Ryatt
The main house in the isles echoes with screams. Ella runs ahead of me, her face flushed and colorless as she darts up the stairs and out of sight, leaving me standing in the foyer. All around me, archways lead out onto a wide circular terrace that surrounds the house in its entirety, the view nothing short of peaceful and serene.
But the screams… gods, Maddy’s shouts of pain pierce my ears and send shivers down my spine, settling in my gut.
Two women dressed in white rush past me, murmuring to each other as they carry handfuls of towels up the stairs. They pass another woman–another healer–carrying a basket of soiled linen in her arms. Blood stains the once white fabric as she runs down another corridor.
My stomach twists at the sight, and I turn toward the terrace, unsure of what to do, where to go, or what to even think.
I step out into the sunlight and close my eyes for a moment, trying to catch my breath.
But a scraping sound catches my attention. I open my eyes and turn my head, spotting Isaac seated on a wrought iron bench on the far side of the terrace. He has his head in his hands, his shoulders tense as another scream echoes through the house behind me.
It’s none of my business. I remind myself that as I glance at the foyer behind me. But then, Maddy cries out again, and I turn back to Isaac in time to see him curl into himself, dragging his hands over his face.
I graze my tongue over my lower teeth, then flex my jaw. What do I even say to a man whose mate is giving birth to his child? In his case, children? Especially when it sounds like she is in excruciating pain.
I walk back into the foyer and search through the rooms that surround the staircase. Everything is open–every room connected by arches that lead to sitting rooms, a kitchen, and eventually a small library with a bar cart resting against one stark white wall, bottles of liquor glistening in the late afternoon sunlight. I thumb through the bottles, finding an untouched bottle of scotch. It glows with amber light as I tuck it under my arm and find my way back to the foyer.
The screams have tapered off, but I can hear the gentle hum of voices lifted in encouragement. That has to be a good sign, right?
Isaac is still sitting on the bench when I walk back out onto the terrace. I know he can sense my presence, whether by my footsteps or my scent, but he doesn’t look at me as I approach, nor when I sit down beside him.
I open the bottle and take a long, deep drag straight from the source, then wordlessly hand it to him.
He takes it and drinks deeply, not bothering to look at the label.
We sit in silence for what feels like a long time.
“What does it feel like?” My tone is heavy, somewhat weary, and laced with an anxiousness I haven’t yet been able to voice.
He knows exactly what I’m asking. “Like I’m losing her with every second that passes,” he replies so quietly I almost miss it, his voice drowned out by the waves breaking against the cliff below. “I feel everything across our bond. Her pain, her fear. Her–her strength.” He toys with the bottle for a moment before taking another long pull, and then hands it back to me.
“Why aren’t you with her?”
He looks at me then, his eyes a bright, glacier blue and full of desperation. “What am I supposed to do to help her? I can’t–” He cuts himself off, his breath catching in his throat. “I couldn’t stand there and watch her suffer. All I wanted to do was shift and shred the room around us. Her being in pain is my worst fucking nightmare.”
And I did this to her.
He doesn’t need to voice those words. They’re written clearly on his face as he looks out at the water again.
He sucks in a breath and exhales sharply. “The other women kicked me out of the room, anyway. I was told someone would come get me when it was… time.”
A smirk plays over my lips as I take another drink from the bottle and offer it to him, but he shakes his head. I put the lid on it and set it between us on the bench. “You knew about this, though. You knew she’d struggle.”
He stiffens a bit, keeping his eyes on the water. It’s the confirmation I need. Ella said something to me about him a while ago that’s been stuck in my mind ever since. “My brother. He can do it; he can read the stars.”
Ella and I had been walking down to the lake during the eclipse when she’d told me, likely not realizing the significance of it.
“We call people like you mystics in Eastonia,” I continue, resting my elbows on my knees. “They read the stars, pull the prophecies from the heavens.”
I’m met with more silence. I glance at him, noticing the way his jaw has gone tight.
“No one else knows, do they?”
He reaches for the bottle. “No.”
“Ella assumes.”
“Ella knows only what I’ve told her and assumes the rest. I never told her that.”
“Did you see our arrival here?”
“Not clearly,” he admits, clearing his throat. He licks his lips before continuing, “I don’t know how to decipher what I see.”
“If you’d been born on my side of the veil, you would’ve been scooped up as a child and spent your young life in training. Consider yourself lucky.”
“I don’t,” he says. “If I knew how to use this… faucet of myself, maybe I would have seen the outcome of the war before it began.I would have seen that my assumptions about not having a mate weren’t true and found her years ago, before she went through such disgusting treatment by her stepmother.”
“What else have you seen when it comes to your mate?”
He closes his eyes and exhales slowly.
“I see two kings,” he says, then swallows hard. “I see my hands splayed on a desk while I choose who is to take my place.” His eyes meet mine. “But I don’t see her. I don’t feel her.”
All I can do is nod. Several seconds of tense silence pass between us.
“Do you want to know what I see about Ella?”
I’m not sure I do.
He doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “Before the war, I saw her plunging a knife into my chest.”
“Yeah, that actually did happen.”
He shoots me a look. “I’m well aware. My mate can’t keep a secret to save her life.”
At least he’s not totally bitter about it.
“Ella will raise armies, she’ll topple kingdoms,” he says softly, distantly. “She’ll turn on all of us.”
“What?” My voice strains as I turn to him.
“I see her in a mask of crimson. I see her buried alive in her own grief to the point she forgets who she is and what she’s fighting for. She loses something precious, and it kills her.” His brows pinch together as he stares absently at the tiles beneath us. “It changes her.”
“What does she lose?”
His brows raise. “I have no idea.”
I lean back against the bench and cross my arms over my chest. “I could have lived without knowing this.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it's you she loses.”
“It doesn’t, but thanks.”
“I’m wrong more often than not. I get strange flashes of knowledge when I’m scanning the stars–like pieces of a movie that are all out of order. I don’t consider it a power or a gift, by any means. It never makes sense. Never.”
I try to tear my mind from the image he just painted for me about Ella. Another scream eches around us. Isaac stiffens, seemingly holding his breath.
“Prophecies mean nothing, Isaac. They’re just warnings. Possible outcomes. Maddy… she'll be fine. She has your mother beside her. Isla’s gifts of healing–”
“And if she’s not fine?” he says sharply. “I nearly killed my mother during my birth. Had it not been for that fucking diamond, we’d both be dead. My mate is having two babies, Ryatt. What am I supposed to do without her if anything goes wrong?”
The pain in his voice cuts me deep.
“I don’t know,” I answer, because I don’t know what he’d do. I don’t know what I would do.
“Your Highness!” A healer comes running out onto the terrace, her cheeks flushed from tearing through the castle. “It’s time.”
I stand and watch Isaac go, his shoulders rigid and hands flexed. He looks at me over his shoulder, his eyes locking on mine, and he gives me a slow nod.
I nod back, a silent blessing leaving my lips to whatever gods are listening. To the Goddess that rules this realm.
Then I let my mind wrap about his vision of Ella. He hadn’t told me when it had come to him, if it was recent or something he saw years ago. She’d worn the mask to bring us here. She might have toppled Rifthold in the process.
She’d destroyed a kingdom. That had already happened.
But raising armies?
Against what?
And if his vision hadn’t been about the two of us coming through the veil and what should have been my death, then what does she lose that would change her so greatly?
I run my hands down my thighs, squinting into the sunlight.
Then I hear a baby cry.
I let out a deep breath, closing my eyes against the sun. Voices travel down through open windows above me–laughter, awing, murmurs of joy and relief.
But I feel the change swiftly, like it’s barreling toward me on a violent tide. Shivers of power coast over my skin, my shadows flickering back to life as I sense a threat.
I rise, turning toward the house just in time for a scream to crash through the air–a sound full of such anguish I nearly lose my foot as I race into the foyer.
“Maddy, Maddy, Maddy!” Someone is begging. Other voices join in–a chorus of pain and desperation that funnels down the stairs as I rush up them, skipping three steps at a time.
I charge into the room reaching behind me for the sword that’s no longer at my back, the sword I haven’t seen since I knelt in Kane’s fortress and watched my father–my real father–get thrown by Kane’s powers.
A crowd of healers, nurses, and Ella’s family members gather around the bed as Maddy writhes, her eyes open to slits as she silently begs for help.
“This baby is far too big,” Jane says. “Maddy, listen, we have to move you to the infirmary, right now–”
“No–no–” Maddy cries out, shaking her head from side to side. Blood pools out beneath her.
I look wildly around the room. Isaac is standing motionless, his arms cradling his newborn son.
But then I realize everyone is motionless. The room has simply… stopped moving. Voices hang in the air. The curtains fail to drift in the now still, silent breeze.
And then I see Ella, her eyes blazing with silver fire, whispering into Maddy’s ear.
“It’s all right. Catch your breath. Catch your breath, Maddy. You’re doing great. You just need a moment. That’s all. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. You must do this. You’re strong. You’re just tired. Rest now. You’re almost done. It’s almost over.”
“Death as in the displacement of the soul. Whoever has this power would be able to move through planes of time.” Arthur, the librarian in Veiled Valley… his words whisper through my head as I watch in both awe and horror as my mate stills time itself to a crawl.
Ella has done this once before. She held Isaac’s life in her hands for months.
What kind of power is this?
Ella looks at me, a soft smile playing over her lips.
And then the room erupts in noise again, and Maddy opens her eyes wide, and screams with determination.