Lord of the Fading Lands
Page 128

She shrank back in sudden fear.
Rain's mouth tightened. The nightmarish image dissolved. "Powerful magic always reveals itself. When someone weaves Azrahn, their eyes turn black and flicker with red lights, like the dying embers of a fire. Ellysetta, I doubt the dream was your own—or anything even remotely resembling truth. The purpose could be many things: an attempt to sow doubt between us where none can exist, an attempt to use my face to spring some sort of trap. Bel told me you've had other nightmares. Were they like this?”
She closed her eyes. The time for hiding the truth was past. "I've had nightmares all my life, some worse than others. Even when I was small, I saw horrible things no child should ever see. Wars, murder, people dying. I don't know why I dream what I dream, but I've always known he was searching for me. And that if he found me, something terrible would happen.”
"He who?”
"The Shadow Man. He's there in the darkness when I sleep. He was gone for years, but he came back again about a week before you arrived in Celieria. He's been searching for me, calling to me in my sleep, urging me to show myself." She wrapped her arms around herself, chafing her hands on her cold skin. "It's one of the reasons I've always feared and denied my own magic, Rain. I was afraid if I used it, he would find me. And now, I think he has." Her throat closed up. Tears welled in her eyes. "I tried to stay hidden, but he knew I was there. He wouldn't stop tormenting me until I showed myself. Everyone was dead: Bel, Kieran, all the Fey, Mama, Papa, the twins. And you—at my feet and the crows were .. . were … oh, Rain, I couldn't bear any more! I screamed at him to stop. I revealed myself to him, and now he knows how to find me. And I think he intends to use me to kill the people I love.”
His arms tightened around her. One hand cupped her chin and urged her to look up at him. "I will permit no one to harm you or the people you love, Ellysetta. And if this Shadow Man thinks to try, I promise you he will regret it" The look in his eyes was lethal. This was the man who'd once scorched the world, and for the first time she realized he was fully capable of scorching it again on her behalf. Would scorch it again, if the evil that stalked her laid claim to her soul. "I make you fear me," he said. The fire faded from his eyes. He pulled her tight against his chest and held her close. "Do not fear me.”
"It's not you I'm afraid of, Rain." She had to tell him about the exorcism, about the demons the priests said haunted her soul. Now that the Shadow Man had found her, she couldn't afford secrets. Whatever evil lived inside her, he might find a way to use it against Rain and the Fey. "It's not even the Shadow Man. Not really." She blurted out the truth before fear could silence her. "It's me.”
He drew back and stared into her face. "What do you mean?”
She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Would he revile her? She pulled herself out of his arms and huddled closer to the wall, needing to put some distance between them.
"Ellysetta ... “
"No. Listen to me. I've been afraid to tell you, but you need to know" She took a deep, shuddering breath. She could do this. She could. She must. "He told me I was evil. He said he knew I felt darkness calling me. And he was right." The admission came hard, each word forced out of her through sheer will, but once the first secret found freedom, the rest followed in a rush. "From the time I was very small, I've had … seizures. There's nothing particular that makes them happen. They just do. An unbearable pain engulfs me, and all I can do is fall to the floor, screaming. Sometimes it can go on for days.”
Memories, long buried, swirled in her mind, as vivid and terrifying as they had been the day she lived them. The echoes of her own wild screams rang in her ears. Her vision turned red as if veiled in blood. She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes and whimpered.
Rain's hand covered hers, offering strength and comfort. She clutched it tight and held on until the worst of the memories faded and she could speak again.
"When I was little, the seizures came every few months, sometimes more often. They frightened Mama and Papa. They didn't know what to do. The doctors didn't know what to make of it. They said it was demon possession, something wrong in my soul. Mama brought in the exorcists from the Church of Light. I was very young … but I remember ..." She bent her head, and her hair fell forward to veil her face. She remembered the candles and the chanting and the fierce eyes of the exorcists as she screamed and her small body convulsed.
"At first they just prayed and rubbed me with sago flowers. But the seizures began to grow worse, and they decided they must do something more … aggressive … to draw the demons out. They had a little box filled with needles ..." Long, shining needles lying on a bed of red satin. Needles to pierce her so the demon could escape her body, each topped with a tiny, dark crystal bead the exorcists claimed would draw the demon out.
"They thought that if they drove those needles into me, they could trap the demon." Ellie rubbed her arms as the memories washed over her. She was screaming … screaming as the needle sank into her flesh.
"Ellysetta ... " Rain pulled her closer, his body so warm against her chilled skin.
"They put one needle through my shoulder and another through my leg before Papa made them stop.”
Papa, so fierce, snatching her up and shouting, "Are you mad? You torture her more? She's only a child! Get out of my house!" How she'd loved him in that moment. He'd pulled the needles out of her body and flung them away as if they were polluted things. He'd held her close, rocking her and weeping. "Papa's sorry, precious kitling. They'll never come back, sweetheart. Papa won't ever let them hurt you again.”