The TwiceBorn

All I Love...For All My Days...

"I alone love you...I alone tempt you...I alone love you...fear is not the end of this...--Live

Before, Lucan couldn't bring himself to look at her. Now he couldn't look away.

He should be walking ahead of her. Not alongside.

The quick, reproachful looks of the other brothers told him as much, but he couldn't stop...looking. The bleeding had stopped. Her footprints were clear as she walked back, her steps the same as the ones walking from the room where she'd been seated, yet she left no trace, not even the slightest of pink. It hadn't dwindled or tapered. It had stopped. Just as quickly and neatly as someone plugging a milk urn to keep all the precious fluid from spilling to the ground.

But who had placed the plug, that was the question.

He had never held counsel with Brede; not like Lord Kenric. But when he was deep in his prayers, there was always a soft hum he could sense inside of his head. It would emanate out, warming his cold hands and numb knees as he knelt and repeated and repeated while the sun peeked over the horizon and began its slow ascent into the sky. The hum...the warmth...it was a lullaby to him. A cradlesong he'd known all his life. And he could hear it now, whispering below the surface of his skin, racing back and forth, pounding and confined by his thoughts, his fears, his...confusion...at what he was seeing.

Never had the bleeding just stopped, all on its own.

The fact she'd stood and walked all the way to Lord Kenric's chambers had been enough to set his heart to hammering and that soft tug of---something---told him, sang to him that he was seeing the impossible. It had been enough for him to no longer want any part of convincing Islinn, the True Believer, to renounce.

The blood on his forehead tightened and itched.

Lucan raised a quick finger and touched the mark then jerked away as though burned. When he had turned to leave, Kenric had spoken one final time,telling him to wash his face but something within him was loathe to do it.

His stomach rolled and clenched and a queasy sweat broke out on his brow. A sense of terror, as fine and delicate as glass, overcame him and he physically had to force himself not to turn and run back up the hall. Anything to get away from...

He glanced at Islinn again. Her clothing was heavy with blood but what wasn't completely dried was only tacky.

The chair had more spikes than he could count, and she had fought him, tearing her skin open in places, and she'd been seated for...how long?

Long enough.

They reached the door of the small room she'd first been in, the one Lucan had collected her from, and he stopped. Resting one trembling hand against the heavy door, he dropped his head. Eyes closed, he still saw her standing there, her stoic expression, bloodied and yet still alive. Every rule broken by her existence.

Brede's rules.

Was Lord Kenric right? Had something darker saved her?