by Raine Thomas
She took a testing sip of the tea. When that sip stayed down, she took another.
He waited until she was done with the entire cup and then set it on the counter. The tea would make her sleepy, so he gathered her up from the chair, then sat with her in his lap so he could hold her.
She sank against him. He felt the tremors running through her when he put his arms around her. Fresh fear clutched at his heart. She felt so fragile, as though she might break to pieces if he held her too tightly.
What in the hell had happened to weaken her like this?
Although his mother told him through thought that she had attempted to feed Kyr broth and water, she hadn’t been very successful since Kyr wasn’t awake. A lack of food and water would surely contribute to Kyr’s delicate state. His mother had also shared with him that Kyr had been unconscious until shortly before he arrived. That had been a blow all its own, as it had been more than two days since they crashed in the Luja megai. There was a lot of time unaccounted for between when his parents recovered Kyr and when he and Kyr had been separated.
He needed to know about that lost time to know how he could help her get better. As he had always done, he reached out to her mind for the answer.
She issued a keening wail and clutched her head, startling him.
“I’m so sorry, love,” he said roughly, hating himself when she started crying.
He placed a gentle kiss on her temple and tightened his hold on her. His head pounded in another form of punishment for his attempted intrusion. When he had tried to connect with her, some of her pain projected into him. Knowing that she was in even more pain than what he felt told him why she seemed so wretched. His stomach was suddenly none too steady, either.
Neither was his heart.
“What’s happening to me?” she whispered against his chest.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
But I’m going to kill whoever put these marks on you, he added to himself as he lightly traced her jaw and the side of her neck to comfort her.
Seeing her returned to her normal appearance had been a little jarring after all of their time in disguise. Why had her captor done such a thing? Had he been trying to confirm Kyr’s identity?
Ty could only assume so. It didn’t much matter right then. He just needed Kyr to get better.
Issuing soft, consoling words, he held her until her trembling subsided and her breathing evened out. His tension eased a bit when he knew she was sleeping. He prayed that she’d feel better when she woke up.
He rose from the chair and shifted her to rest more comfortably against his chest. Stepping out of the bathing chamber, he made his way down the main hallway of his childhood home and entered the cooking area, where he heard quiet voices. When he reached it, his gaze moved from his parents to his father’s sister, Lia. They looked up and grew quiet when they noticed him.
His mother squinted. “Yen-Ki…even with Kyr asleep, the connection between you is nearly blinding.”
She drew on a pair of eyeshades and handed a second pair to Lia. The action almost humored him, but the festering fear and anger he harbored in his gut wouldn’t let him indulge in such a frivolous reaction.
“We’ve cleaned the bedding in our room, son,” J’ael said, walking over and clasping Ty’s shoulder. “You can settle her there.”
Ty glanced down the hallway towards his parents’ bedroom, then back at Kyr.
“Why don’t you sit with Kyr on the couch, Tae?” Elly suggested instead, obviously sensing his reluctance to let Kyr go.
His mother was the only one who called him by his birth name, complete with the extra syllable that made it sound more like “Ty-ay.” He wasn’t quite sure how he’d become known to everyone else by his nickname, but even his father used it now. Hearing her call him Tae made the reality that he was home really sink in.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said.
She waved him off. “We’ll be right behind you. I was putting together some food and tea, as that’s what Alametrians do during times of trouble.”
“Thank the all-glorious Yen-Ki,” J’ael said with a pat of his stomach and a wink at his amanti. “I’ll join you, son.”
Ty nodded and turned to walk around the bend in the hallway that led to the family room. He found himself looking around to see how much things had changed since his childhood, which was the last time he’d been there. It was both reassuring and a little baffling that he noted very few changes at all.
“Your mother likes to pretend that she’s going to update the place someday,” J’ael said. “We both know she never will. She’s too sentimental.”
It didn’t surprise Ty that his father knew what he’d been thinking. J’ael was a powerful Mynder. Even though he couldn’t read Ty’s exact thoughts, he was very observant.
“She sure could have given this couch an upgrade without anyone’s feelings being hurt,” Ty commented as he gingerly took a seat on it. “This thing has seen better days.”
J’ael chuckled as he sat on the loveseat across from the couch. “We inherited that from your grandparents. We’re stuck with it until they pass, bless their souls. Besides, you were probably conceived on that sad excuse for furniture.”
Ty groaned. “I could have lived without that visual, thanks.”
Their humor faded when Kyr let out a choked sound and jerked in his arms. He pressed her to his chest and issued a shushing sound, touching his lips to the top of her head. Her body once again sagged against him and her breathing calmed.
He didn’t bother hiding his distress from his father, who wore a similar expression. “What can you tell me, Dad?”
J’ael frowned. “Not a whole hell of a lot. We got word about five nightfalls ago that you and Kyr were rumored to have crossed the protections. Elly and I figured you’d head here. We have some inkling of what’s been happening at the palace, and we know who out here we can trust. We’ve been scanning thoughts to track your whereabouts. We knew you were close, so we sent out some scouts to help you if needed. Elly and I have been trying not to change our routine, since we figure Vycor’s got eyes on us. If we went scouting, he’d know something was up.”
Ty nodded. He didn’t blame his parents for not going out themselves. They’d done the smart thing.
“Anyway, we got word earlier today from one of the scouts. He’d witnessed a single male carrying a female into an abandoned building. The female looked like the description we’d picked up for Kyr, but the male wore a cloak. The scout felt there was something wrong. The male wasn’t tall enough to be you, and the scout spotted bruising on Kyr’s face.”
Ty’s throat worked as he swallowed a curse. He caught an image of what his father described from his thoughts. The scout had conveyed exactly what he saw.
J’ael nodded, sensing the cause of Ty’s expression. “I decided that this bore personal investigation, Vycor be damned. I went out with a couple of the other scouts, taking care to do it discreetly to avoid raising suspicion. We went in and found Kyr. Her abductor was gone.”
Ty started to read his father’s memories only to have them blocked. Blinking, Ty met his father’s gaze.
“Don’t do that to yourself, son,” J’ael said. “Please.”
The look on his father’s face made Ty’s chest constrict. Whatever J’ael had seen when he rescued Kyr must have been bad.
Very bad.
Elly and Lia walked into the room with trays of food and tea, which they set on the coffee table. Taking one look at her son’s face, Elly frowned. She looked at her husband in search of an explanation.
“I just told him that I didn’t want him seeing what I saw earlier,” J’ael explained with an innocent lifting of his hands. “He doesn’t need to see it.”
Sighing, Elly sat beside him as Lia took the armchair situated catty-corner from the couch and loveseat. She asked, “Do you really feel you need to know, Tae?”
Before he could answer, Kyr made another mewling sound and thrashed in his arms. It too
k a while for him to calm her down this time. In the process of her writhing, she bared more of her skin to his gaze.
All of it was bruised.
No one spoke for a couple of minutes after she finally settled back down. Ty needed his own breathing to even out before he could speak, and everyone else seemed stunned and uncertain. Eventually, Lia spoke for the first time.
“Ty, would you like me to use my abilities on Kyr?” she asked in her soft, compassionate voice. “I can help you learn what happened.”
Lia had the ability to enter a person’s dreams. If Kyr hadn’t already helped him overcome the nightmares Vycor had implanted, Ty had intended to hunt down his aunt for help. He desperately wanted to know what Kyr had gone through, and he felt he needed to know if he was going to help her heal from whatever had weakened her. But he was worried about his aunt causing Kyr more pain by entering her mind.
“Lia’s work is done at the lowest possible level of intrusion,” J’ael said, obviously having followed his son’s logic. “The mind is wide open during sleep. I don’t think any harm would come to Kyr.”
Ty made up his mind. “All right. I’d like to try it. But I want to be connected to you, Aunt Lia, as you do this.”
“Of course. Just don’t interfere. That could have devastating consequences.”
In other words, he had to remember that he was observing a dream and he couldn’t go charging after Kyr’s attacker.
He nodded. Lia rose and walked over to sit beside him on the couch. She waited until Ty shifted Kyr so that she was lying across his lap with her head near Lia. Then she lightly touched Kyr’s temples and began the process of entering Kyr’s dreams.
They sifted through a variety of images: Kyr on Earth and other planets as she learned her life lessons, her in the palace as a child being disciplined by Shaya, her standing in the Judgment Chamber with the Shelvaks, her and Ty making love, her traveling with Gren to the Dark Lands. Each dream was a reflection of the actual event, Ty realized, with only a few changes inspired by the dream landscape.
Eventually, they landed upon the memory they sought. Kyr was falling in her parachute at what seemed an extreme rate of speed due to her dream state. She landed roughly, colliding with the tree where Ty found her chute. Along with Lia, Ty witnessed the shocking blow to Kyr’s face by the unknown male.
They flipped to the next sequence. They watched through Kyr’s eyes as she regained consciousness, registering things in her dream state that he suspected she hadn’t at the time. It was clear she had been under the influence of something powerful…something debilitating. He felt her fear when she was disrobed and she realized she couldn’t control her mind or her body. He heard her pleas for their baby that fell on merciless ears.
Then he watched helplessly as she was systematically tortured.
When it was over, Ty removed himself from his aunt’s thoughts. He blinked as the family room came back into focus and felt a drop of moisture trail down his cheek. He realized that his mother was now kneeling at his feet and clutching his hand. Her face was also glistening with tears.
“I’m so sorry, Ty,” Lia said. Her voice was full of emotion.
His mother released him when he shifted. His hands weren’t steady as he lifted Kyr to hold her against his chest again. If she had been awake, she would have felt the brisk thumps of his heart thrashing against his rib cage.
He couldn’t possibly convey just how enraged and appalled he was over what had been done to her. He was almost equally as terrified over what the strange V’larian drug might permanently do to her or their unborn child.
And he felt viciously betrayed…because her captor had been his cousin, Sem’s younger brother, Troi.
Chapter 24
“Troi? My sister’s son, Troi? Are you sure?”
Ty wished he could give his mother a response that wouldn’t break her heart, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t speak at all. It was Lia who had shared his cousin’s name with his parents.
“I’m sure of it,” Lia said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know how he could have done such awful things to Ma’jah Kyr. To anyone. Oh, Elly. It was unspeakable.”
Elly’s face was sickly pale beneath her dark eyeshades. She pushed herself to her feet and probably would have stumbled right into the untouched tray of food if J’ael hadn’t anticipated it. He was up and clutching her in a tight hug before she could move.
“I can think of no reason why Troi would do something like this,” J’ael said, rubbing his amanti’s back as she pressed her face against his chest.
“Ma’jah said…in the dream she said that Troi had been influenced,” Lia revealed. “Influenced by VycorDane.”
Ty’s jaw clenched so tight at the name that it was a wonder his teeth didn’t shatter. He once again thought of Vycor’s vow to destroy his family. If Ty didn’t get to him soon and stop him, Vycor would have all of his family at each other’s throats. He knew that if Troi had been in the room right then, Ty wouldn’t have been held accountable for his actions, whether or not Troi had been influenced.
“Can you make her forget what happened?” J’ael asked Lia.
Lia’s gaze moved to Kyr. “I’ve already done what I can. By sharing the dream with me, it reduces its impact on her psyche. She won’t forget it, but nor will it rule her.”
Elly had collected herself and now stood straight, brushing her tears aside. “Tae, Kyr needs rest. Let’s get her settled in our bed. She’ll sleep peacefully now.”
He didn’t want to go against his mother’s wishes, but he didn’t want to leave Kyr alone with her dreams…not after what he’d seen. His aunt spoke before he could come up with a sound argument to keep Kyr close.
“I’ll sit with her,” Lia assured him. “I’ll make sure her mind is at ease.”
“All right,” he relented.
He rose with Kyr and carried her down the hallway to his parents’ bedroom. When he walked in, he headed straight to the large bed. It dominated the space, covered with an ivory and navy blue comforter and a plethora of pillows. The carved wood and rose-gilt headboard was the same as it had been when he was a child. Some of his childhood artwork still decorated the walls, having been placed in fancy wood frames by his mother in a rather heroic attempt to make them look more impressive than they were. A tall bureau and a single nightstand completed the furnishings. As he laid Kyr in the bed, the sheets released a faintly floral scent.
“I have a nightgown she can wear,” Lia said, walking in behind him with a folded pink garment in her hands. “I managed to borrow a few things before you arrived.”
“Thanks, Aunt Lia,” he said, accepting the nightgown. The robe Kyr was wearing had seen better moments.
“Of course. I’ll give you a minute to get her settled.”
He waited until she closed the door behind her before he got to work removing the robe. It was harder—oh, so much harder—to handle seeing the bruises on Kyr’s body when he knew exactly how they had happened. She had suffered so much. They had suffered.
When would it be enough?
To avoid dwelling on it and letting it drag him down into a spiral of hate and despair, he focused on getting Kyr comfortable in the bed. He kissed her as he touched her to change her into the nightgown…her lips, her cheeks, her forehead, her abdomen…and murmured words he hoped she somehow heard in her sleep.
His aunt knocked and waited for him to invite her in. He thanked her again as she took a seat on the bed and gathered one of Kyr’s hands into her own.
She smiled. “You know you don’t have to thank me, Ty. She’s family, and we take care of our own.”
Neither of them mentioned that it was family that had put Kyr there. He just nodded and headed back to the family room with one last glance at Kyr.
He spotted his mother sitting on the couch he had abandoned. His father was nowhere in sight. Elly was adding cream to one of two cups of tea she had poured.
“Come and have a seat, Tae,” she urged, patting the couch
beside her. “I sent your father off to give us some time together.”
Ty obeyed, walking over and sitting beside her. He didn’t have an appetite for the food or tea still sitting on the table, but he knew his mother would fuss if he didn’t partake. He lifted the cup and saucer as she brought her own cup to her lips.
“You don’t have to drink that,” she told him. “I poured it out of habit, truth be told. I imagine it’s the last thing you want right now.”
Her insight didn’t surprise him. She was one of the most powerful females he knew. While female Mynders were more in tune with relationships and feelings than thoughts, she had always been as intuitive as many male Mynders. He knew that she wasn’t offended when he put the tea back on the table.
“Tae,” she said, “I know you can read our thoughts. But I feel it’s important that you hear directly from me and your father that we never for one minute believed that load of farsil dung that came from the palace.”
Ty met her intent gaze. An unseen weight slid from his mind. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to hear that until just then. Leave it to his mother to know, he mused.
“Thanks, Mom.”
She gave him a look that said he didn’t need to thank her. “It was a mockery of a trial. A blind mud rat could have seen that. We scanned numerous memories of it, and they all showed how absurd it was.” Her hand reached out and touched his. The gesture transported him briefly back to his childhood and the feeling of comfort she’d always provided him. “You have enough on your mind, my sweet, strong child. This should never have been a burden for you to carry.”
“I hadn’t realized it was,” he admitted. “But I suppose my judgment has been clouded by everything that’s happened.”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “Tell me.”
He did, starting with receiving the news that Kyr was in danger during her life lesson on Earth. The retelling was concise, as he was trained to report. Thorough and factual. His mother didn’t interrupt once, merely nodding and making small sounds of understanding. He knew she inferred much that wasn’t explicitly stated. There was something very reassuring about that.
