by Kaitlyn Hoyt
Chapter Two
Colton
“Colton, staring at her isn’t going to bring her back,” Emma says. I tear my eyes from Ryanne and look up at Emma. Her blue eyes are glossed over from her own tears. She has red splotches under her red, puffy eyes from crying. Ryanne was her best friend, but right now, she doesn’t understand.
“She can’t be gone.” I shake my head and clench my jaw, trying to stop the tears again. “She can’t be.” Emma crawls over to me and rests her head on my shoulder, comforting me.
“She changed the course of history, guys. Don’t you understand that?” Incendia says. “She’s supposed to be here at the end. She’s supposed stop Dravin. I’ve never seen anyone do what she did earlier. She fought all the men that we’d been fighting for hours in like ten minutes! No one else can do that.”
“We are not going to try and find someone to replace her,” I growl.
“There’s no one to replace her,” Incendia says. “I was supposed to die; not her.”
“Incendia, Ryanne saw that vision for a reason. She was supposed to stop your death. Be thankful you get another chance. Don’t dwell on what can’t be changed,” Bragden whispers to her.
Don’t dwell on what can’t be changed. Does he understand how difficult that is? It feels like my heart is literally breaking. I feel like part of me is missing. Ryanne filled a void that I didn’t know I had before I met her. She broke down all barriers and filled my life with laughter, happiness, love…she filled the void with her love. Now that it’s gone, I’m left with nothing but grief and pain.
I look across the room at Liam, who’s sitting with his head against the wall and a hand across his chest. He can barely breathe. Natalie is frantically trying to calm him, but without Ryanne here, there’s nothing she can do.
Ryanne was the glue in our group. She kept everyone together. I can already feel a rift forming between us. Tom’s angry. Bragden’s a bundle of emotions. He’s upset over Ryanne, mad at Enrique, confused over Incendia, and worried about his brother. Larkin and Kyril don’t know what to do. Larkin’s pacing the room, trying to remain calm. Liam’s dying. Natalie distressed, trying to help him. Emma won’t let David console her. Logan’s frustrated that, yet again, he couldn’t save her when she needed it.
Me? I can’t feel anything. It’s like my body has shut off and refuses to let me know my soulmate is dead. Liam gasps loudly and leans forward. We all turn and look at him, confused at the sudden change.
“Something’s happening,” he grunts. My eyes move back to Ryanne again. She’s lying on her back in the middle of the hotel room. Her dark hair is fanned out around her head messily from the fall. The contrast between her pale skin and dark hair is more apparent. The streak of blood that dripped out of her mouth has dried. The wound on her stomach is still bleeding onto the carpet.
Liam takes a deep breath. We all turn and look at him. He can breathe? He crawls away from Natalie and moves toward Ryanne. Something is obviously going on. When he nears her, Ryanne’s body begins shaking. What? Everyone takes a step forward, wanting to know what is happening. Her body seems to inflate with oxygen. She gasps and sucks in air and then starts coughing. More blood comes out of her mouth. She’s alive? The room is silent around me. How is this possible? Black liquid starts oozing out of the stomach wound. Logan pushes past everyone and tries healing her again. His hands give off a faint glow as he tries to close the wound.
I shoot up when I see the skin start to close. It’s working. I move Ryanne’s head so I can see her, but her eyes are closed. She still looks like death. I push her hair away from her face. Logan pulls his hands away and looks her over. She hasn’t opened her eyes, but she’s breathing. Small shakes still take over her body. How is she alive? She gasps again as her body goes still. I stare at her waiting for some sign of movement. Her chest begins to slowly rise and rise with each breath. She’s alive.
“I guess she really is too stubborn for death,” Emma says.
Tom hands me a wet washcloth. I move Ryanne toward me and clean the blood of her face, turning the white washcloth red. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do when we check out of this room. I lift Ryanne up and lay her down on the bed. She’s still so pale. Her body looks so fragile right now.
Turning around, I look at the room. “How is this possible? She was dead. You all saw it. Logan couldn’t heal her. How is she alive?”
Mr. Howick pushes off the wall and looks at me. “I’ve heard stories about when a person dies before their time, they are given another chance. In every person’s life, there is something they want to change, say, or do differently. Ryanne wasn’t supposed to die today, so she got another chance. I don’t know where she went or what she did, but she had to do something. If she wasn’t able to do it, she would have died permanently.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned that before?” I ask. It would have been nice to know that there was a small chance that she could come back from this.
“There was no point. It wasn’t a given that she would return. There was always a possibility that she wouldn’t have come back. Not a whole lot of people are willing to change that late in the game.”
“So what do we do?”
“Wait for her to wake up. There’s not a whole lot we can do right now,” Tom suggests.
“I hate waiting.”
*****
Opening my eyes, I roll over onto my side. I’m back at the hotel room. Alive. With a gasp, I shoot up. I’m alive. Colton jolts awake and gets into a defensive stance. When he sees me, he reaches out and jerks me to him, more forceful than necessary. However, that’s exactly what I need right now. I bury myself in his arms and cry into his shoulder. I did it! I made it back. His arms tighten around me when he feels my tears on his chest.
Burying his face in my hair, he starts murmuring something. I can feel his lips moving against my skin, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Leaning back, I look up at him. “What?”
“Don’t you ever do that to me again, Ry. I love you so much. Don’t you dare scare me like that.” Before I can say anything, he crushes his lips to mine. I lean forward and kiss him back just as passionately. I know that I look like crap and don’t feel much better, but I don’t care. I almost died for good. I would have never seen him again. I thought that I would never get to see him again.
When I hear the sound of a door opening, I pull back and look around the room. “It’s okay. It was just David and Emma,” Colton says.
I turn back and look at Colton. He’s watching me. Normally, I would squirm under his gaze, but today I don’t. I lean forward and kiss him lightly again. “I’m sorry.”
“I love you too. I’m sorry I didn’t say it back before.” Colton wraps his arms around me and pulls me against his chest. I curl into this side. I can hear his heart beating in his chest—the heart that belongs to me. He holds my heart and I his. I wrap my arm around his waist and pull him closer to me. “There was nothing I could do, Ry. I watched you die right in front of me again, but I couldn’t do anything this time. I couldn’t,” he choked. I roll over and prop my arms on his chest.
“I couldn’t let her die, Colton. She’s Bragden’s soulmate.”
“What?”
“James told me. I was given that vision for a reason which means that Incendia has a bigger role in all this. We need her alive.”
“We need you alive too, Ryanne,” he tells me. “You’re my soulmate.”
“Which is why I’m here,” I say.
Colton reaches forward and tucks a loose curl behind my ear. “How are you here?”
“I overcame some things,” I vaguely say.
“I understand,” Colton says. I’ll reveal everything to him one day, but for now, I think that I should keep it to myself. I start to crawl out of bed, I really do need to take a shower, but Colton pulls me back. “Just let me hold you for a little bit.”
I lean back down and rest against his chest. I’ll never walk away from him again.
Never.
After my shower, I call everyone back into the hotel room. They are all sitting around waiting for me to start talking. I’m trying to ignore the large blood stain in the middle of the carpet. I don’t need to be reminded that I died recently…again. However, my eyes keep landing on it. I died in that spot. In that exact spot…I pulled a dagger out of my skin.
I tear my eyes away from the spot and move toward the door. Before my gaze gets there, I meet a pair of grey eyes staring at me. Without thinking, I run across the room and launch myself at Liam. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I hug him too me. A second later, I feel his arms wrap around my waist and my feet are lifted off the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to him. I don’t know what he went through specifically while I was…preoccupied on another plane…but I know that he was probably affected. Claire told me that if I didn’t make it back Liam would have died.
Putting me back on the ground, Liam crouches down so that he’s at eyelevel with me. “Please don’t put us through that again,” he whispers. I’m aware that everyone is watching us, but I don’t care. “There are too many people here that love you, and none of us like witnessing that.” I can see the sadness in his eyes. My eyes move back to the bloodstain on the floor again, but Liam grabs my chin and makes me look at him.
“I don’t care what happens to me, Ryanne. I accepted the consequences when I gave you that pendant, but look around you. Look at all these people that just watched you die.” When Liam lets go of my chin, I glance around the room. Like I suspected, everyone is watching us—all with relieved looks on their faces. “You keep this group together,” he whispers to me. I return my attention to him, and bite my lip, trying to keep my tears down.
Stepping forward again, I hug him. Liam always knows what to say and what I need to hear. He’s amazing like that. I pull back, but before I step away, I place a small kiss on his cheek. He gives me a surprised look, but stands back up and moves beside Natalie.
Trying to lighten the mood, I give him a small smile. “At least I still haven’t gotten shot again.”
“Don’t jinx it,” he mumbles, but I see the small smile he’s trying to hide.
I start to head back to Colton when someone else grabs me and hugs me. Instantly recognizing Bragden, I hug him back. Because of me, he almost lost his brother. I apologize to him like I did Liam, but he instantly starts shaking his head. He doesn’t say anything though. He doesn’t have to. I can read everything I need to from his expression.
Letting go of me, I finally make it across the room and back to my soulmate. “Ok, I think we need to leave here. We need to get back to finding other mages. We need to go back to the plan.”
“Ryanne, you just died,” Emma says.
“And now I’m alive. I’ve died before, you all know that. I’m back, it’s all good. Let’s move on from that. We need to stick with the plan.”
“You don’t want to rest?” Tom asks.
“No, I don’t need to rest. I’ve slept long enough. I’m fine. My magic is healing me as we speak. We need to get a move on. Claire told me what would have happened if I actually died, and I am not going to let that happen, so we need to go and put the future back on its intended track.”
“You spoke with Claire again?” Tom asks me.
“Claire, Lily, and my mom, but that’s beside the point.”
“Lily?” Colton asks, “Lily’s dead?”
“No, I helped her. She wasn’t supposed to die yet either. She’s probably in the hospital right now. Anyway, stop distracting me. The point is I know what will happen if we don’t continue on the intended course. I’m not going to mention specifics, but you won’t like it. Like Incendia said before I…stepped in front of the dagger, we need more mages. We need more help.”
Everyone continues to stare at me. They all expected me to sit down and rest for the next couple days. I promised my mom that I’d try to get over my insecurities and I’m trying to. I don’t think I’m strong enough yet to accomplish this task, but I can feel my magic coursing through my veins. I can feel the power flowing through me, and every day, my magic grows. Every day, I’m getting stronger. I’m getting closer and closer to the mage I need to be, but I know I’m not going to become that mage by sitting down and resting for days. I need to move. I need to do something purposeful. I need to start accepting my responsibilities and do what needs to be done.
“Oh, and I need to put the protective enchantment on you, Incendia,” I tell her.
Still no one talks. I know what they want to know. “You want to know what happened to me while I was…dead?”
They all nod. Taking a deep breath, I look up toward the ceiling and begin, “I woke up in this hotel room alone. You guys were gone and everything looked perfect. Claire came and told me that I wasn’t supposed to have died and that there was a way to get back, but she couldn’t tell me anything. I left the hotel. Pretended to see some tumbleweed. Ran into Lily. Walked away from Lily. She caught up to me. Told me how she died. I forgave her. She forgave her step-dad. Poof, she’s alive. I walked to the cemetery. Cried. Boo-hoo. Tears. The whole she-bang. Then I promised to overcome some insecurities and viola, here I am.” I rush through the explanation because I don’t want everyone to dwell on it for too long. I don’t want to have to explain anything in more detail. I’m not ready for that yet. “You guys good?”
They all continue to stare at me. Thankfully, I feel the familiar pull of my magic. Since everyone is sitting and I am standing, I know that there is no way anyone will catch me. I close my eyes and fall to the ground, going into a vision before I feel the physical pain of landing on the floor.
Chapter Three
Colton
Insecurities? What insecurities could be so bad that she would have to overcome them in death? I’ll have to ask her about it later. Ryanne bites her lip and looks around the room, waiting for everyone’s reply. She spoke really fast, so I’m sure everyone is trying to catch up with her words. They all look surprised. I know that Ry left out a lot of information. She doesn’t want to tell us everything.
She sighs and opens her mouth to speak again, but freezes. “Travis,” I warn as Ryanne starts to sway. There’s no way I can make it across the room fast enough to catch her. As she starts to fall, Travis jumps forward and catches her right before she hits the ground.
“Dadgumit. That was a close one,” he says as he sits up, adjusting Ryanne on his lap. “Does she always just fall like that?”
“She didn’t use to. When she first got her magic, she would have enough time to warn us before she fell. Now, it just happens so suddenly that she’s unable to say anything,” I explain.
Tom moves forward. “She’s right though. We do need to get a move on. We’re sitting ducks right now. Ryanne’s enchantment seems to be working since Dravin wasn’t able to detect the magic in her, but we can’t just rely on that. We can’t stay in one place for too long. We attract too much attention as it is.”
“Can we discuss on this when she wakes up?” I suggest.
“Colton’s right. She could be seeing something that changes everything,” Liam says.
“I’m not,” Ryanne mumbles as she sits up. Travis helps her. Ryanne turns around and thanks him.
“What did you see?” I ask.
Ignoring me, she turns and looks at Larkin. I hate when she does that. She knows that it annoys me. I see the small smile she’s trying to hide. Stubborn girl. “Come on, Larkin. We gotta go.”
“Go where?” he asks when Ryanne stops in front of him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I tell her. Still ignoring me, she puts a hand out to help Larkin up. Larkin grabs onto her extended hand and stands. She leans up and whispers the location in Larkin’s ear. He looks over her head at me, but grabs onto her arm and transports them out of the room.
“He does it because he knows it annoys you, Colton,” Emma says.
“Wouldn’t you get annoyed if you just saw your
soulmate die? Claire told me not to let her out of my sight because she’s in danger, and I can’t even do that.”
“She’s not in danger, Colton. She knows what she is doing…usually. She didn’t look like she was hiding anything too serious. I think she didn’t tell you because she knows you’ll make her stay here. I know she doesn’t like upsetting you, so she wouldn’t do it on purpose,” Emma says.
“We weren’t given the visions. She’s the only one that sees what’s going on outside of this room. She’s the only one that can change anything,” Kyril says, “and Larkin just likes making you mad, so he goes along with it.”
“Well he needs to stop doing that,” I say. Leaning back against the bed, I try to remain calm while I wait for my soulmate to come back.
Larkin transports back into the room holding an unconscious girl in his arms. She has bruises all over her body and her head is wrapped up in gauze. “Lily?”
“Ryanne said she needed our help,” Larkin explains as he places her down on the bed and transports back out of the room. We all turn and look at the girl who’s completely out lying on the bed. Logan tentatively stands up and walks over to her.
“Am I supposed to heal her?”
“Yes,” Ryanne says when she and Larkin reappear. “We’ll need her.”
“She’s a human.”
“Not completely,” Ryanne says as Logan begins to heal her.
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“Like me, Lily’s real dad left when she was a baby, so she never knew him. However, her real dad was a mage, so Lily is half mage. She has magic in her.”
“How do you know that?” I ask her.
“She’s right,” Incendia confirms. “She does have some magic in her. I don’t think she’s come into her powers though. It’s not very dominant yet.”
Logan reaches down and places his hands on either side of Lily’s face, focusing on her head injury. I walk over to Ryanne and pull her away from Larkin. “I need to talk to you,” I whisper to her.
