“Sense anything?” he asked after a few moments.
“Nothing yet,” I answered, shaking my head before remembering his eyes were likely closed. He made a soft grunting sound of acknowledgement, and then we were both quiet again for a bit.
“I am sorry for causing strife with your family,” I said after a moment when the silence became too unbearable. Silence had been my life for so long that I could barely stand it anymore.
“Do not be sorry, Nuala. Shay is always standoffish, especially with strangers, and Darragh told me that you did nothing wrong. If anything it was… I appreciated it,” Rian admitted haltingly. “I have grown used to being the one they turn to. The one they idolize and then blame.”
I could not help smiling at his admission and hoped his eyes were closed as I nibbled on my bottom lip.
“I will always defend you, Rian. I believe in what you are doing, not just for your own people, but for all—”
My words were cut off by a sudden gasp of pain when the breath was knocked out of me. I went ramrod straight, and my head whipped back so hard it felt like my neck snapped when a phantom hand grabbed my throat.
A voice screamed in my mind. Vicious and accusatory. Ancient and hateful beyond anything I ever felt before.
It was the last thing I remembered before the darkness descended upon my mind.
I groaned as I stirred beneath a soft and familiar blanket. There was a throbbing pain in my head, and my throat felt stiff and raw as if my flesh had been burned. Trying to turn my head sideways to look around caused even more pain to lance down my neck and spine.
“Rian,” I murmured, my voice scratchy.
“I am here, you are safe,” he assured me as his fingers interlaced with mine on my stomach. I instantly relaxed, his touch enough to chase away the nightmares.
After a moment, I peeled open my eyes, wincing at the brightness of a nearby lantern as I tried to look up at him. Rian saw my flinch and immediately dimmed the light with magic until it no longer hurt my head.
“Nuala, what happened?” he asked me urgently.
I was just trying to recall that myself as I lay on his couch with him kneeling on the floor beside me. The way I’d been kneeling next to him when he was unconscious.
The bizarre encounter had not lasted long, but that did not matter. It had been enough of a connection for my intuition totell me all that I needed to know.
“I know who has the missing stone. She tried to hide from me. She tried to scare me away,” I murmured.
“She did not merely try to scare you,” Rian growled, his voice deepening in apparent anger.
I frowned in confusion, and he seemed to deliberate for a moment before he rose to walk into his bedchamber. Sitting up gingerly, I massaged my aching neck that was strained from being grabbed so roughly in the astral plane by a powerful immortal. I was untrained in such things, but even I knew it was unusual for the physical body to be affected by such a projection.
Then again, the female who had assaulted me was very far from an average magic user.
I tucked Rian’s mother’s blanket around me and swung my legs over the edge of the couch. I was ready to go and see where he’d gone, but Rian emerged from the chamber. He was carrying what looked like a silver statue with an oval disk on top of a slender stem and round base. It was not until he sat beside me and presented the item to me that I even realized it was a pedestal mirror.
My breath caught as I found myself suddenly looking down at my reflection. I saw what he meant to show me, the imprint of a hand burned around my throat, which was why my skin felt so stiff and raw there. It seemed he had put an ointment on the red and blistered skin, but I knew from experience that such a wound would take my human flesh months to heal.
But as troubling as that should have been to me, it was nothing I had not seen before. What was most shocking to me was the rest of me…
It had not escaped my notice that Rian had covered every reflective surface in his tent to prevent me from seeing what my brother had done to me. But Luke was too proud of his work not to show it to me whenever he could shove a mirror in my face.
Look, little whore! Look how hideous you are. No one will ever look upon you with anything but disgust now!
But I knew that was not true. I had faith in my visions and the man in them who was meant for me. If he could love me as I was, then I resolved to become comfortable with the creature in the mirror. To learn to love her too.
I am a monster. I am ugly and wicked. I am wrath and vengeance. And he will love me anyway…
That had been my mantra.
Rian wanted to protect me from that deformed face as if she did not live inside me. As if she was not the thing that had survived. She was all that was left of me after everything else was carved away. And I was not sure how to feel about the fact it was actually thispretty facethat scared me. No longer the sullen child or the bruised and bleeding prisoner or even the monster, but a stranger with an undetermined path.
Who was she?Did I get to choose this time?
