When I’m able to peer over the chest-high wall, I find blankets piled on top of a thick later of hay. Kyron sits at the head of his makeshift bed with his back resting on a bale of hay. One leg is bent with a book resting against his thigh. His feet are bare, his tunic loosened at the neck, and a rouge strand of black hair hangs over his forehead as he studies the page before him. The sight of him takes my breath away. Even if he weren’t my parah, I’d still be drawn to him.
He looks up at me and smiles in a way that makes every muscle in my body melt. “Coming to make sure I’m upholding my end of the bargain?”
I lift the quilt over the railing and answer, “I was worried you would get cold.”
He opens his palm, and a small flame burns in the center. “Built in heat.”
Blood floods my cheeks, and I tuck my lips between my teeth. My excuse for being here was clearly not well thought out, which means the truth can’t be any worse. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about you. At all. All day.”
“Well, that makes two of us.” He closes his book and sets it to the side. “Would you like to join me?”
“I don’t know if that’s?—”
“You know you want to, and I want you to.”
The truth is that I wasn’t going to put up a hard fight against the offer. I do want to be close to him.
I open the gate, and Kyron holds out his hand for the quilt. He shakes it out and throws it over his shoulders before opening his arms to me. I sit beside him, and he pulls me to his chest, cocooning us in the blanket.
We sit in silence, basking in the energy that flows between us. It’s so different now that I know he is my parah. I always thought it moved one way, but now I understand that he feels it too. The hot sizzle of desire and the hum of tranquility. There’s a rightness when we are together, like we each hold our own pieces to a puzzle that when placed together make the most marvelous picture.
“A question for a question?” Kyron softly asks.
“All right.”
“The last time we were here, you could use my flames in ways I couldn’t. Can you do the same with my Cognus powers?”
I play with the string on his shirt. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt compelled to try. It’s too invasive, and I don’t want that kind of insight to someone else. Besides, what if I scramble someone’s brain?”
“Good, I don’t want you to try,” he says, his voice raspy with emotion.
I stiffen against him. Does he really think I would abuse that power if I tapped into it? The only time I’ve used it was within the realm of what he can do. His Cognus gift isn’t powerful. He must touch someone to read their feelings, unlike some Cognus who can play with minds, bind memories, or make someone remember. I’m nothing like his…
“Did something happen with your mother?” I ask.
He exhales, and his arms tighten around me. “When she unbound my memories, I remembered things I wish I hadn’t. Things that would change the way people see me… things that changed the way I see myself.”
A deep sense of sorrow, heavy and thick, presses down on me. The feeling almost makes it hard to inhale. It’s a sensation that’s not my own but coming from him. “If you want to talk about it, I’m listening,” I say, slipping my fingers beneath the collar of his tunic, hoping that my gentle touch brings him some peace.
He falls silent, his eyes darting around the stable. I can almost see his brain working through all the probabilities. He really believes that whatever he has to say will have some dire effect on the way I feel about him. It won’t. The memories he was missing were from his early childhood. What could he have done as a small boy that would make me think of him differently?
“Do you remember when I told you about my recurring nightmare at the Omnis?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
It was a moment I will never ever forget—the night of our first kiss. He told me he was plagued by a dream of him as a young boy siphoning the gift from a man. A voice encouraged him to take the power, and he did until the man collapsed dead to the floor. The image brought him so much pain even though he didn’t know if it was a memory or just a horrific nightmare his mind repeatedly played.
“It wasn’t a nightmare. The memory was so traumatic that even binding my mind couldn’t keep it at bay.”
I place my palm to his cheek and lower his face until our eyes meet. “That doesn’t change the way I feel about you. I told you that night that it wasn’t your fault. You were only a little boy.”
“The man was my father.”
I still. Even my next breath remains trapped inside me. His father. Kyron killed his father. I can’t imagine him doing harm to anyone who didn’t mean to harm him first. This is a man who knows no limits to what he will do for those he loves. If he killed his father, I know it wasn’t done with hateful intensions.
His voice is deep and quiet as he continues. “My father was the Stigian insider helping Micah smuggle Cyffreds through the tunnels and into Lucent. My mother discovered what he was doing, and as punishment, she had his son kill him. I drained him of his life force, of his gift, and I couldn’t stop myself.”
And there it is. The answer to almost every terrible thing the people I love have endured. Esmeray. The woman is the epitome of everything evil in the five kingdoms. She has no morals and shows no mercy. And she deserves no better than a brutal death if she forced her small son to kill his own father.
