“She’s in pain!”
Percy barked a laugh. “If you think this is pain, just wait.”
Dhara could hear what they were saying, but she was too busy trying to writhe away from the sensations crowding her nervous system to engage with the conversation. She wanted to strangle Percy for what he was doing to her, even though she knew he was helping her, and it terrified her to know that this was only the beginning of what she was about to endure.
Another pain stabbed at her, this time in her throat, but when her hands flew up to feel the injury that must be there, she found nothing there. There was no wound or blood, but she felt as though someone was stabbing her in the throat again and again, and when she opened her mouth to cry out, all that she emitted was a gurgle.
“Help her,” Kean demanded, watching her in clear misery. “Percy—stop channeling and fucking help her!”
“Let me do this my way!” Percy shouted back.
I’m dying. I’m going to die and all they can do is shout at each other. The thought ran through Dhara’s head and she didn’t know if it was real or if it was the kind of thought that Nicolette had described—the kind that only served to draw her deeper into despair, right where the spirit living inside of her wanted her.
Whether twenty minutes passed or twenty years, she didn’t know, but the pain seemed to grow worse with each excruciatingly slow second, and she was gasping for air, entertaining hopes that she could just end it all rather than have to endure another moment of this agony.
“Okay, we’re ready to start,” Percy said quietly.
Start! Start! We haven’t started? Dhara’s whole body shuddered with agony, every cell screaming out for relief. “Please …” she moaned. “Water …something …a rest …”
Her only answer was a sudden plunge into darkness—one that took her out of Percy’s house completely, out of the United States, and out of the present. With no warning whatsoever, she was standing in a back alley as young girl, lost, barefoot, wearing ragged clothing, her hands and feet filthy from exposure to the elements, and a pit of fear so deep in her belly that it seemed to eat her alive.
The vision that followed wasn’t linear. It was just snapshot after snapshot, each one worse than the last. The streets were scary, but the buildings that her childhood self wandered into were far worse. Images of train stations, of hunger, of backroom deals, of stages with poles and girls with tight outfits, of men and their leering expressions, of hands that were in too many places at once, of beatings with belts, and of smacks across the face, of screaming, of humiliation, and above all of such intense loneliness that Dhara could barely breathe.
It was a shock to her system, all of what must have once made up her memories flying at her at once, both real and intangible at the same time. Her vague idea of her life as a happy, pleasant, middle-class young girl who had always excelled in math and striven to get grades good enough to get her into the best colleges swirled around with the real memories of her childhood, creating an emotional dichotomy inside of her that made her brain ache and her stomach churn.
The rage that she had been battling against for weeks began again, but it was more intense this time, threatening to overwhelm her. It came to life before her eyes in the form of fire, the way it always did, and she could feel the fire charring her skin and seeping down into her bones so that she was boiling alive from the inside out.
She was hardly aware of it, but she was thrashing on the floor, her body convulsing as the power that Percy was channeling battled against the corrupted spell that was inside of her, and then, with no warning whatsoever, everything that was familiar was gone, and Dhara was trapped inside a memory—perhaps the first real one she’d ever had.
“They’re going to kill her if we don’t get her out of here.”
The tall woman with graying hair and a lined face whispered harshly to the hunched man at her side, her fingers twisting together nervously.
“They won’t keep her anymore. She’s too smart. They know she’ll figure a way out.”
They’re her parents,” the man retorted. “We have no right to take a child from her parents.”
“Some parents!” the woman spat, her face contorting with anger. “They’ve abused her for her entire life. She’s nothing but a meal ticket to them. A young child to stand on the street and beg. A servant to run errands. A young girl to send into the bars and the clubs where they want to see her dance. They spit on her, hit her, screamed at her—what has it done to her? It’s broken her!”
“If she’s broken, then there’s little point in risking our lives to save her!”
The man and woman argued back and forth, bearing tired versions of the faces she had mentally assigned to her parents, and Dhara, all of seventeen years old, watched from her palette on the floor. They thought she was asleep, but she wasn’t. Sleep was for people who felt safe when they closed their eyes. That had never been her.
“There’s a way,” the woman said. “You know there is. You know the way I’m talking about.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“We owe her that much,” the woman insisted, moving about the room quietly. “We’ve turned our back and let them do these things to her all of these years. It isn’t right. She’s seventeen now, and she could make something of her life. You know how bright she is. All the beatings and the screaming and the abuse—it doesn’t change her potential. If we give her a fresh start, really a fresh start, then she has a chance.”
“I don’t want any part of it.”
“Then I will do it alone,” the woman whispered. “I know who to take her to, and I won’t be stopped. I know they will kill her when she defies them, and she will soon defy them. I see it in her face.”
“Then it is on your hands. Not mine,” the man said, his voice sharp. “I won’t be dragged into this and end up killed just because you feel badly for her.”
“And I won’t respect someone who feels that way,” she retorted.
The scene faded, one image moving seamlessly into another.
“Where are we going?” Dhara asked the woman as they walked hurriedly down a street together, both wrapped in shawls that helped to hide their identity. She knew that the woman was taking her for the fresh start she had been whispering about, but Dhara had no idea what that really meant. She was desperate for it, unable to bear the thought of even one more day in the life she was living. But she couldn’t bear to wait to find out what was coming for her either.
“Hush,” the woman chided. “Don’t ask questions. Just come.”
It was only minutes later that the woman ushered her into a small, rundown building, which had a door so easy to miss that it might as well not have existed. The room inside was dimly lit and almost empty, save for the hooded man who stood in the middle, his arms outstretched.
“Devya. You’ve brought her to me.”
Dhara hung back, suddenly nervous. “What is this?” she demanded. “I will do nothing for him. Nothing!”
“It’s not that way,” Devya assured her, urging her forward. “This man is going to help you get away, Ankita. He’s good. You must trust him.”
The vision cleared, and Dhara was back in Percy’s room, realizing only as her vision cleared that she was in such agony that it was tempting to wish for death as some sort of sweet release. It wasn’t just the fire that burned inside of her or the screaming misery in her brain, but the sensation of crawling things along her skin that triggered every panicked instinct she had. Gasping for air that she couldn’t draw into her lungs, Dhara thrashed, clawing at her skin, her nails drawing blood from her arms and her chest as she tried to free herself of the creatures that were pricking her skin with their tiny feet then sliding beneath it, their small, crustacean bodies wriggling underneath her skin and crawling amongst her organs.
Revulsion kicked in and only increased Dhara’s panic. She tore at her clothing, desperate to get beneath it to try to claw the skin off her skeleton, and then she was lost in memor
y once again, one form of torture exchanged for the next.
“Sit down,” the hooded man said. “I am going to heal you of everything that hurts you.”
Skeptical, Dhara sat down carefully, keeping one eye on the man as she did. “Why would you?”
“Because that’s my job,” the man said, approaching her, his hands sliding over her hair, his fingers sinking into the strands. “You have a great mind. A perfect mind. It’s astute. Flexible. It is a great specimen.”
She pulled back from him, her fight instincts triggered. “Don’t touch me. Don’t talk about my mind.”
“So much anger,” he whispered, settling his hands back on her head. “Relax. Let me take it from you.”
The anger that the man had sapped from her that day was back in its most complete form. Dhara shredded her dress, moving onto all fours as her chest heaved and her limbs trembled.
“Let me out!” she screamed, instinctively sensing the power in the circle that surrounded her. She couldn’t get out unless she was released, and if she stayed inside of it, she was going to die. “Let me out! Let me out!” She hit her hand against the crystals that formed the circle, but they only burned her skin, causing her to recoil into the middle of the circle, next to no clothing hanging from her body and tears streaming down her face as the spiritual form of her childhood memory combined with years of corrupted magic attacked her, targeting everything that made her feel human and whole.
It felt good, the way that he was drawing the emotion out of her. She felt light and free—limp, almost, as though years of weight were being lifted off of her shoulders. It took only moments for Dhara to give in, leaning into the man eagerly as he systematically roamed her mind, confining every memory under magical lock and key. The world became vague, and she understood it less, but she felt it less too. She felt no pain or anger or fear or regret. She felt no revulsion or dismay. She felt …nothing at all. All of her feelings were stored away safely, never to bother her again. She was a blank slate, a fresh start, a new canvas. But even her memories of that fact began to fade and she felt herself drifting away, the person she had been disappearing entirely. With nothing yet to replace who she was, she was a shell. A vessel for whatever bad magic wanted to move in and cement itself in the recesses of her mind.
She was going to die. Of that she was certain. The pain was too much, the emptiness too vast, and the terror too far burrowed in the core of her heart for her to ever overcome it. She had fought hard, but there was no point anymore. The thing inside of her was stronger than she was, and she wanted to feel that nothingness again. The nothing had been a perfect place—one where no person could ever hurt her. She craved the nothing, and if she would just give in, she could have it all to herself again—a great field of nothingness to roll around in forever.
It would be so much easier.
It would be so sweet.
It was so close within her reach.
No more pain.
No more anger.
No more fear.
No more anything.
“There are dangers,” he said, speaking to the woman who had brought her here. “Already, we have changed her fate forever. Are you sure that you want to give her these new memories?”
“Give her the life that she should have had,” the woman said, staring at Dhara, who was lying there, smiling up at the ceiling, utterly unaware of what was happening around her. “Tell her all the stories that should be real. Give her every reason to succeed from now on. Tell her …tell her that I’m her mother and that I loved her.”
“Someday it will make her hate you.”
“But that’s a problem for another day,” the woman whispered. “Give her happiness for a time.”
“You realize that this could go wrong. The memories I’ve locked away could become—”
“Do it!” the woman insisted. “I cannot be gone from home much longer. Do it now, or I’ll never get her out in time. I’ve gotten her a ticket to America.” The woman smiled, tears in her eyes. “She’s going to have the life that I should have had. She’ll live for me too.”
“She’ll never be quite right.”
“But now she’s only wrong.”
She would never be quite right. The man had said it himself, and it was a severe understatement. Everything had been a lie. Her whole life. She was a broken, abused, defiled woman with no purpose or place in the world. She was never going to be normal. She would be like Nicolette—hiding, insecure, reliant. Broken.
She was so broken.
When anything was as broken as she was, the only thing that anyone could do was throw it away. Oh, how she longed to be thrown away. The pain would stop. It was eating her alive, from the inside out. The fear would go away. It was consuming her in its flames of self-doubt. Nothing could ever hurt her again.
Oh, God, how she wanted to die, like she should have the day she was born. How much pain and misery would have been saved if only she had just died.
It wasn’t too late.
Her heart rate was slowing. Her pulse was thread and shallow. Her breaths were a far distance apart and the oxygen they brought to her organs was hardly enough to sustain her even long enough for her body to draw its next breath.
She was hardly there anymore, so what was the point in staying?
It would be so easy.
She was going to do it.
She was going to end it. End it all. Slip away. Nobody would care. Nobody would know.
Dhara would just disappear into the fire. It was where she belonged. It was where she had always, always belonged.
Chapter Forty-One
Kean
It was agony to watch her. Dhara was trapped in her own mind, and Kean could only imagine the agonies she was suffering. He couldn’t even reach out and touch her to give her some comfort or to try to anchor her to the real world. She was trapped within some sort of circle of healing power, but all that circle seemed to be doing was making her writhe with pain and misery.
He could hardly stand it, the bile in his stomach rising up into his throat, threatening to trigger his instinct to vomit in an attempt to purge himself of the sight in front of him.
“Help her,” he whispered, again and again, unable to tear his eyes away from Dhara long enough to look at Percy. “Help her. Help her.”
“She’s slipping away,” Percy said, his own face gray with the effort he was expending. He was almost panting, sweat beading on his brow as he tried to keep Dhara grounded through the purging process. “She’s giving up. She wants to die.”
Kean was on his feet in an instant. “No! Stop her. Intervene. Do something.”
“I can’t. All I can do is stop the process to give her some relief, then start over.” His voice was strained, his words cracking with effort as the air sizzled around him, the whole house seeming to vibrate. “It’s what we did with Nicolette, over and over.”
“No,” Kean said, pacing frantically. “She can’t go through this again. Let me in there. I can help her. I can ground her. Get me into the circle.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Fuck how it works!” Kean shouted, stalking over to the man. “Let me in there. Don’t you fucking let her slip away, Percy!”
“If you break into the circle, your energy melds with hers,” Percy said through gritted teeth, his chest heaving as Dhara began to seize in the circle in front of him. “Your entities …you’ll blend. Mesh. It’s …it can be …shit …” he closed his eyes, going green. “It’s complicated.”
Kean was about to argue with him further, but Dhara’s body suddenly went limp, her head lolling to the side, and the fear that overtook him was so intense that it blocked out everything but the sight of the woman he loved lying there, needing him. He didn’t secondguess it. He walked right over to her, stepping over the crystal barrier as though it didn’t exist.
A sensation of power tripped over his skin, but nothing else happened as he knelt beside Dhara, gathering her into his arms and bu
rying his face in her hair as he rocked her. “Dhara,” he whispered, clutching her to his chest. “Dhara, I’ve got you sweetheart. I’ve got you, and I will always be right here, bringing you back. I don’t know what you’re going through, but we can do it if you’ll just trust me. You promised to trust me. Come back to me now, and I promise I’ll never let anything hurt you again.”
Her body was still limp in his arms, her skin cold and clammy to his touch. He leaned her back, looking down into her still face and brushing her hair away from her cheeks as he kissed a trail over them. When he pressed his lips against hers, they were cold and still, her body unresponsive as he stroked her neck and her arms, trying to produce some sort of reaction.
“Come back,” he whispered to her, before glancing up at Percy. “What’s happening to her?”
“I’m not getting any kind of read,” Percy said, his face grim. “I think…”
“Don’t,” Kean said sharply. “She didn’t give up. She wouldn’t.”
“I’m getting nothing from her.”
Kean took it as a bad sign when Percy’s color began to return, as though there was nothing inside of Dhara that was sapping his energy anymore. His sweat dried on his skin, and his body stopped shaking, and all the while, Dhara lay in Kean’s arms, beautiful, perfect, and lifeless.
“No,” Kean whispered. “Damn it, Dhara, no. Not after all this. Not after making me fall in love with you. Not after showing me that there can be something more in my life than just how was I born. I want a life with you. I want to see what you do next. I want to listen to you and watch you. God, I would give anything to have a baby with you. How can you leave me here, feeling this way? Whatever you’ve found on the other side, it’s not as good as what we have. It can’t be.” His voice broke, and tears threatened his eyes. She still didn’t move, and he was finding it harder and harder to trust that she was still there with him.
But he couldn’t give up on her, and all he had to hold onto was the hope that she couldn’t give up on him either, no matter what horrors she had to endure.
Celtic Dragons Page 23
