by LJ Swallow
“Right.” Paul sneers. “Sure. Well, keep your mouth shut about seeing Cora.”
She leans back and places her booted feet on the low table, digging hands into her coat pockets. “Like R says, don’t wanna be involved.”
Paul tucks the gun back into his jacket but continues to watch the group with suspicion. “What d’ya reckon, Andy?”
“Just leave it,” says Andy. “Let’s go. I knew this was a fucking bad idea.”
“I’m fine,” I retort. “And we have what we came for. Job done. Now you can go home and sober up.”
R scratches his belly and yawns. “See ya next time,” he says as he walks back to the kitchen.
Sara holds up a hand in a goodbye and switches her attention to Alfie, poking him awake.
I follow the two pissed off men back to the van, taking in a deep lungful of air as we step outside. I won’t admit to anybody my true fear that this could’ve ended really badly.
23
I’m rewarded with the silent treatment again on the way back to the house. Now the two men are sobering up, I’m the one blamed which is unfair. Nothing happened. We went, we found what we needed, and we’re back.
Paul and Andy don’t mention events to Emma when we return to the house, handing over the supplies and loping back to their drink and cards.
I took a risk, I know that, but I can’t spend my life hidden. I needed to know what’s happening in the sector, if my disappearance has led to anything. I half expected Alaric to look for me or expect me to lead him to Mattias, but concocting abduction stories is extreme. Anybody who knows me would find the idea ridiculous. But then anybody who knows me wouldn’t expect me to marry the Regent.
Lost in thought, I don’t notice the van return until I hear Ty’s voice in the kitchen. Low voices raise until seconds later Ty slams through the door. I turn and my smile drops when I catch the look on his stony face.
“You okay?” I ask.
“You went out.” His low voice is laced with the anger he’s holding in. “Why?”
“Because your dumb guys were too drunk to drive.”
“Emma could’ve gone with them.” Mattias’s usual impassive cool slips more with each word we exchange.
“Well, she didn’t. I offered. I drove them to the city, and now I’m back safely so don’t look at me like that.”
Ty pushes his hands firmly into his pockets. “You don’t do that. You can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not safe, surely you’re not stupid enough to believe you can walk the streets.”
My anger spikes. “I was not walking the streets. The place was hidden, and the guy selling drugs didn’t care. The two women upstairs are sick, Ty.”
“Another day wouldn’t have made a difference,” he growls.
“Emma seemed to think it was urgent.”
“I don’t give a shit what Emma thinks, Cora! Now you’re here, you stay put. I don’t have time to chase around after you.”
Aware others are close by, and refusing the need to yell at him for talking to me like this, I stand. Without a word, I leave the room and head upstairs. If he wants to talk to me, we do this in private.
I’m barely through the bedroom door before Ty appears and slams it behind him. “Don’t walk away from me!”
He engulfs the small room. There’s barely enough space for us and the large bed. I stand my ground and keep as far away as I can.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m your subject. You’re not bloody royalty here,” I say in a low voice.
“I’m trying to keep you safe, you stupid girl.”
“Screw you!” My calm breaks. “Call me a stupid girl one more time, and I’ll walk out the door. You’re a patronising asshole sometimes, Mattias Hyland.”
“And go where? Back to Alaric? Because he’ll find you alone out there in five minutes, guaranteed.”
I bite inside my cheek, knowing he’s right but not admitting it. “Silas is right. You treat me like some kind of damsel in distress. You were the one who left me with Alaric. You must’ve known what was happening. I escaped myself that time, no thanks to you!”
He steps closer and grabs my shoulders. “You are not safe on your own.”
I drag myself away. “The girl I saw today said you’d kidnapped me. Are you letting Alaric think that?” I lower my voice. “Or is it true? Is that why you don’t want me to leave?”
Ty’s face darkens, but his eyes hint shock not anger. “You have to ask me that? You’re unbelievable.”
“I don’t bloody know! I feel like you’re keeping me prisoner if you won’t let me leave the house.”
He jabs a finger at the door. “Fine. Go.”
I blink at his calling my bluff, and I run my tongue along my teeth. The anger courses through, that this man can possess my heart and soul, but then behave as if this gives him the right to own me.
I stride towards the door, and Ty catches my arm before I touch the handle. “Where are you going?”
“You told me to go.”
“Don’t be so—” I flash him a warning look. “Bloody minded.”
“Let go of my arm.”
“No.” He seizes me by both wrists and looks down at me, eyes dark. “No.”
My heart thumps, mind blinding with fury at his behaviour and hands on me when I don’t want them. “I said, let me go!”
A sudden pain lances behind my eyes, blinding my vision momentarily. A spasm floods from my head along my arms. The physical reaction to my fury at the situation shocking.
“Shit!” Ty drops my wrists as if I’d burnt him and steps back, rubbing his palm with the other hand. “What the hell was that?”
The pain subsides as quickly as it started, leaving me with a throbbing head and blurred vision as I attempt to focus on Ty’s face. I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“That fucking hurt.” He squeezes his fingers into his palm and out again, confusion replacing the anger on his face. “Have you been using runes? Did you think they’d protect you today?”
I yank up both shirtsleeves and hold out my arms. “No.”
“Something from your book?”
“Seriously, you think my attempts at spells would have any effect on a Hyland?”
“Something just did.” He crosses his arms and a smile plays at the corner of his mouth, the atmosphere in the room dropping with his attitude. “I know you’re hard to deal with when you’re mad, but this…”
“I didn’t do anything. Honestly, I don’t know what happened.” I rest my back against the door. “Everything hurts. I wouldn’t do that on purpose.”
My aching head whirls with confusion, heart still thundering in my chest, but fear joins the anger. How did that happen from letting go of my emotions for a few seconds?
Ty sits on the low bed and rubs his hands across his face. “It isn’t usually this quick.”
“What isn’t?”
In the following silence, in the way Mattias stares at the floor rather than look at me, my anxiety grows. This is what he does when about to close me out.
“The change—the magic.”
“Don’t fall into one of your cryptic speeches, Ty. If something is happening to me, I need to bloody know.”
He looks up. “I should’ve told you but had no idea whether I could or not. You don’t need to worry about my blood poisoning you. Our blood doesn’t poison.”
I hold up my hand, showing him the red sore. “Look at this. It’s not healing.”
“It will. Your body’s absorbing my blood.” Running a hand through his hair, Ty watches me warily.
“But your blood kills humans. It kills the Scions.”
“No. Humans gain magical ability from close contact with us, from anything repeatedly blood or sex related. The Hylands slowly kill the Scions with poisons to perpetuate that myth.” He rubs his temples. “Sometimes before the children are born if the girl realises what’s happening but usually after.”
“What?” I
whisper. “They kill the mothers of their children? Why do that?” My mouth dries. Are these the people who’ve kept the humans safe? Hearing they’re monsters killing people for their blood shocked me, but this… “They kill pregnant women? Shit, Mattias. Why?”
“To stop people knowing. To prevent creating a powerful human wielding enough magic to challenge us.”
“But I can’t believe you use Scion blood for magic.”
He laughs softly. “I don’t think you understand. The power transfers with sex too and most strongly through pregnancy because the power is passed to the baby of course. The Scions gain magical ability. Nobody can figure out why the magic transfers to humans, but this has always been the way in our family, even before the sectors. We can’t let that happen.”
“Oh…” The word comes out in one long breath. “So every girl you have sex with gets magic powers?”
“Cora, you’re funny. No. It takes more than a random hook-up or two, which is why I’m confused by you because we’ve hardly touched until recently. It could be my blood in yours and your passion to learn magic that has accelerated this. Maybe because I haven’t used any strong magic myself for years it means the effect is bigger. I don’t know.”
“You’re saying I’m gaining the ability from… sleeping with you?”
“I think the blood in your system from the night outside the Senate office kick-started it. Again, I don’t know.”
Years of lies, of death and pain, and not only for the lower-life sector. The aristocratic humans the Othala drew Accords with have been sacrificed for the witches’ stranglehold in exactly the same way. The Othala abused and murdered those they promised to always protect.
“This is horrific, Ty. Who else knows? How can the others let this happen?”
“Hylands don’t share secrets. We stay locked away in our own world, protected, in order for us to maintain the sector’s protective barriers. No human who enters our world leaves. No witch knows about the Scions, even though recently some are aware of the blood fuelling everything.”
“Why blood?” I swallow, fighting against connecting Ty with his family’s brutal history. “This is so wrong.”
“Calling Hyland’s power ‘blood magic’ is too narrow. Any emotion: anger, love, lust, leaves an emotional imprint in blood, and these imprints are what fire our magic. The fear from humans used to maintain the wall intensifies the power held in their blood and keeps the magic strong. That’s why we don’t drain their blood in one go and then kill them… that’s why it’s slow.” He looks up. “And I’ll tell you anything, but please don’t ask me what happens to them when they’re hurt. I don’t want you to see or know.”
I shake my head. “No, don’t tell me.”
“Only Alaric and I know about the magic transfer. Only Hylands have ever known apart from the Scions who realise what’s happening before they die.”
“Including your mother,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” He looks away. “But I think my father loved her; otherwise, why would the world have Alaric as well as me?”
This man is one mindfuck after another. “Everyday more secrets, Ty. Is there anything else while we’re here? May as well tell me everything because I can’t cope with thinking I know you and then ‘wham’ something else.”
He hangs his arms between his legs and stares at the floor. My heart pounds, terrified what’s coming next. His father killed his mother even though he loved her. He’ll kill me like all the others? When he stands and walks over, I tense, ready to hit him with whatever magic I used a few minutes ago. If I knew how.
Ty smooths my hair with both hands and cups my face. “There’s only one more secret. I’m in love with you. Totally, irrevocably obsessed with keeping you close so I can be reminded of the strength you give me to let go. You look at me and don’t see the monster I convinced myself I am. And this bloody scares me.”
At first, I don’t take in what he’s admitting, my mind gripping something else. “You’re scared of me? You think I’ll take your magic and use it against you? I don’t want to do that, Ty.”
He holds my head, the worry on his face at odds with how somebody who says they love you should look. “Everything I ever loved died. You’ve exposed part of me frozen in time, melted my protection against allowing feelings to destroy me again. Alaric saw how you affected me before I did, because he’s seen this in me before.”
“And I weaken you against him,” I say heart plummeting. “If I take your magic.”
He smiles. “I don’t use my magic a lot, the odd cloaking spell but nothing major. I haven’t much since I was a kid. Alaric exhausts his power and has to replenish it a lot. That’s why he’s siphoning more blood, why he feeds on people’s fear, and why he’s really scared of me. I hold a lot more power than him. If we met head to head, I could destroy him.”
“Then why haven’t you? You said you wanted him dead.”
“Time and place, Cora. It will happen.” He pulls me closer. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“You hide yourself well,” I whisper and touch his lips. “I ached for you to fall in love with me in the same way as I love you, and all you did was push me away.”
“Because I’m scared, I told you. But I can’t hold this back anymore. It’s too late to stop you interfering with my life. Because the moment I spoke to you, I reconnected with a part of myself. Then I touched you, and knew I was lost.” He smiles and brushes his lips against my forehead. “I never expected it to physically hurt when I touched you though.”
“But if you listened to yourself, you’d know I want to help you.”
“Exactly. You’re my strength not my weakness, but it’s hard to let go of my fear I’ll lose you. I can take Alaric on, but if he kills you to provoke me, I’ll have lost you and some of my reason for doing all this.”
“Won’t happen.”
“It could. He would do that.”
I press my mouth against his. “No more Alaric. This is about you and me.”
“And about me loving you.”
“And about me loving you, all the good and the bad.”
We wrap together, and I'm surrounded by the strength and heat of the man who recently allowed me to dig deep and find his buried secrets, the one holding my face as his kiss deepens with a gentleness that reinforces his words. Ty’s kiss is the same as every other we’ve shared—the intense passion that lies inside and the something familiar in his lips—as if we’ve found the ones that should always be on each other.
Ty kisses me in a way that nobody ever has or will again. Each time his mouth is on mine, he steals a little more of the remaining parts of my heart and soul, parts I’ve held safe until the person deserving them came into my life. I was determined nobody would ever be allowed to possess the Scion Cora, but Ty holds every part of the Cora I want to be, willingly given. And he does the same.
24
One week.
One mind-numbing, frustrating week.
I understand why Ty doesn’t want me to leave, but sitting around the house unable to contribute is driving me nuts.
Tamsin and Annie seem to improve, and I spend time chatting to them. Ty won’t tell me where the facility is, where Alaric keeps his human cattle. Neither will the guys, and the two women don’t remember. All I know is that people arrested for minor misdemeanours, and those who won’t be missed, are taken to the facility. The disgruntled Aaron has other friends held there, and I’ve heard him arguing with Ty about returning for them.
These two women are the tip of Ty’s iceberg. For the last year, he’s helped smuggle people out. He’s a Hyland, of course he’s granted access, and he’s quiet about what he does to achieve his aim. Once the people are gone, nobody cares. The victims die on a daily basis.
The survivors are rehoused and watched, kept out of sight, but Ty knows the unspoken truth: this won’t last. There’s talk about creating a new settlement in the Wastelands, to show the sector future possibilities once the truth is reve
aled. I don’t worry when Ty joins scouting missions in the Wastelands, but I do if he heads into the city.
A few of the guys here want him to march in and tear the place down, to expose the horror, but now I know Ty’s secret I understand why. Either he conserves his power to take down his brother, or he uses it to free people and then needs to replenish. Which means he needs blood.
The other witch, Anton, stays away from the house. I’ve seen him once, in conversation with Ty, and when I asked what was happening, Ty dismissed me. Anton’s his go-between to keep up with what’s happening in the sector and hides himself as Alaric’s supporter. Ty trusts him, but I hold doubts. Anton senses my unease but says little to me.
Most afternoons, I exercise away my boredom wandering through the property, as far as the gates and fence, then back through the fields. Did this place once thrive? Like the rest of the sector, there’s no upkeep, and the barns crumble as the brightly coloured weeds strangle the crops still attempting to grow. Somebody could cultivate this, make the place new again.
Sometimes I stare at the shimmering barrier, the wall closer here than the Enclave, and images intrude. Tamsin and Annie hooked up to machines, people trapped and scared. My imagination has always overacted, which is why I refuse to ask for details about what happens or where they’re kept. I’m interested in the future, the present too horrific to think on.
Everybody is out today, including my inept bodyguards. My refusal to be wrapped in cotton wool continues and Ty relents, agreeing I’m okay here alone. Is this the first step to him allowing me more involvement? Besides, storming in and bringing us down at a place in the middle of nowhere isn’t Alaric’s style. No, Alaric will want public and brutal. Whether this brutality extends to me, I don’t want to consider.
I walk back to the farmhouse, irritated I’m left behind again. I’m dying to see the Wastelands ever since the glimpse Alaric gave me from the Hyland house and Ty’s stories when he returns form his excursions. The times Ty talks about successful scouting trips and his plans are when he’s a hundred percent Ty with no hint of Mattias. Has he considered that he may need to become Mattias again if he deposes—and murders—his brother? The sector can’t go from strong leadership to none, anarchy won’t help.
