sign of the ice that had washed over me.
Until it came again.
Then the familiarity of the magic made sense. It was the feeling I had always gotten before Cail had come, cold like ice.
My breathing picked up into frantic pants as the thought raged through me, my insanity trying its hardest to drag me back down to the nightmare that haunted me. I fought against the pull, against the fear, Ilyan’s song coming right to mind in a desperate attempt to cling to the good memories and not let the blood that ran down the walls take over.
Still, I couldn’t stop my brain from screaming that Cail was here, that he had found me. Even though I knew he was dead.
I needed to get out of here.
My shoes slipped as I ran from Dramin in a desperate attempt to get away, to run from the nightmare that was so willing to drag me down. My feet sounded like bass drums against the stone walls, the heavy slaps of my shoes echoing in my ears. I opened the door and closed it without looking, not caring if it made a sound. My focus was only on making it back to my room, on getting away from Cail.
I didn’t even get the chance.
The cold magic flared again at the same time that something deep inside of me screamed in desperation. I fell against the wall right outside of Dramin’s door, my whole body seizing as footsteps even softer than mine made their way toward me, the familiar sound of his gait freezing me in place.
Except it wasn’t Cail, and the knowledge of who it really was gave me no chance to escape.
Ryland had found me.
Seven
“Jos!” Ryland’s voice erupted behind me, loud and unmistakably happy. I wished I could feel the joy that I had felt so long ago, but all I felt was the cold dread that I had lived with for months.
I dug the soft pads of my fingers into the stone I leaned against in my desperation to escape, the sound of my heartbeat a bass drum that a normal human wouldn’t have been able to live through. It banged painfully against my chest as my voice ripped into a scream of panic that burst through the darkness around me, even though I knew my yell would do nothing.
He had found me.
He would hurt me.
I could hear him walk toward me, his steps slow as the nightmares began to infiltrate my soul, my scream fading into a whimper. The cold, painful surge of what I now knew to be his magic flared next to me again, and I pushed myself into the wall as if it would give way and let me meld into it.
Let me get away.