Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Chapter 29 - Hiraeth - A Shattered Mirror

I don't know the knowledge behind taking memory, so I can't very well try and return hers once he's done. I don't know if all those thoughts transfer from her to him, or if he simply messes with the three parts of the brain that hold her memory, misfiring the signals or destroying those cells so that they never return. I don't know if she dies a little more each time he does this, and I don't know if it's slowly converting her from good to evil. She hasn't changed much in the past, but again, this one's different - it feels different - so there's bound to be some changes within her that I may not necessarily like.

She's in the middle of one of her screeches when she just...stops. I look up, finding The Eternal now turning her head this way and that as if examining the mind concealed by her sunken-in skull. I can't see what he does, only that she's unconscious and completely limp. If it weren't for the hum within me telling me that her heart's still beating, I'd think she was dead.

"She's strong, but I think that should hold," he determines after a moment. He drops her chin without care and I bite my tongue to hold in the wince I get when her neck pops at the jolting movement.

"You believe them to be making improvements?" Arkyn asks, his eyes empty and careless as always. His choice of words is infuriating, but I still tuck the slice of information away for whatever it may give me.

"Time is of the essence, and our enemies are predictable despite their advantages."

Something bursts in my chest. Something powerful and warm and...sad. Sad because what I feel flood my system is hope, and what hope could I have now when the girl hangs broken before me yet again, only this time she's more hollow than she's ever been. Our enemies. Their enemies are who I've been praying to every God and Saint and deity alike would come to save us since I was thrown into the cells and forced to watch them tear into her like cattle. I can imagine how they're planning to get here now - to get her back, but I know why this feels different.

It's the last one.

He said that time was of the essence, so they're running out of time to do whatever it is they wanted with her, so here he is. Taking the last bit. There won't be a next time for me to hear those screams, and despite my earlier wishes, I want to take them back. At least before, I knew that I could potentially get her to remember again, but now, while I hope for someone to run in and rescue us, I fear that the person they'll run down here to save won't be the person they find at all.

The Eternal nods to the two guards posted beside the door. They walk to the chains tied to the wall and release them. She falls to the ground with a heart wrenching thud, but I don't move. I'm not allowed to move until they both exit the room, and they're making simple conversation made of careful words so as not to give me any information I'm not supposed to know.

"You say they, yet we all know that it's far less which..." Arkyn glances at me, but I still keep my eyes downcast. "Surely we have the upper hand with an elemental in our hands."

"We have a bargaining chip in which will do little to halt their plans. We need her withered for us to have the upper hand, or else they'll throw the first punch, and I can guarantee you it won't land where you move to block."

"And how is it we're to get her withered, if I may ask? I've been down here more times than one would think needed in order to break her."

"It's not breaking her that's the problem. It's remaking." He says the word with such passion, and it's not making me think that he's going to return her to the strong woman who tore apart his prized dog like a stuffed animal. "It's easy to shatter a mirror. A puzzle to piece back together, and a challenge for even the most gifted hands to return it to its original state. I don't want to see one crystal clear reflection when I piece her back together. I want to make a dozen mangled and wrongly duplicated facial features that look a hundred times worse than one could imagine. I don't want to make her into the salvation the prophecy perceives, but the ruination of the land and the sea that is the base of this world. Tear those apart, control the thing that controls them, and there will be no enemy. Only a thing to be drowned and buried."

By the Gods and their Saints, he's the definition of unhinged. I couldn't help but stare at him as he spoke - to watch his eyes somehow dim until the whole of them was stark black. To fear his words and the way the that the darkness spread from him to the shadows and chilled the room to icy temperatures that rose goosebumps on my skin. Arkyn's eyes snap to mine, and I instantly return my head to its inferior state.

The warmth returns to the room, but the chill remains on my skin from him talking not only breaking her but creating her into one of his own Hellhounds - and likely the most powerful and potentially dangerous of them all. He doesn't want to take her power for his own, but rather make her into one of his own. Once he's done that...

Gods save us, and Saints protect us.

I can't stop my hands from shaking, nor my eyes from filling with water but not a single tear falling. I haven't felt this scared in a while, and now that I can picture the girl still lying unconscious waking with black and red eyes...I hope Kallisté and her alpha know what they're doing. I hope that there's still hope for her, but I'm no seer, and I can't do more than what I've already been doing.

"Keep an eye on her," The Eternal orders. He walks towards the door with Arkyn on his heels. "I want to know the moment that she's ready to kill the ones she once loved."