Nearly two centuries had passed while Jelisette lived with half a soul. Brynleigh’s heart ached as she imagined her Maker’s daily, excruciating pain.
The immeasurable grief. The sorrow. The agony of being half a person.
Her legs trembled, and dizziness swept through her. She didn’t even know vampirescouldbe dizzy, but this was a day of nasty surprises.
“I need… I need to sit down.”
Ryker nodded, his mouth pinched in a line as he moved aside.
Releasing the sink, Brynleigh stumbled to the living room and dropped back into her chair. Her head fell into her hands, and she forced her lungs to intake air.
Every breath hurt.
Was this what Jelisette felt like every minute of every day? Was she drowning in grief and sorrow and pain?
Eventually, Ryker reclaimed his seat across from her. She felt his gaze on her and looked up to meet brown, dispassionate eyes.
Gods.
The anger lining the hard edges of his face was a knife driving into her side. This was too much for right now. Too soon.
Her gaze plummeted. She picked at a stray piece of lint on her borrowed sweater and shook her head.
“Why tell me this?” she muttered. “Why not just leave me in that prison?”
Was his goal to hurt her? Was that why he hadn’t killed her yet?
Instead of taking her life swiftly, he would kill her with a thousand empty looks that stung like stakes, cold stares as beautiful and deadly as blades of silver, and utter loneliness as harsh as a million lifetimes without blood.
That would be the more painful way to go.
Before him, Brynleigh hadn’t known what a true partnership could feel like. She hadn’t known it was possible to have another person complete you.
Perhaps the worst thing to come from all this was that she’d learned the value of having someone love her, only to have it stripped away.
For the longest time, silence was the only thing between them. She wasn’t even sure Ryker had heard her question.
“I… I couldn’t leave you there,” he confessed.
Couldn’t.
Such a strange word. It denoted a lack of ability, but that didn’t make sense. Jelisette apparently had no problem lying to Brynleigh, hiding a Binding, and abandoning her in prison, so why was it so hard for Ryker to do the same?
Confusion roiled through her as she tried to parse what he was saying. “Why not?”
He inhaled sharply.
“I just… couldn’t.” There was that word again. “In order to get you out of the… interrogation?—”
“Torture,” she quietly interrupted, rubbing her wrists. The sweater hid the ruby marks, but they were still there. Even now, she felt the ghosts of those manacles on her wrists.
“What?”
Her voice was soft as she canted her head. “They weretorturingme, Ryker.”
Memories of her time in the prison flashed through her mind. Screams and pain and agony, all intermingled with grief because she thought Zanri had killed her husband. She’d been so lost in the hurt, and she thought it was her penance because she’d gotten him killed.
Except…