I wanted to tell whoever was screaming to shut up. They were just going to attract the Vil?s, attract Edmund’s men. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get the words out.
While I stared ahead, his shoes moved toward me, voices pulling through the screams in a weird echo I didn’t understand.
“Wyn?” The voice resonated through my head like a bass drum, the same word coming again and again as the fear in the name increased. Maybe they could get whoever was screaming to shut up. “Wyn!”
“Help,” I said, my desperate pleas barely above a whisper. “My hand. Help. Heal it.” I wasn’t confident they had heard me above the scream that wouldn’t stop or even if they were really there. I couldn’t focus enough to know anymore.
Pain throbbed through my head as I felt wide hands lift me. Then bouncy black curls came into view, the familiarity of them seizing through me in a wave of dread.
Edmund.
No. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t be.
It was then the screaming stopped, the terror taking its place as my weak body began to fight. Blood sprayed everywhere as I flailed, nonsense spewing out of my mouth as I tried to get away from him, to fight. Except, I couldn’t find the energy above a gasp and a flail. It didn’t matter; I would die trying to escape him if I had to. I would rather die than go through what Edmund had planned for me.
“No!” I screamed, “I won’t marry you! Let me go! No!” The words came one right after another, the panic mounting as his magic moved into me.
The calm heat of a power I didn’t recognize flooded me, moving right to my hand, right to my heart as it calmed me, as it cauterized the wound in an obviously desperate attempt to stop the bleeding.
I stopped fighting as the magic took control, my body relaxing, my heart rate slowing, even while I could still feel the fear, still feel the pain. I didn’t seem to care quite so much anymore.
“Geez, Wyn,” Ryland gasped, his voice breaking through my horror in that same weird echo I had heard before. “I didn’t know you thought of me that way. I’m flattered, but I’m not interested.”
“Ryland?” I gasped, turning to face the boy who carried me, but he didn’t even look at me. He held me against him, his jaw tight, eyes focused ahead.
“At your service.” His voice was chipper all things considered, but even I could tell he was putting it on, something dark edging beneath him, like he was trying to hide something. “We’ve been looking for you.”
I didn’t know what to say. My body felt very heavy and foreign as I lay in his arms, my magic slowly coming back to life as his filled me. Something, considering the way his brow furrowed, he noticed and, strangely, was not happy about.
“Ryland?” I asked, confusion and fear rising up in me, barely able to get the one word out.
“Ilyan says I am to treat you like an enemy, Wyn.” His voice had taken on that deep, gravely quality I had heard before. The underlying tension made sense, and I froze, the calm I had felt at being found melting away in a tense anxiety.
I swallowed, looking away from the boy to the cathedral, to the barrier we were quickly approaching. My mind panicked over whether or not it would even let us through.
“You attacked Joclyn, Wyn. You attacked Risha.” His muscles constricted at the mention of the last name, and the dread I was feeling dipped into me painfully. “And last anyone heard, you were going to be marrying Edmund, which seems to be hauntingly accurate given what you were yelling at me … I mean … I do look awfully similar to my father—”
“I have a reason…” I could barely get the words out, the selfish, pathetic nature of my excuse grating on me.
“A reason for marrying my father? I don’t want you as my stepmother, and neither does Ilyan.”
“No! I obviously don’t want that, Ry! I mean, for attacking…” I felt like I had been hit in the chest … or maybe stabbed in the hand. After everything, trying to pass off my selfishness as a reason for attacking my best friend was pretty pathetic. I guessed Ilyan had a right to tout me as dangerous.
Maybe I was.
No, I knew I was.
“We know about the blade,” Ryland said, pulling me out of the quickly building panic with a growl. “And you should know better.”
“What are you, my dad?” I couldn’t stop the snap from erupting out of my voice. Now that my body was healing, my personality went right back into place. “Says the boy who attacked his mate and his best friend when under the control of his father—”
“That’s different.”
“How?” I spat, my temper quickly rising to a dangerous level, the heat of my magic rising to match.