“It’s the only way I know how to explain it. Something formed on your skin. It poured out of your eyes and ears.” Ilyan looked away and closed his eyes. I could feel his stress rolling off of his body in waves. It added to my fear and I grabbed his wrist, needing some form of connection.
“It’s okay, Joclyn. You’re going to be okay.” His voice was strong, but I could hear the lie. He didn’t really know if I would be alright, and it scared me.
“I guess you never should have forced me to get out of bed,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. Ilyan’s head snapped up to look deep into me, the intensity of his gaze like a pressure against my soul.
“I guess not,” he said, his hand moving to trace the lines of the braid.
“I heard what you said to Ovailia,” I said. Ilyan’s body stiffened as if I had caught him saying something he shouldn’t. “About how my magic isn’t fighting you anymore,” I clarified. He relaxed a bit, surging his powerful tendrils through me again.
“You are the only one I have ever met who actively fights me, or is strong enough to do so.”
“What?” I let my question trail away, not knowing what to ask, but needing clarification.
“My magic is stronger than most, Joclyn. Most of the time it floods into another person and at times I have trouble controlling my own strength. But you have always fought me. You are as powerful as I am it seems.”
My eyes opened wide as I tried to process what he had said. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not, his tone could go either way. But regardless of whether I was normally powerful or not, I still couldn’t reach my magic right now.
“I tried... I tried to use my magic. But it didn’t respond.” Ilyan’s eyes grew wide and my heart thumped again in fear. “What’s happening to me, Ilyan?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But, I have ideas.”
“What?”
“Do you remember at the party?” he asked, and my body stiffened automatically. “When Ryland sealed himself to you, completing the Z?lství?”
I didn’t respond. I only stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
“When magic is sealed together it is a permanent union. If Edmund has made Ryland break the connection between the two of you, your magic would be separated from half of itself. When one of our kind who has mated dies, they take half of their partner’s magic but leave half of their own behind. But, if Ryland has broken that connection…” Ilyan paused and dragged his hand heavily through his hair, his eyes darting away from me.
“He’s broken…” My voice caught as the air sucked itself out of my lungs. The Ryland I knew was gone, but breaking our bond would mean there was no hope of getting him back. The thought terrified me.
“So what makes you think that this could be caused by a broken bond?”
Ilyan looked away, making me nervous about what he was about to say.
“Ilyan?”
“I have seen it once before, when my Mother died. With half of her own magic gone, and none of my Father’s to replace it, her body began to shut down. It would be akin to what happens to humans when an organ in their body does not work. They fade and suffer until they die.”
“So I am dying,” I cut him off.
“I believe so.”
“And you can’t save me this time?” Panic clenched my stomach, spreading pain deep into my legs. I ignored it. “Ilyan?”
“I am trying, Siln?. There are normally ways around this, but nothing is working.”
His eyes were shining with tears and boring into me with that same pained look he had before. He moved his hand from my head to rest his fingers against my mark.
“I can’t let you die, Siln?. I will do everything in my power to stop it.”
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I couldn’t cope with seeing him cry over me. I didn’t want to.
I rolled away from him, calling out as the pain engulfed my body again. Ilyan helped to move me and lifted the blanket over me.
“Sleep, Joclyn. You need your strength.”
I barely registered that the flow of his magic had changed before I was plunged into the black abyss of sleep.
I had been here before.
I had stood in the center of this clearing a hundred times. I had looked up into these trees and watched their long arms stretch to the sky in hopeful longing. I watched them now, and although they were the same, something was terrifyingly different. Perhaps it was the color, or the way the branches cut a jagged edge into the night sky. Whatever it was, it made my heart stutter.
A thick mist swirled around my legs, picking up the light-weight cotton of my pajama pants. It crept over the forest floor in a dense cloud that wet my bare feet and made the forest floor look like a living thing with its rise and flow.
I heard a deep growl behind me and my body tensed, although I didn’t dare to turn. There was a pause as the mist continued to roll and swell before the growl returned accompanied by warm putrid breath against my ear. The deep sound rumbled through me as the fog swelled, the owner’s hard chest rippled against my back.
“Hello, Joclyn.”