Page 20 of Enthralled

Danny’s nostrils flare. He’s not giving up this fight, not yet. But his eyes rove over my face, studying me as he contemplates his next move. “Come home with me anyway, Clara,” he says carefully. “You don’t have to marry me. Just come home. Let us care for you through your confinement. Kitty will love the child, and I will provide for it and for you. What more could you ask?”

“Truth,” I whisper bitterly. It feels wrong to say it—nothing about my life has been truthful these last many years. I’ve clung so hard to delusion, shaping everything, every choice, every hope, every dream around my brother, around my belief that I could protect him. That shattered fantasy now cuts me to ribbons on its razor shards. But I repeat with more firmness. “I ask for truth. And for a life lived and chosen on my own terms.”

Danny’s eyes are so round, so wide. He looks at me as though I’ve become his enemy. Perhaps I have. And perhaps that is for the best. “Please, don’t do this,” he says.

“I’ve already decided, Doctor Gale.” I draw myself a little straighter, my throat constricting. “Now please, leave.”

He holds my gaze, battle in his eye and stance. I’m not sure I can withstand him, not sure I have the strength to keep fighting. There’s a part of me that would like to give in, a part of me that longs for the safety and familiarity of submission. But if I cannot hold on now, I never will. So I stand my ground. At last he breathes out a long sigh and, wordless, turns to the door.

Just as his hand touches the doorknob, I call after him: “Danny!” He looks back. The hope flaring in his eyes strikes me like a dart. But I step toward him, yanking the amethyst ring from my finger. I hold it out to him. Slowly, reluctantly, he extends his hand, palm up, and I drop the ring into it. “Don’t come back here, Danny,” I say ruthlessly. “I never want to see you again.”

His expression twists with rage and agony. His dear, familiar face becomes something unfamiliar. It kills me to know this will be our last moment, that all those years of friendship have led us here, to a place where love and caring no longer matter. Everything that was good between us has grown so twisted, we cannot help but hurt one another. To try to cling to what was will only cause more harm. I know it—he knows it. But the act of letting go feels like ripping off a limb. Will either of us survive such cruel amputation?

Squeezing the ring tight in his fist, Danny turns, yanks open the door, and slams it behind him so hard, the whole house seems to shake. I stand in the wake of his departure, shuddering in every bone. I wrap my arms around myself, desperate to keep from coming apart at the seams. It’s too much. After everything else I’ve just endured, it’s too much.

A little “Oh!” bursts from my lips. I sink to the ground, press my hand over my face. I don’t cry. I can’t. Crying would be too great a relief, and my body cannot know relief. Not now. So I merely sit there, shuddering, as the burn of guilt, shame, fear, and helplessness courses through my veins. And always . . .pain. . .

“It’s never easy, you know.”

I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting on this cold floor, shivering but feeling no cold. Time lost meaning in the flood which so utterly overwhelms my senses. I don’t want to come out again, can’t bear to face reality and the pressing needs of the physical world.

But eventually that rasping voice speaks behind me, startling me where I sit. I whirl in place to look back into the room. Oh gods! I’d entirely forgotten about Ilusine. The fae princess sits in the middle of that bare chamber, having propped herself upright. Her sunken face looks at me balefully through straggling locks of colorless hair.

“It’s never easy to be the one left behind when the Fatebond manifests,” she says, her lips rolled back from her teeth in a grimace. “You know all along that what you have won’t last, that this person to whom you’re ready to give your heart will never receive it. But you pretend awhile . . . and sometimes you forget . . .”

Even as her words trail off, she grips the hilt of the dagger in her shoulder and wrenches it out. A little gasp eeks from her lips, and she stuffs the bunched-up apron against the wound. Blue blood immediately soaks through the fabric.

“Oh!” I scramble up from the floor. Turning to the door, I take two steps and stop. I should get Danny. I know I should. I’m not at all prepared to deal with a gory wound, and Danny has experience with these things. He’s even treated a fae before. But how can I bear to call him back now with those final words of mine still ringing in the cold air? How can I beg him to treat this woman, this fae, whom he must hate simply for the fact of her existence? I squeeze my hands into fists and bite back curses as a wave of nausea washes over me.

“If you’re thinking about going after the mortal, don’t.” Ilusine’s voice is but a faded echo of the strong, confident woman I first met. But the disdain is still there.

I look back at her, my brow knotted. “He’s a doctor. He can . . . hemighthelp.”

“I don’t need one of your human physicians.” Her lip curls faintly. “I may have used up the bulk of my magic, but there is still power in my blood. I will heal. Though perhaps”—she looks down at her shoulder and heaves a sigh before finishing in a soft voice—“not so fast as I should like.”

With a sigh, I return to the kitchen and search out some old kitchen towels and rags, anything that might serve as bandages. Leaving these in a pile before Ilusine, I climb the stairs to Oscar’s room to fetch a blanket. His bedding is not fresh, and the stink of mortality will be an assault on Ilusine’s delicate senses. But it’s better than nothing.

I pause a moment, looking around the room. The haunting presence of Oscar permeates this space. There is his jacket hung on a peg by the wall, mended and patched so many times by my own hand. There on the little shelf are half a dozen volumes of G.H. Godswin’sAdventure Stories for Boys, thrilling tales we used to read out loud to one another at night, whispering by the light of a single candle. There is his writing desk, covered in evidence of his unleashed creativity, a disaster of pages, pens, trimmings, and spilled ink. And there—lying in a tumble across his bed—the stack ofStarlinmagazines with his own story printed inside.

“His potential was tremendous. And his pain was profound.”Castien’s words echo back to me, spoken during our last, heated argument. How vehemently I’d attacked him for daring to place that curse on my brother, for blocking his ability to write, to create, to be his whole and best self. I was so firm in my conviction, in the rightness of my stance.

But Castien was right. My brother’s potential for destruction was far beyond my understanding. Castien knew it all along, and he tried to warn me:“That boy’s soul is steeped in darkness. If he is ever set free, that darkness will seek to find liberty somewhere. He will put it onto paper, send it forth into the world, and let the combined magic of weaker minds bring it bursting to life.”

Why couldn’t I see it? Why wouldn’t I let myself see it? I willfully blinded myself, determined to perceive only the reality I desired. A reality in which my brother was an innocent boy, a pathetic victim, my darling and beloved one whom I could protect and shelter and save. I wouldn’t see the man he’d become.

Now I’ve met the manifestation of his darkness face-to-face.

I open the glossy pages ofThe Starlinand find my brother’s story once more. There’s an illustration on the opening page: a rough sketch in black ink depicting the shadow-wreathed eyes, the leering mouth, the long, pointed fingers, and—worst of all—the gaping hole and broken ribs of the monster’s chest. It was a mistake to try to capture it like this. Though the artist is talented, his work is but a pale shade compared to the images conjured by the mind. It was those images—not this—which brought the Hollow Man to life.

I close the magazine, let it drop back into the pile on the bed. I’d truly believed I could prevent Oscar from doing this. I’d truly believed my return was all he needed, that he would let me lead him back to health. But it was hopeless.

How long was Oscar involved with Ivor? I remember coming home to his tales of a new lover and seeing the madness ofrothiliomwhirling in his eyes. And didn’t I hear my brother’s voice in Ivor’s apartments at Aurelis? At the time I’d dismissed it as my own suffering mind playing tricks on me, but the truth is clear. Oscar had traveled to and from Eledria more than once.

There are so many blank spaces in my knowledge, things I can only guess at. Ivor must have learned of my power and potential from Estrilde during their courtship days. Recognizing my magical gift, he sought me out for reading lessons. When I’d protested that the fae cannot learn to read, he’d told me a drop or two of human blood ran in his lineage. The genealogies of the House of Illithor later revealed he possessed significantly more than that. His own father was half-human. Which means Ivor was capable of learning far more mortal magic than he let on during our lessons.

Did he also learn about Oscar from Estrilde? Did the two of them work together to create their own gate into the mortal world so that he might come and go, visiting Oscar undetected? And now the two of them are together. Did they make it through the gate to Vespre before Lodírhal destroyed it? Are they there even now? I cannot imagine for what purpose. They could have fled anywhere in all Eledria following Ivor’s reclamation from the pit. Why Vespre? Why the most dangerous place in all the worlds? What is Ivor planning?

“Damn,” I whisper so softly the word makes no sound as it tumbles from my lips. I should be there. Right now. With my children, with my fellow librarians. I should be there, and I am not. Because of my own stubbornness. Because of the evil I calledloveandunderstandingandforgiveness.

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