Destined for Greatness ✔️

Chapter 17

Ryleigh's head had never hurt this badly. And she was blind. Or perhaps the night was just pitch black dark. She wasn't sure.

She wasn't really sure of anything, let alone where she was. That was: she assumed she was still in her cell, but she wasn't sure if she was on the floor or on the bed, or standing on her head. She wasn't sure she even had a head. Yes, she did. It hurt too much to be gone. She wasn't sure she had anything other than a head. She couldn't feel her body. Perhaps they'd chopped off all her limbs so she couldn't run. But then she should feel pain.

She blinked, hoping that her vision would return that easily. It didn't. There was a dark blur over her eyes, like there was smoke crawling all around her.

Her stomach cramped, which both told her she still had a stomach, and that she was going to throw up in three, two –

She turned hastily and fell off the bed, groaning as her head hit stone. That solved the mystery of her location. She was most definitely on the floor. She lifted her torso just enough to be able to throw up, and blindly crawled a few inches away afterwards, so she wouldn't fall face-first into her vomit.

The floor was cold to her touch, but she welcomed it. She lowered her head down on her arm and wiggled her legs, just to make sure she still had them. They twitched. Good. She blinked again, and slowly a bug crawling across the floor right in front of her face came into view. It was a beetle with a shiny black body.

There was a soft scraping sound right outside her cell. Probably the guard keeping watch over her. Was he laughing at her? He probably had a great time watching the Shadow Walker squirm on the floor. He probably thought this was rock-bottom for her, but little did he know. It was bad – make no mistake – but Ryleigh had seen worse.

She rolled onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling. It was hard to tell through the pounding of her head, but she felt different. Her mind felt different. Had Jade put a spell on her after all? But no. She felt lighter, if anything. Not more burdened. For the first time in what must have been months, there was calmness in her head. Usually, the first thing going through her mind waking up were images from the battle fourteen years ago. Blood and corpses and water and silvered arrows. Sounds of screams and cries would fill her ears. Her shoulder would ache as though there was still an arrow lodged into her skin.

Right then, however, her mind was silent. She blamed it on her fragile state. She was too botched up to think about the past. That had to be it.

Her heart started pounding almost as loudly as her head. A realisation crept onto her the same way that the beetle was creeping across the floor, slowly and without respect for her personal space. Jade had been right.

She shut her eyes. No. There had to be a different explanation. Except there wasn't. When she thought back to her conversation with Corbin, there was a different kind of recollection than there used to be. She still remembered their discussion, but there was a part afterwards that she didn't remember before. A part in which Corbin stopped her in her tracks and violently gained access to her mind. He did it quicker and with far more skill than Jade had done, but then he had far more experience. And she didn't see it coming, so she wasn't ready to fight him. Before she realised he was doing it, it was done already, and then he altered her memory so she never had a clue.

Jade had been right. Denial was no longer an option.

Her chest constricted. He'd manipulated her. Her own father. He'd promised he'd never mess with her head and he had. It dawned on her exactly what that meant. If he hadn't mind-controlled her, would she have lost her mind like she had? Would she have spiralled like she had? There was no way to tell, of course. She might have done everything exactly the way she had done it now. But there was a chance – no matter how small – that things could have ended differently, and he had robbed her of that possibility.