Rise of the Faire-Amanti (The Ascendant Series Book 3) (19 page)

“You’re surprised by this?” the female asked Kyr, stroking Kyr’s hair as she once again sank into the chair. “You can’t connect with Ty’s thoughts?”

Kyr gave a brief shake of her head. The action had her stomach protesting, but she forced it down.

“All right. I’m going to get you something to drink that should help settle your stomach. Don’t try to move from that chair.”

Especially under the circumstances, Kyr wasn’t about to drink anything from someone she didn’t know, but she didn’t say anything as the woman disappeared into the hallway. When she was alone, she glanced up and saw herself for the first time in the mirror.

Her eyes widened. Her pulse raced as she stared at her reflection and realized that her face, hair, and eyes had all been restored to their original appearance.

What the hell was going on?

As her shock eased, she gave herself a more thorough study. It made her think that she might be better off over the excrement tank. At least there, she wouldn’t have to see the horror of her reflection.

She imagined she’d had more color as a cadaver. More than half of her face was covered in bruises in various stages of healing. Dark circles made her eyes look lifeless and hollow. Her lips were nearly as pale as her skin. She glanced down at the clothing she was wearing and realized it was little more than a robe.

Ty was going to utterly lose it if he saw her like this.

Turning on the water, she rinsed out the sink and washed her face with a cloth from the neatly folded stack on the counter. Spotting a clear glass vial beside the tooth cleanser, she opened it and sniffed it. Mint water. She used some of it to rinse the inside of her mouth. Just the smell helped ease her stomach.

She had just turned off the water when she heard voices coming from somewhere in the house. The tone was low, but there was an undercurrent to it that told her Ty had arrived.

No sooner did that thought enter her mind than he appeared in the doorway. The relief on his face brought a fresh round of tears to her eyes. He reached up to tenderly cradle her face as though convincing himself she was really there. The fatigue in his eyes wasn’t lost on her.

“Thank Yen-Ki,” he said. “Are you all right?”

A tear fell as she shook her head. She jerked from his grasp to dry heave over the sink.

So much for a graceful and loving reunion.

Kyr heard footsteps and looked into the mirror to see the dark-haired female standing beside Ty. She put a hand on Ty in a way that conveyed familiarity, but she averted her eyes from the bathroom, making Kyr think she didn’t want to look at her.

“I’ve prepared this for Kyr’s upset stomach,” she said. “Be sure she drinks it.”

Ty hesitated when she tried to hand him the cup. “But she’s…”

“Everything is natural and safe,” the female said. “I promise.”

“Okay,” he said, accepting the glass. “Thanks.”

The female merely nodded and gave Ty one more pat before stepping away. He turned to Kyr with the cup.

“I need you to drink this,” he told her.

All of the confusion and tension she had experienced since waking flooded back. “Aren’t you going to taste it first?”

His brow wrinkled. “Sorry. It didn’t occur to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because my mother made it.”

Chapter 23

To help calm Kyr, who looked horrified when he revealed that his mother had made the drink he held, Ty drank some of it while she watched. It was a blend of herbal tea that he remembered his mother making when he was a child, much like he suspected.

“Will you please drink this?” he asked.

He tried to keep his tone and expression normal. She didn’t need to know what seeing her in this condition was doing to him. Still, he suspected she read enough in his eyes to know it was important that she drink the tea. She reached for the cup with a hand that trembled. The sleeve of the too-big robe she wore slid back.

His gaze fell on the dark bruises around her wrist. It took all of his
Dem-Shyr
training not to react. He wanted to roar like a possessed animal over the signs of violence. Instead, he swallowed his fury and helped guide the cup to her lips so she didn’t spill.

She took a testing sip of the tea. When that sip stayed down, she took another.

He waited until she was done with the entire cup and then set it on the counter. The tea would make her sleepy, so he gathered her up from the chair, then sat with her in his lap so he could hold her.

She sank against him. He felt the tremors running through her when he put his arms around her. Fresh fear clutched at his heart. She felt so fragile, as though she might break to pieces if he held her too tightly.

What in the hell had happened to weaken her like this?

Although his mother told him through thought that she had attempted to feed Kyr broth and water, she hadn’t been very successful since Kyr wasn’t awake. A lack of food and water would surely contribute to Kyr’s delicate state. His mother had also shared with him that Kyr had been unconscious until shortly before he arrived. That had been a blow all its own, as it had been more than two days since they crashed in the Luja megai. There was a lot of time unaccounted for between when his parents recovered Kyr and when he and Kyr had been separated.

He needed to know about that lost time to know how he could help her get better. As he had always done, he reached out to her mind for the answer.

She issued a keening wail and clutched her head, startling him.

“I’m so sorry, love,” he said roughly, hating himself when she started crying.

He placed a gentle kiss on her temple and tightened his hold on her. His head pounded in another form of punishment for his attempted intrusion. When he had tried to connect with her, some of her pain projected into him. Knowing that she was in even more pain than what he felt told him why she seemed so wretched. His stomach was suddenly none too steady, either.

Neither was his heart.

“What’s happening to me?” she whispered against his chest.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

But I’m going to kill whoever put these marks on you
, he added to himself as he lightly traced her jaw and the side of her neck to comfort her.

Seeing her returned to her normal appearance had been a little jarring after all of their time in disguise. Why had her captor done such a thing? Had he been trying to confirm Kyr’s identity?

Ty could only assume so. It didn’t much matter right then. He just needed Kyr to get better.

Issuing soft, consoling words, he held her until her trembling subsided and her breathing evened out. His tension eased a bit when he knew she was sleeping. He prayed that she’d feel better when she woke up.

He rose from the chair and shifted her to rest more comfortably against his chest. Stepping out of the bathing chamber, he made his way down the main hallway of his childhood home and entered the cooking area, where he heard quiet voices. When he reached it, his gaze moved from his parents to his father’s sister, Lia. They looked up and grew quiet when they noticed him.

His mother squinted. “Yen-Ki…even with Kyr asleep, the connection between you is nearly blinding.”

She drew on a pair of eyeshades and handed a second pair to Lia. The action almost humored him, but the festering fear and anger he harbored in his gut wouldn’t let him indulge in such a frivolous reaction.

“We’ve cleaned the bedding in our room, son,” J’ael said, walking over and clasping Ty’s shoulder. “You can settle her there.”

Ty glanced down the hallway towards his parents’ bedroom, then back at Kyr.

“Why don’t you sit with Kyr on the couch, Tae?” Elly suggested instead, obviously sensing his reluctance to let Kyr go.

His mother was the only one who called him by his birth name, complete with the extra syllable that made it sound more like “Ty-ay.” He wasn’t quite sure how he’d become known to everyone else by his nickname, but even his father used it now. Hearing her call him Tae made the reality that he was home really sink in.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said.

She waved him off. “We’ll be right behind you. I was putting together some food and tea, as that’s what Alametrians do during times of trouble.”

“Thank the all-glorious Yen-Ki,” J’ael said with a pat of his stomach and a wink at his amanti. “I’ll join you, son.”

Ty nodded and turned to walk around the bend in the hallway that led to the family room. He found himself looking around to see how much things had changed since his childhood, which was the last time he’d been there. It was both reassuring and a little baffling that he noted very few changes at all.

“Your mother likes to pretend that she’s going to update the place someday,” J’ael said. “We both know she never will. She’s too sentimental.”

It didn’t surprise Ty that his father knew what he’d been thinking. J’ael was a powerful Mynder. Even though he couldn’t read Ty’s exact thoughts, he was very observant.

“She sure could have given this couch an upgrade without anyone’s feelings being hurt,” Ty commented as he gingerly took a seat on it. “This thing has seen better days.”

J’ael chuckled as he sat on the loveseat across from the couch. “We inherited that from your grandparents. We’re stuck with it until they pass, bless their souls. Besides, you were probably conceived on that sad excuse for furniture.”

Ty groaned. “I could have lived without that visual, thanks.”

Their humor faded when Kyr let out a choked sound and jerked in his arms. He pressed her to his chest and issued a shushing sound, touching his lips to the top of her head. Her body once again sagged against him and her breathing calmed.

He didn’t bother hiding his distress from his father, who wore a similar expression. “What can you tell me, Dad?”

J’ael frowned. “Not a whole hell of a lot. We got word about five nightfalls ago that you and Kyr were rumored to have crossed the protections. Elly and I figured you’d head here. We have some inkling of what’s been happening at the palace, and we know who out here we can trust. We’ve been scanning thoughts to track your whereabouts. We knew you were close, so we sent out some scouts to help you if needed. Elly and I have been trying not to change our routine, since we figure Vycor’s got eyes on us. If we went scouting, he’d know something was up.”

Ty nodded. He didn’t blame his parents for not going out themselves. They’d done the smart thing.

“Anyway, we got word earlier today from one of the scouts. He’d witnessed a single male carrying a female into an abandoned building. The female looked like the description we’d picked up for Kyr, but the male wore a cloak. The scout felt there was something wrong. The male wasn’t tall enough to be you, and the scout spotted bruising on Kyr’s face.”

Ty’s throat worked as he swallowed a curse. He caught an image of what his father described from his thoughts. The scout had conveyed exactly what he saw.

J’ael nodded, sensing the cause of Ty’s expression. “I decided that this bore personal investigation, Vycor be damned. I went out with a couple of the other scouts, taking care to do it discreetly to avoid raising suspicion. We went in and found Kyr. Her abductor was gone.”

Ty started to read his father’s memories only to have them blocked. Blinking, Ty met his father’s gaze.

“Don’t do that to yourself, son,” J’ael said. “Please.”

The look on his father’s face made Ty’s chest constrict. Whatever J’ael had seen when he rescued Kyr must have been bad.

Very bad.

Elly and Lia walked into the room with trays of food and tea, which they set on the coffee table. Taking one look at her son’s face, Elly frowned. She looked at her husband in search of an explanation.

“I just told him that I didn’t want him seeing what I saw earlier,” J’ael explained with an innocent lifting of his hands. “He doesn’t need to see it.”

Sighing, Elly sat beside him as Lia took the armchair situated catty-corner from the couch and loveseat. She asked, “Do you really feel you need to know, Tae?”

Before he could answer, Kyr made another mewling sound and thrashed in his arms. It took a while for him to calm her down this time. In the process of her writhing, she bared more of her skin to his gaze.

All of it was bruised.

No one spoke for a couple of minutes after she finally settled back down. Ty needed his own breathing to even out before he could speak, and everyone else seemed stunned and uncertain. Eventually, Lia spoke for the first time.

“Ty, would you like me to use my abilities on Kyr?” she asked in her soft, compassionate voice. “I can help you learn what happened.”

Lia had the ability to enter a person’s dreams. If Kyr hadn’t already helped him overcome the nightmares Vycor had implanted, Ty had intended to hunt down his aunt for help. He desperately wanted to know what Kyr had gone through, and he felt he needed to know if he was going to help her heal from whatever had weakened her. But he was worried about his aunt causing Kyr more pain by entering her mind.

“Lia’s work is done at the lowest possible level of intrusion,” J’ael said, obviously having followed his son’s logic. “The mind is wide open during sleep. I don’t think any harm would come to Kyr.”

Ty made up his mind. “All right. I’d like to try it. But I want to be connected to you, Aunt Lia, as you do this.”

“Of course. Just don’t interfere. That could have devastating consequences.”

In other words, he had to remember that he was observing a dream and he couldn’t go charging after Kyr’s attacker.

He nodded. Lia rose and walked over to sit beside him on the couch. She waited until Ty shifted Kyr so that she was lying across his lap with her head near Lia. Then she lightly touched Kyr’s temples and began the process of entering Kyr’s dreams.

They sifted through a variety of images: Kyr on Earth and other planets as she learned her life lessons, her in the palace as a child being disciplined by Shaya, her standing in the Judgment Chamber with the Shelvaks, her and Ty making love, her traveling with Gren to the Dark Lands. Each dream was a reflection of the actual event, Ty realized, with only a few changes inspired by the dream landscape.