The Silent Tempest (Book 2) (25 page)

He had lots of experience with blood
vessels. Fresh hope brought renewed strength, and he found it easier to think,
easier to focus. Quickly he repaired the artery, not merely sealing it off,
but matching it up properly and restoring the proper flow. It was delicate
work, but not difficult. He had dealt with far worse, in other parts of the
body. After that he repaired the vessel in her ear canal, to stop the blood
leaking there as well.

Tyrion paused then, thinking, observing.
Brigid’s breathing was still shallow, and her heartbeat was irregular. She
hadn’t improved. He had seen blood left in the body before. The body would
absorb it slowly, but it would take days, weeks. That much blood would be
there for a while, and meanwhile the pressure would remain for some time. What
would that sort of bruising do to her brain?

I’ve got to let it out.

Clenching his jaw, he drew his will down
to a fine point, using his aythar to create a small hole in her skull before
opening the membrane beneath it. Blood began to run down her scalp, dripping
into his lap.

Kate let out a soft gasp.

“It’s alright,” he told her. “I’m letting
the excess out.” His voice was much smoother now. Action had helped him
regain his composure.

Once the blood had drained, he closed the
skin but left the small hole in the skull open. Any additional blood could
drain into the area beneath her scalp, to prevent any more pressure from
building up. Brigid’s heart rate seemed to have returned to normal, and her
breathing was deeper now.

“She’s going to be alright, isn’t she?”
asked Abby, still standing close by.

Looking around Tyrion could see that all
of them were gathered nearby now. He met Kate’s eyes, uncertain how to reply.

She read his look and spoke for him,
“She’s alright. We’ll take her inside and let her rest. I think she will
recover.”

After a short discussion, Abby used her
power to gently lift Brigid’s limp form, levitating her sister a few feet above
the ground before guiding her toward the house. They placed her in Tyrion’s
bed. The entire household was crowded into that one room for several minutes
before Emma took the initiative and began ushering them out.

Abby was the last to leave. “I want to
stay with her,” she announced.

Emma looked to Kate for support.

“We should probably take turns with her
until she wakes up,” said Kate, suggesting a compromise.

Tyrion broke in, “Kate can stay, everyone
else out.”

Abby refused to give up that easily,
“She’s my sister. You may think we’re all just puppets for your games, but we
aren’t. We’re human beings. I want to make sure she’s alright. Let me keep
watch over her.” She stopped for a second, her eyes welling with tears but her
face determined. “Please,” she added.

Emma opened her mouth, thought for a
second, and then closed it again. Finally she turned to Kate and Tyrion,
“Actually, I agree with Abby. I want to stay too. Could we take turns?”

Kate glanced at Tyrion, unsure of his
mental stability. He had shown a poor record for negotiation in the past. She
worried he might explode at the girls’ resistance, but his response surprised
her.

“Fine,” he told them. “I’ll need to rest
eventually. You can come and go, but only one of you at a time. If the others
feel the same, you can share the duty with them. Everyone else will do as Kate
says. I don’t want to be bothered while I’m watching her. Understood?”

They nodded.

“Abby you stay first, Emma you come with
me. You can help me organize the others. We still need to eat, so we need to
get dinner started,” said Kate.

The two of them left the room, while Abby
sat on a small stool beside the bed, on the opposite side from Tyrion. He was kneeling
on the floor, his eyes on the dark haired girl. Looking up, he met her gaze
once before closing his eyes and focusing on his other senses.

Silently, he watched Brigid’s heart and
followed the movement of her lungs. It would be a long day.

“You saw what happened to her,” said Ian.
He and most of the other teens were gathered outside. They were supposed to be
practicing, but Layla wasn’t with them at the moment, and Tyrion was
preoccupied, so they had fallen to talking amongst themselves.

“He’s been different since we went to the
arena,” replied Abby. “Less cruel.”

“Less cruel?” responded Ian in disbelief.
“He tried to kill Brigid yesterday!”

“That was an accident,” she answered.

“Were my ribs an accident?” said Ian.

Ashley spoke up then, “Nobody’s saying
he’s nice, Ian, but he seemed pretty upset over what happened. I still think
he’s a terrible person, but Abby’s right, he isn’t evil.”

“He used that whip on you just two days
ago,” pointed out Ian. “Were you thinking, ‘oh he isn’t evil’, while you were
screaming in pain? Only a sick bastard tortures his own children.”

“I hate him as much as you do Ian, but you
haven’t been in the arena yet,” said Abby.

“You mean the arena that Jack and Gabriel
didn’t come back from? The arena they died in, that arena?!” he shot back.

“Yes, exactly, Ian! How many of us do you
think would have died if he hadn’t been so hard on us?” she said, rebuking
him. “Do you think it was easy for me to
kill
someone? It made me
sick!”

Sarah moved closer, putting a hand on
Abby’s shoulder in a gesture of sympathy.

Ryan broke in then, “Listen Ian, nobody
here loves him, but I don’t think he’s doing this because he wants to. I think
he’s trying to keep us alive.”

“Shut up,” growled Ian. “Nobody wants to
hear from you. You’re just his little toady. You think you’re special because
he put you in charge of building our crappy house.”

“If he had put a moron like you in charge
of it, it would just be a pile of rocks with a shit-hole cave for us to sleep
in,” said Ryan.

“Why don’t you say that to my face?”

“I just did, dumbass! Are you trying to
prove my point?” responded Ryan with a sarcastic sneer.

Ian took a swing at him, which Ryan didn’t
bother trying to dodge. Ian was much larger, but bare knuckles didn’t mean
much when you had a shield up.

A moment later, Ian was swearing and
holding his injured hand, but then he fell backward. Ryan had shifted the
ground beneath his feet. Ryan brought his hand downward in a purely symbolic
gesture as he hammered the other boy hard in the chest with his aythar.

Ian gasped for air and struggled to get
his wind back.

“The rules have changed, Ian. You just
got your power a few days ago, so you need to learn. It’s not about
this
anymore,”
Ryan pointed at his bicep for a second before moving to point at his own
temple, “It’s about
this.
You haven’t been in the arena yet, but I
have. I’ve killed. If you keep thinking like that, you’re going to die when they
toss you in there next week.”

Ian sat up, but didn’t reply. Violet
helped him back to his feet before turning to Ryan. “How did it feel?” she
asked.

“What?” said Ryan.

“How did it feel to kill somebody? How
did you do it?” clarified Violet.

He looked at the red headed girl for a
moment. Of all of Tyrion’s children, she looked the most like Kate, despite
the fact that the two women were unrelated. “I hated it, but I did just what
he said,” answered Ryan. “I fought carefully, and when I had my chance, I
pretended it was him.”

Abby nodded at his comment, “Me too.”

David had been listening, but at that
point he spoke, “You can all say what you want, but he didn’t just hurt us.
He’s hurt Mrs. Tolburn too. What kind of man abuses a woman like that?”

“That’s why she’s in love with him?” said
Sarah. “Come on, David. He’s never really hurt her.”

“She is not! I was there,” said the boy.
“I saw him drag her into his room, and I saw her face when she came out. She
was crying.”

“You think that’s why she’s always
watching him?” asked Sarah.

David nodded, “Of course. If you see a
snake, you don’t take your eyes off of it.”

Sarah’s eyes grew sly, “Why don’t you ask
her then?”

***

Tyrion woke feeling stiff and groggy. He
had been sitting by the edge of the bed, and in his fatigue, he had leaned over
and placed his head and arms on the mattress. From the soreness in his back,
he must have stayed in that position for some time.

Emma sat across from him on the other side
of the bed. “It was my turn, so I swapped with Abby. I didn’t know whether to
wake you or not,” she said in response to his unspoken question.

“Has she woken?” he asked.

Emma shook her head, “No. Nothing has
changed yet.”

Turning his attention to the raven haired
girl in the bed, he watched her heart beat for a long minute. It was different
now. It had been regular before, but it seemed steadier now, and her breathing
was more regular as well.

“You should go lie down,” suggested Emma.
“I doubt anyone is using the other bed.”

“I’ll stay here,” he replied.
Besides,
I doubt Kate would take kindly to me commandeering her bed.

They sat in silence for a while, but it
was not an uncomfortable one. Emma watched him as much as her sister, and
eventually she could restrain herself no longer, “Why did you do it?”

“It was an accident,” he said
automatically.

“No,” she said, “I know that, I meant
something else. Back then, before I was born…”

“Oh,” he said, unsure how to respond now
that he understood. “You mean when I raped your mother.”

“That’s not what she told me,” returned
Emma, her soft brown eyes were uncertain as she spoke.

Tyrion sighed, “Look, no matter what she
told you, it was worse than she might have thought. If you’re looking for some
reason to forgive me, to try to understand, or just to reconcile yourself with
it—don’t. I’m not your father. I’m just the man who forced himself on your
mother. Fathers love their children. I’ve never done anything but bring pain
to you, or any of the others.”

Emma looked away, her mousy brown hair
falling over one eye as her head moved. “Mother said it was like a fairy
tale. She never expected it, but that when she saw you, she knew she…”

“It was a mistake.”

“She said I was her best mistake,”
insisted Emma.

The implicit forgiveness in her tone made
him angry, but he had shown enough of that lately. Taking a deep breath, he
answered, “No. It wasn’t a mistake on her part, Emma. Your mother had
no
choice.
I took that from her, and I did it so completely that she wasn’t even aware of
it. I used my power to manipulate her mind, her feelings. I made her think
she wanted me. It was still rape, no matter how you sugar coat it.”

They lapsed into silence again, though
this time it was not so comfortable. Even so, Tyrion preferred it to the
questions. He hoped that the girl would surrender the topic, but she
eventually found her courage again.

“You still didn’t answer the question,”
she said at last.

“What was the question?”

“Why? Why did you do it?”

“I was horny,” he said bluntly.

She didn’t say anything to that, but her
eyes were sullen.

“What?” he said, irritated. “What did you
expect?”

“The truth,” she said softly.

“That was the truth.”

“That was
part
of the truth,” she
corrected.

Where does this stubbornness
come from?
he wondered.
Her mother
was an easy going girl.
“If you ask too many questions I might lose my
temper,” he suggested. “Aren’t you worried what I might do?” He kept his
voice gruff, hoping to frighten her.

“No.”

“Why not?” he asked, somewhat exasperated.

“You’ve spent the last day and a half
sitting by this bed worried about Brigid,” noted Emma. “I don’t really believe
you want to hurt me anymore.”

“I did that to her.”

“It was an accident,” said Emma, repeating
his earlier response.

He blew out a lungful of air in
frustration. “What will it take to shut you up?”

“Just tell me the rest,” she insisted.

Looking at her, he was struck by the
sudden urge to hug the girl. She was so earnest, so young, and far too
stubborn. More than anything he wanted her acceptance, but he knew he would
never deserve it, no matter what she herself believed.
This is a mistake,
he
thought, but then he opened his mouth anyway.

“I was broken. When I was fifteen someone
hurt me so badly that I knew I could never be worthy of the girl I loved,” he
admitted.

“You were in love with her?”

“Not your mother,” said Tyrion sadly.
“Kate.”

Emma frowned, “But Brigid is Kate’s
sister… If you loved her, why would you…?”

“An older woman took that decision from
me.”

“Oh,” said Emma, but it was clear that she
didn’t understand. She stared at Brigid for a moment while her mind worked,
then she sat straighter, “Oh!”

He nodded, “Brigid was the first, and
because of that I deserted Kate.”

“Was it your fault?”

“I thought so then,” he told her. “But it
really wasn’t my choice.”

Emma looked toward the door, “Does she
know?”

“Yeah, she figured it out on her own.”

“Is that why she hates you?” asked the
girl.

“No,” he admitted. “She is an exceptional
woman. She forgave me for that. She has her own reasons for hating me. After
I—after what happened with her mother, I told her I didn’t love her. I pushed
her away. Then I began hunting the women of Colne. I was empty, lonely, and
horny. I knew it was wrong, but somehow I convinced myself it wasn’t rape. It
was much later before I finally faced the truth about myself.”

“And that’s why she hates you?”

Tyrion laughed, “No. She forgave me for
that too. She’s angry because I hurt
you.
She is angry because I hurt
the others. She doesn’t agree with my training methods.”

Emma nodded, “It was pretty awful. Last
week was the worst week of my life, until the day in the arena.”

“It isn’t over,” he said quietly. “You’ll
have to do it again.”

“Killing was the worst thing I’ve ever
felt, even worse than the red whip. It felt like my soul was dying,” she
paused. “But I’m still alive.”

The world seemed to darken as she spoke.
Tyrion put his head in his hands. He kept his magesight on Brigid’s heart,
letting its steady rhythm swallow his other perceptions. He didn’t want to
face the world anymore.

“So how do you feel about Kate now?” asked
Emma curiously.

“I still love her,” he said frankly. “I
always have. She was the one bright moment in my life, before everything went
to shit.”

“Maybe you should tell her,” suggested
Emma seriously. “It isn’t too late.”

“It’s better this way. Brigid is a
perfect example of what happens to people close to me. She’s safer hating
me.” Tyrion stopped then, realizing the girl was baiting him. His awareness
expanded to its normal range, and he found an eavesdropper just outside the
room. He had left the door open so that they could come and go. Kate stood in
the hall.

He gave Emma a hard look, “How long has
she been standing there?”

“Since at least, ‘does she know?’, but
that was just when I noticed. It could have been longer,” said Emma.

Standing, he stepped around the bed and
took her by the elbow, pulling her to her feet and ushering her unceremoniously
to the door. Emma didn’t resist. Kate started to step inside just as he
pushed the girl out. He held up a hand to stop her from entering. “No.”

Then he shut the door, and this time he
sealed it. There would be no more intrusions.

I should never have let her
get me to talking.

***

Brigid was nauseated.

It wasn’t something she was aware of at
first. Her eyes were closed, and the world was dark, but gradually it was
coming into focus. Her magesight was showing her the room whether she wanted
to see it or not, but now that her awareness had returned, she began to focus
on things.

That was the mistake; as soon as she
attempted to guide her perception, to resolve something in better detail, the
nausea pounced on her. A groan escaped the lips that she was just beginning to
feel, and her eyes opened. Perhaps she would have better luck using her actual
eyes to see.

The room wheeled around her in a colorful
blur while her head was filled with pain. She closed her eyes again.
Let’s
not do that,
she told herself.