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“Raven, It’s me. I don’t know what they did to you -” It said, holding its hands out, palms up. To try and calm me into a false sense of security. To make me believe I was being saved. It couldn’t fool me. No one was coming to save me. I wasn’t worth saving.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” I half snarled, half sobbed, I whipped the half-empty water bottle I had been clutching toward the phantom, with my less-than-considerable might. It hit her in the chest and it bounced off harmlessly. I froze.
No one took a breath. All three of us sat frozen. Rycon and Clair waited to see what I would do. I struggled to gather my scrambling thoughts. The water bottle had touched her. She was solid.
She was real.
52
Slowly, I got up. My legs shook as I took a hesitant step forward. I think Clair was holding her breath as if she knew any sudden movement would send me into a screaming panic. One step at a time, I made my way across my cell, until I stood before her.
She stood, unmoving, before me, barely daring to blink. Her eyes were misted with unshed tears as she took in what I was sure was a terrifying sight. A tear finally escaped its watery prison and slid down her cheek. Her lip trembled. I reached forward and touched the small salty drop with my shaking, filthy fingers. The tear was warm against my freezing skin, and I was so overwhelmed with emotion I felt I might explode.
“Mom?” I asked, my voice hitching in my throat. She nodded gently, earnestly.
“It really is me, Raven.” She reached out gingerly to cup my cheek. “I should never have let you go, I am so sorry.” Her own voice was breaking. I shook my head, my face crumbling into tears that I had refused to shed during hours - no... days of torture. I collapsed into her and began to sob. She wrapped her arms around me and pressed me close. She smelled of lavender, and I knew she had to be real. Even Maria hadn’t been able to capture her clean scent.
I don’t know how long we stood there. She held me tight as I broke down. All the pain and fear leaked out through me. Sobs wracked through my body so hard I could barely hold myself up.
“Shhh, Shhh.” She whispered, rocking me against her. “I’m here. You’re ok. You’re going to be ok.” I didn’t have words to tell her what had happened to me. I couldn’t explain how much of a relief it was to be touching a real live person. Feeling her solid body made me quiver with unrestrained relief. She was made of flesh and blood. She had come for me.
“I love you, Raven, I am so sorry.” How could anyone ever love you? The painful memory cut through my mind. I peered up into her beautiful face and knew she had no idea what it meant to me that she had said that. Even after everything, she had come for me. With my mental shields in ruins, she of course, could read my thoughts.
“I will always come for you, Raven.” A fierceness in her eyes smoldered as strongly as the pain in my heart.
Rycon coughed awkwardly from where he stood a few feet away. He had tried to give us space, and I had completely forgotten he was even there.
“Not to break up the reunion, but we have a finite amount of time to get out of this shit hole,” he said. Both Clair and I looked at him. Clair’s expression said enough. We wouldn’t have had to get out of here at all if he hadn’t betrayed me in the first place.
“Why are you both here?” I asked. My voice was still rough from so much screaming. The shifter and my mother both understood what I meant. Why were they working together?
“I was trying to tell you in the shipping yard last night,” Rycon said. Last night?
I still didn’t understand why they kept saying I had only been here for a few hours. “Yes, ok... I originally brought you here hoping that if I did so Kieran would sever the bond. But he was lying when he said if I brought Clair to him, he would free me. He can’t free me. He was full of shit. If he decided to kill you, I would have died with you, so...I went to get Clair.”
“You are a disgusting creature.” Clair spat over my shoulder. Rycon rolled his eyes.
“Tell me something I don’t know, witch.” He drawled. “Anyway. I couldn’t leave you here while we’re still bound.” Did he have any idea what I had been through? What he had done to me? I glanced down at my arms, still covered in pencil-thin white scars from my ‘sessions’ with Marcus.
My entire body was covered in intricate scars from my neck down. He was sorely mistaken if he thought coming to save me would be his redemption. I could never forgive him for this.
“I still don’t understand how It felt so much longer for me down here than you. I swear I have been here for weeks.” I whispered, my voice still strained. Clair’s face crumbled again.
“Kieran must have had you in a time loop. It is dark magick that makes time pass much more slowly for the target of the spell. Jeremy hasn’t even come home yet in our time path. The fact that he had you trapped in a loop down here for weeks is...enraging. Even I didn’t know he was capable of magick that powerful.”
“Well, I think our pal Ash Nevra has something to do with that.” Rycon speculated. “She must be siphoning power to him somehow.” Despite her distaste for the shifter, Clair nodded in agreement.
Rycon turned to face the door. “Okay. Enough catching up. We have to go.”
53
Clair’s attention snapped to the shifter, her face filled with distaste.
“One thing before we go. This, I’m sure, will be the beginning of many punishments you will endure over the next little while to make up for your betrayal.” Clair held her right hand before her face, her pinky and ring finger bent, her middle and forefinger pointing upwards, and her thumb resting against her chin. She blew lightly against her protruding fingers, and I felt a tingle in the line between myself and Rycon that I had declared dead long ago, at least in my timeline.
The block in our bond wiggled free and released itself with a pop, like a cork on a champagne bottle. Rycon’s energy came roaring back, and even with the suffocating power of Kieran’s enhanced triquetra, I felt marginally better. Rycon staggered with the release on the block, and I’m sure it was less enjoyable for him as the destruction and pain I had been through passed into his body. He was feeling what I had been feeling for the first time, and he did not like it. His eerie eyes flashed with a burning hot rage.
‘Even I’m not this sick.’ He hissed into my mind, and it was a relief to have his strength back, even after everything he had done. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and handed it to Clair.
