AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Whatever he did, it’s somehow broken the skin again.” Her voice was hard. “The wounds look as fresh as the day they were made. They’ve looked like this before. They should close up in a few hours, but you’ll likely feel their pain for several days.”
“What in the name of light is that stuff he put on them?” I mumbled into my pillow. “We’re behind the protective barrier. I shouldn’t even have a scar anymore. Six years have passed, and it’s still so fresh that—”
“Six years?” Nellie asked sharply.
“Yes.” I lifted my head as she released the tunic, and the material brushed against my aching skin. “Oberon came into the village six years ago, after Father tried to return from his quest or whatever it was…it feels like so much longer, but I remember like it happened yesterday. Don’t you? You were there, waving that broom at him. It’s always stuck with me, you know, how brave you were that day. It made me love that bloody broom.”
Nellie pushed up from the bed and wandered over to the bars, her back to me.
I frowned. “Nellie, what’s wrong?”
She turned back toward me and shook her head. “You’re the one who needs toremember.”
My heart pounded as I slowly eased off the cot to stand on unsteady feet. Nellie wouldn’t look at me, and a strange sensation prickled the back of my neck, like there was something unseen and unknowable standing right behind me. A ghost from my past that turned to shadows when I tried to look at it. Even now, it felt as though I was looking through an opaque window. The haze consumed my mind, drowning me in mist.
“Remember what?” I whispered. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“Twenty years ago.” Nellie frowned. “You were five. I was three. That was when he first tried to cut it out of you. It was going to be me, because I was younger, but you insisted he choose you instead. You’ve always protected me. Always. And I’ll always protect you, too.”
“What?” My heart dropped as the entire world seemed to tilt beneath me. “Are you saying Oberon came for me twenty years ago, and that I…that I don’t remember it? That’s impossible. It doesn’t make any sense. I—”
I didn’t have the scars before that day. Six years ago, that was when Oberon had cut my back.
Something screamed inside of me. An animalistic mewl that echoed through the caverns of my mind. I tried to push it away, to cling on to what Nellie was trying to tell me, but it felt as if claws were scraping through my mind. I clamped my hands over my ears, bending over on myself, sitting hard on the cot behind me.
Nellie appeared beside me in an instant. She pulled my hand away from my ear and gave me a sad smile. “I’m sorry. Forget what I said. I think I’m just confused, that’s all. You should get some rest. You’ll heal a lot faster if you do.”
“No. Wait a minute. A second ago, you were convinced—”
“Like I said, I was wrong,” she whispered quickly. “I got confused. That was a nightmare I had last night. I’m getting everything all mixed up.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
I frowned. “Nellie.”
“Get some rest.” She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my hair. “I love you, Tessa. We’re going to get you out of here.”
I shook my head as my sister padded across the cell and climbed into her bed. What was going on? What had she been talking about? However she’d tried to turn it around, I knew she wasn’t talking about a recent nightmare. She truly believed Oberon had attacked us that long ago, and that I’d somehow forgotten it had ever happened. But how could that be?
Easing back onto the bed, I tried to think back to those early days, but my memories of childhood had always been blurry. I’d thought that was normal. As the years passed, new memories pushed aside the old. But try as I might to stay awake and figure this thing out, sleep soon claimed me, as if a part of me didn’t want to wander into the past.
* * *
Isensed him. It was something electric in the air, as if the world shifted just slightly to accommodate the ultimate power of him. Mist and snow swirled toward me on the chilly wind, and as I turned, my belly did a little flip at the sight of him.
His razor-edged ears cut through the dark hair blowing around his angular face. Just like the last time I saw him, he wore snug trousers and an unbuttoned tunic that highlighted the ridges of his abs. His powerful hands tensed beside him as his sapphire gaze speared my soul.
For a moment, I could barely breathe.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he finally said. “When you vanished last night, I didn’t know what to think.”
“Nellie woke me,” I said. “I was mumbling in my sleep, and she was worried the guards would hear me. We didn’t want Oberon to find out I can talk to you.”
A strange tension thumped between us. After the previous night’s dream, it was as if we’d come to an awkward truce. The things I’d seen…they made me understand him more than I had before. Our journey together through the mists had really only scratched the surface of knowing him. Guilt and duty weighed heavily on his shoulders. He wanted to do what was right, but his past was tainted with pain and violence and betrayal. And he was stuck in a vow he could never escape.
I wanted to be angry at him for what he’d done to my father, but I couldn’t be. As hard as it was to reconcile my memories of my father with what I’d seen in Kalen’s memories, I knew he’d needed to be stopped. And Kalen had been forced to be the bearer of that duty.
“I need to ask you about the mists,” Kalen said, his steady voice cutting through the thickening tension. “What did you mean before when you asked me if I was outside of Albyria?”
