Forgotten (29 page)

“
I should,” Analee
hissed.

“
You might have everyone
else convinced you’re this all-powerful leader, but I’m holding the
get out of jail free card. From what I’ve gathered, you need me to
be willing, before Jace can heal me. I wouldn’t bat an eye if you
decided to kill me, but death isn’t what scares me.”

“
You’ve lived through death
already and survived. It shouldn’t scare you,” Analee laughed,
dismissing me.

Already survived death?
First, she was just as insane as the rest of them – but if I
pretended to believe them, then this was another clue to why they
thought I was Deino, the Chronicler.

“
Why don’t we just hurry
things along and figure out how much you can take, shall we? If it
is not death you fear, I’m sure I can find something that terrifies
you,” Analee challenged.

“
And this will give you
enough proof that I’m one of you, and you’ll let Jace help
me?”

“
If you live through this,
Jace can do whatever he wants. He’s always had free-will,” Analee
said. “A warning, the Scavengers will come for those who have sworn
the Oath, but no longer honor it.”

She then made a comment I couldn’t
understand because it was in their cryptic language. As soon as she
stopped speaking, the ice girl crawled over to me. Frost caked my
skin, where I’d sweated. The young girl reached for me and wrapped
her dainty hands around my wrist. My skin froze over my chilled
flesh, and my hand tingled for a few seconds, before becoming numb.
I clenched my mouth shut, to keep my teeth from chattering. A
migraine formed. My entire body trembled like I was stranded in the
middle of a blizzard. Ice coated my eyes. I couldn’t move my hands
without fear that my finger would snap off if I moved
it.

“
This is why I can’t leave,
dearest, unless you’d like to feel like you are freezing to death
from the slave girls,” Jace muttered, as he placed a hand on me.
His temper pulsated through me. “Tolerance, can be forced, as I did
with you, but can be deadly if I don’t progressively heal you. If I
wasn’t here, they’d wait until you regained consciousness before
starting again, forcing you to relive this until you passed out or
died.”

“
You act like this is a
frivolous waste of time,” I said, through clenched teeth, since he
seemed adamant about not relaxing his jaw. “I’ll let you heal me if
you swear you’ll still help me find the people who killed my
family.”

Jace sighed heavily. “Analee’s right,
even though I’d love for her not to be. I’ll do anything to find
the Chronicler, even if it means investigating a cold-case murder
simply to have the chance to heal you... We swore the
Oath,”

“
To the Scavengers,” Analee
said.

Marco bounced his finger in the air as
if he were orchestrating a band. “They swore –”

“
Which we
all
volunteered
to do,” the shadowed figure said.

“
To find the three Fate
sisters, at all cost. Before any other undertaking,” the flickering
one added. Only one language echoed in the room when she spoke this
time.

“
Or sacrifice their lives
to the death bringers,” Jace finished. “You see, Gwyneth, we’re
destined to find the Fate sisters, or die trying.”

“
Why?” I asked. “Why are
they so important?”

Analee groaned with frustration and
then said made another comment to the ice girl. The girl clamped
her hand down on my shoulder, freezing my upper body before Jace
could react. I wanted to cry but refused to give the Master the
satisfaction of hearing me scream for mercy. Jace rattled off a
series of curse words. Analee mocked him; her heavenly voice filled
my mind.

“
Seriously guys,” I said,
gritting my teeth and hoping not to pass out. “I know I don’t
belong to whatever club you’re in, but
English,
please!”

Dead silence. No one moved, except the
girl released her hand from my shoulder and wrist. The air around
me fluctuated from freezing cold to blistering hot. My skin started
to warm slightly, filling me with newfound energy. It wasn’t long
before Jace’s heat blanketed every inch of my body. I opened my
mouth to ask what was going on, but I couldn’t exhale. The fiery
warmth grew until it burned around me. The warmth was a heavenly
sensation, which made the utter quietness around me so
confusing.

“
What’s going on?” I said,
not understanding what was so significant.

Jace grabbed my hand like he was
pulling me to a safety net of his embrace. His lips felt like the
smoothest silk as he kissed my hand. His figure brightened,
flickering like hot coals on a fire. Whispering my name, his lips
lingered on my hand. Warmth wrapped up and down my body, following
the movement of his hands. Jace finally took a breath, releasing
the clasp around my throat.

“
Something else you can’t
tell me?” I guessed.

He whispered my name. In my mind, I
heard ‘Gwyneth’ again. This time it sounded more like a whispered
echo. He repeated it over and over. I heard my name and then the
echoed version. His lips skimmed my skin while he spoke. Their
silky texture was silky smooth on an otherworldly level. I wanted
to look around the room to see what everyone else was doing, but I
couldn’t tear my gaze away. He stopped kissing my hand only to turn
it over.

Guiding my hand to his mouth, he
kissed me and said my name once more. But his lips didn’t move. I
gasped. He repeated my name over and over, yet his lips didn’t
move.

“
Jace?” I
gasped.

I refused to believe what was
happening – he couldn’t speak without moving this mouth! With my
fingers pressed up against his lips, he said my name –it echoed in
my mind like it had whenever they spoken in their foreign language.
Again, his lips, throat, chest didn’t move, yet I heard him speak
my name.

“
Impossible,” I
whispered.

“
Well, she definitely has
old blood, if she figured out were a bunch of talented,
super-natural ventriloquists,” Marco said.

“
She’s in her human form,”
said the shadow figure. “Which gives us no indication of how pure
her Elysian is.”

“
Human or in our form, we
know the Chronicler doesn’t age well,” Zalen added,
jokingly.

“
Then she shouldn’t have
been able to hear us, now should she?” Analee said. “We were always
under the assumption the Fate’s abilities didn’t work unless they
were within close proximity to each other, when their immortality
flourished. Perhaps they were lying. Perhaps they had powers even
when they were apart, as mortals.”

“
Or perhaps, they were
merely stronger when they were together,” Marco uttered as he
watched me with impossible intensity. “Apparently, the Fates were
the best secret-keepers of our kind, as well as the most
powerful.”

“
I beg to differ,” Analee
said.

“
Yet she can only grant
what the heart most desires when she is captured,” Zalen added.
“Maybe their proximity to each other, only influenced their human
aging, not their power.”

“
Well, let’s just find out
how much Gwyneth can do without her sisters nearby, shall we,
girls?” Analee signaled her other slave girl to me. “I swear on my
life, Jace, if you let a squeak escape her mouth, I’ll kill
her.”

Jace’s frustration and vehemence crept
over me. It burned my flesh until it reached my heart. As much as
I’d been through tonight, it couldn’t compare to Jace’s misery. The
frost-covered girl whispered the echoed name Jace called me. It
sounded like an angel had spoken. Dragging her legs, she crawled to
me, using only her hands.

“
Please believe that I
don’t want to allow this. I’d rather not bow to the Master anymore,
Gwyneth,” Jace said, holding me tight. Something in his voice
shifted, when he spoke again. “I’d follow you to the end of
world…again, if you’d have me, Gwyneth.”

The way he said my name made my heart
flutter. I swallowed and tried to take in a breath. Jace shook his
head; he refused to give me my right to breathe. The girl grabbed
my ankle and sunk her boney fingers into my flesh. Her grip felt
like daggers, piercing my bone. I opened my mouth to cry
out.

“
Scream for us, little
human,” Analee said, egging me on.

I wanted to tell them I couldn’t
breathe, therefore I couldn’t speak. I fought Jace, squirming in
his grip. He didn’t budge. I beat him, as the girl climbed up my
leg. My bones felt like they were shattering under her grip. Blood
seeped from my flesh. It pooled around my body. I turned my
attention to the girl digging her nails and her fingers into my
thigh. I grabbed her hair and tried to rip her off of me. She
hardly reacted to my pitiful attempt to keep her off of me. I
started losing consciousness as I pulled her hair until the frost
girl grabbed one of my wrists and jerked it out of the other girl’s
hair. Prying my hand open, I caught a flash of light as it bounced
off a dagger. It cut my skin. As the blood pooled in my hand, the
vision flooded my mind – me in a meadow, when the young girl cut me
with the icy dagger. While the vision played over in my mind, the
frost girl shoved her fingers into my palm. My blood chilled. She
was freezing my blood. My fast heart beat started to
slow.

I opened my mouth to scream, but not a
sound came out. Jace prevented me from taking the breath needed to
expel my pain. The two girls crushed my body, freezing me. I prayed
for the heavens to save me. My cries echoed in my mind, as I
expressed the long-standing pain that I’d enclosed in my soul as
well as the immediate pain the ice girls brought my
body.

The girl released my hand to cover her
ears. The one that had crawled up my leg pushed away. Analee fell
to her knees. Marco and Zalen disappeared. A thread of screams in
several different languages rang in my ears as the shadowy dark
figure held onto the flickering one. Black liquid dripped from
Jace’s ears. I felt his lips gently brush my cheek.

My world became dark as he rocked me
in his arms. I embraced unconsciousness…

I didn’t know how long I
was out, but I awoke to Jace’s voice. “–I don’t want to rule, I
just want
her
.”

“
Ding! Ding! Ding!” Zalen
sneered. The air rippled at the sound of his voice. “She comes with
power. Whether you want it or not, Gwyneth’s got it.”

“
But it is I who’ll rule,
not the Chronicler,” Analee said. “Not this time
around.”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

Bliss found me at night, while I
slept. Stars hung in the sky like fireflies, while the moon lit the
land around me. A meadow stretched out endlessly. The horizon was
uninterrupted – no buildings or street lights to alter the glory of
the night. My body hadn’t fought itself at the beginning of the
dream like the others. I felt stronger. I glanced over my shoulder
– no one was there, but I could have sworn I’d felt Jace’s warm
pass over me. I spun in a circle. Larkspur petals cushioned my
feet. A sublime mood encompassed me. To escape the complications in
my life was a gift. I watched the lightning bugs dance in the
sky.

The wind rested. Yet, my
hair moved slowly away to one side of my neck; it was
his
doing. Jace was
careful not to touch my skin as he brushed my hair aside. A smile
grew on my face when the smooth touch of his kiss was placed on my
neck. I leaned back into his embrace and allowed myself melt into
him. Jace’s body warmed after I whispered his name. A tidal wave of
zest flooded my heart. I couldn’t sort my anger from the enthusiasm
we had for each other. I turned to take in his beautiful body and
immediately lost my breath. Colorless flames crawled from his skin
onto me. It tingled instead of burned; rather it felt like my body
was awakening for the first time in my life. The rapture was
surreal. I hadn’t cared if it was his aura over shadowing mine. I’d
always hoped that one day I’d be happy; perhaps I was looking for
joy during the wrong time of day.

He turned me in his arms and then
hummed a tune I couldn’t quite place. I rested my arms around his
neck. He pulled me close against his bare chest. One hand was low
on my hip while the other crept high on my back. His dazzling, deep
voice echoed in the night while he mesmerized me with his melody.
The song promised suffering, but the outcome was worth it. When I
realized he was repeating a verse over and over, he’d engulfed me
in his fire.

Jace leaned in close like he was going
to let me lick the song right from his lips. “Close your eyes,
dearest.”

I obeyed. Instead of his hazy outline,
his fiery essence captivated me. His entire body rippled with
flames, fueling each other. His fingertips ticked my skin just
behind my ear, while his thumb traced my jaw line.

“
You see the world by the
touch of your hands; I want you to know what I see when I look at
you.”

I had spent my entire life hiding from
what I looked like. I didn’t care about appearances, especially not
mine. Jace changed all that. I tried to look away. His rough hands
were gentle on my face, but he wouldn’t let me hide from him – or
the truth.