Bleeding Ink

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

The face Lyv made as she finished the last of her slice of cheesecake was not the usual one. Brows furrowing and lips turned down in a frown, she shot up from her chair and spun around, eyes searching for the person heading their way before he even rounded the corner into view.

Jai strode forward, practically lifting people out of his way, with fierce determination on his face.

"What's happened?" Lyv demanded once he was within earshot.

"Elys," he answered. "Eamon and Archer came back from training without him. Said they were sword fighting and he got caught on the arm with a blade. But it wasn't just because of that. He'd gone into a vision and they couldn't get him out for almost a solid minute. Once he was, though, he practically fled on horseback. They found him later at the Raven, but he wouldn't talk, wouldn't even acknowledge them. They came to find me after. I knew you would want to go to him, too, so..."

"So, let's go," she finished for him, stepping to his side as she laced their fingers together. "Now. You know how he gets with his intense visions, locking everyone out as he sorts through them himself."

"And you know how he always ends up coming to us."

Lyv nodded, then looked back at Cleo. "You're coming with us."

She just shook her head, looking between her cousin and her mate. "I...no. You two go. Whatever happened with Elys, my questions can wait until after he's sorted through everything."

Jai held out his other hand for her. "Eamon said when Elys was in his vision, he said your name. So, you're coming with us."

Cleo froze, staring at his hand. With her name coming up, was Elys's vision something to do with what she wanted to ask him about the Lady in White? Could he have seen something so horrific he had to drown his sorrows and try to forget?

She took Jai's hand.

The closer they got to the tavern, whispers surrounded them about the Seer of Ikreus. How he'd raced through the streets of Ayveri just a few hours before, how he'd practically slammed through the door of the Raven, and how he demanded the strongest alcohol to come to their regular table as soon as he finished a tankard. Usually, Elys wasn't one for alcohol, but whatever this vision had been of seemed to have tipped him over the edge.

And it made a nervous knot form in the pit of Cleo's stomach as her hand tightened on Jai's arm with every step.

"...don't know what it was about," Jai had been saying to Lyv. "Like I said before, Cleo's name was mentioned. Then something about Des...and darkness."

Lyv let out a whimper. "Jai, you don't think..."

"I...I don't know, princess," he told her, kissing the side of her head. "We knew it would happen. We've always known."

They didn't even have to specify as to what that was either.

When Dessa was conceived, Lyv had dark magic within her. It had been the same for Cleo and Adeena when their mother Corliss became pregnant with them. But while Cleo and Adeena had immediately displayed how their dark and light magic was within them, Dessa's had somehow stifled both it and her light magic. She had always thought of it as a curse, not having magic, but Lyv and Jai had told her otherwise. Her magic would appear someday, though they never knew as to when. The only spark she'd ever shown was on the day she was born, and it snowed in both their world and in Laria.

Then again just a week before when Cleo came and she and Elys felt it stir within her.

And maybe...maybe the day it fully came to the surface was about to come.