A place where I’ll eventually have to make a choice about what I want.
Or who.
Once we’re finished, we lay side by side in the mud, gathering our strength while we sink further into the forest ground.
“I’m sorry,” he says, staring up at the sky, his eyelids blinking against the drizzle of the rain. “I know this has to be hard for you.”
I find his hand and place mine over it, watching the lightening in the sky. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” he insists. “I should have been stronger than to let some stupid Faerie stake me… the Death Walkers threw me off, though.”
“It’s not your fault,” I press, slanting my head to the side to look at him.
He refuses to look at me, however, fixated on the raindrops falling down to the earth instead. “Where’s Alex.”
I let out a faltering breath. “He wandered off… said he couldn’t watch.”
He squeezes my hand. “It’ll be okay,” he says, but I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince. Him or me. Regardless, the invisible, magnetic connection that I felt with him the last time he bit me is twice as powerful now and I can only feel it growing with each beat of my heart.
The weight of the rain and my guilt pile on me more and I just keep thinking: if only I could shut it off. I try a few times, very pathetically, but give up when the feeling almost builds. Rain crashes down and thunder booms as I keep sinking further and further into the ground.
I’m just about to let it bury me when I realize that it actually is. I’m being buried alive by the mud and rain. Laylen rolls to his side and I hear him say something, but his voice is muddled with the mud oozing into my ears.
“Laylen!” I cry and I feel him grab onto my arm, but the ground only opens up and swallows me whole.
Chapter 20
“Feel it, Gemma,” someone whispers. “Feel what you really are…”
“No, Gemma, don’t…” a soft voice whispers. I know that voice. It’s my mother’s.
I open my eyes to the yard covered with metal objects surrounding me. “I don’t feel anything.”
“That’s because you’re cold,” someone says as I sit up and glance around the junkyard. “And heartless.”
“No, she’s not,” my mother says and she emerges out from behind some metal crates. “She’s good and that’s why you’re so worried.”
“Yes, she is,” the voice purrs. “She’s bad and you’ll soon see that I’m right.”
“I am not,” I argue as ravens flock around my head. “I’m just confused.”
“Confused.” The voice grows louder and then laughs. “You’re messing with everyone’s head and playing with their emotions. You’re downright evil, which is good… it’s what I want.”
I suddenly recognize the voice. “Stephan.”
“Gemma, don’t listen to him,” my mom begs, not moving toward me, reaching out to me instead. “Please.”
“You know you never seem to learn from your mistakes,” Stephan talks over my mom as he steps out into the open. “You repeat them…which is beneficial for me and what I have planned. It’ll make it easier to turn you.”
“Turn me,” I say. “As in evil? Because that’ll never happen.”
“You’ll see,” he states with confidence as my upper arm begins to burn. “I know you have it in you. That’s why I chose you.”
***
My head is throbbing and I could swear my skull has been cracked open. When I open my eyes, I expect to be buried in the mud, but instead I’m in a small room with sunshine yellow walls, which is decorated with masks, pictures, and a colorful rain stick. The air smells lavishly of rain and forest.
I quickly start to sit up, but I’m jerked back down. I bounce against the mattress, restricted by metal cuffs and chains that are secured to my wrists and legs and tied to the bedposts.
“Shit,” I curse. My legs are spread out and my arms are above my head, locked and losing circulation. My clothes are caked in mud and my hair feels crusty.
Where am I? And how the hell did I get here? I don’t have an answer for either since the last thing I can remember is sinking into the dirt.
The crystal ball is still in my pocket and I close my eyes to try to Foresee my way out of here, but I can’t even so much as feel a charge of energy; despite how much I let my emotions own me. I give up and start jerking on my arms and legs, but the cuffs only bite at my skin. I use every ounce of my energy, trying to get away, until my wrist and ankles rupture open and bleed all over the bed.
“There’s no use trying to get away.” Nicholas’s face appears above me. His arms are crossed, the sleeves of his red shirt shoved up to his elbows, and he has a cut just above his right eyebrow as well as a bruise on his cheek bone.
“What happened to your face?” I ask derisively. “Did one of the Death Walkers beat you up?”
He makes sure to keep his distance from me, leaving just enough room that I can’t slam my head against his. “Watch what you say. Remember, I’ve got all the control here.”
I let out an unsteady breath. “Where am I?” I aim for a composed voice, however the fact that he has all the power at the moment makes me extremely nervous. Nicholas is the kind of guy who will do things to me.
“My house,” he says simple, motioning at a nightstand beside the bed and an antique oval mirror on the door. There’s also a window, but the curtain blocks my view to the outside. I wonder where his home is? In the City of Crystal? The Kingdom of Fey? Somewhere else?
“How did I get here?” I ask. “How did you drag me through the mud like that?”
“I already explained this to you,” he says. “It’s called mind manipulation, Gemma. You could do it too—make people see things that aren’t really there—if you’d just train as a Foreseer.”
I swallow hard. I’d almost forgotten how Nicholas could make me see things that weren’t real. “But I blocked your mirage power.”
“That wasn’t my mirage power. God, you know nothing about what you can do.” He fakes a pout. “It’s quite tragic, really.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I make my hand as narrow as possible and attempt to squeeze it out of the cuff, but the metal only bites my skin and I wince. “And what did you do to my power?”
“You can’t use your power because of the praesidium.” He points around at tiny marble sized lavender balls scattered all over the floorboards, the windowsill, and the footboard of the bed. “They trap your Foreseer energy within you,” he says, sinking down to the bed.
I arch my back and wiggle my body so forcefully that the bed thumps against the wall. “Let me go!”
He slams his hand down on my stomach, hard enough that it knocks the wind out of me and I cough as I struggle for air.
“I think you know why… you understand now, what I am and who I work for.” He squats down on the floor so that he’s eye level with me and starts playing with my hair hanging over the side of the bed. “I tried to do things the easy way, but you just wouldn’t let me.”
“Let you what?” I ask, inching my head to the side to get out of his reach. “One minute you’re trying to teach me how to be a better Foreseer and the next you’re attacking me and chasing me down with a herd of Death Walkers. It doesn’t make any sense.”
He laughs at my pathetic attempt when I yank so hard on the chains they make a loud snapping noise. I bend my neck up, and aim my forehead for his, but he leaps to his feet and hops back, fury flashing across his face. But then he quickly collects himself and smiles again.
“You’re so feisty,” he says, his fingers seeking the nightstand.
I glare at him. “Let me go you sick, perverted a**hole!”
“Now, why would I do a stupid thing like that?” He opens the top drawer and retrieves a teal crystal ball that shimmers even in the inadequate light.
I freeze. “The Ira.” Suddenly there’s a spark of light in this very dim, grey situation. I could get it from him. I just need to figure out how to escape with it.
He glances down at it in his hand and then amusement dances in his eyes as he tosses it back and forth between his hands, like he’s playing catch. “Oh, I almost completely forgot that you wanted this.”
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
He catches the Ira and then taps his finger against his lip. “You know, I could make a bargain with you.” He extends his hand toward my face and I twist my neck to the side, cringing as he strokes my temple with his fingers. “You know Stephan wants you really badly.” He ravels a strand of my hair around his finger. “And I’m supposed to give him to you... but I might break the rules and keep you.” He leans down and sticks his nose in my hair, smelling it. “You smell so utterly delicious.”
I fling my head in his direction and click my teeth together, trying to bite his finger, but he quickly withdraws his face and hands from my hair. “You know he’s going to end the world with me.” I know it’s a long shot, but perhaps if he understands what’s going to happen and the severity of it, then he won’t want to help Stephan anymore. “Everyone will die. Even you… I’ve seen it.”
“I don’t need you to explain what Stephan is planning to do,” He snaps, yanking down the sleeves of his shirt. “I understand more than you do.”
“And you’re simply okay with letting him kill everyone?” I shake my head at him. “Don’t you even have a heart or are you seriously that cold?”
“I think the real question is just how heartless and cold you are,” he sneers.
My jaw nearly drops. His words almost match what Stephan said to me in the dream I had right before I woke up here. Maybe it wasn’t a dream, though. Maybe it was a vision.