5. Living with Half a Soul

CHAPTER 5

Living with Half a Soul

B rynleigh froze, her heart a booming drum as Ryker's last words echoed in her mind.

Dead, dead, dead .

For the longest moment, she couldn't breathe, let alone think. Dead? How could he be dead?

When her mouth started working again, she breathed, "Impossible."

It couldn't be true. Bound Partners didn't up and die on their other halves.

All vampires were immortal unless killed, but if a Bound Partner perished, the surviving partner would be living with half a soul.

A Binding was more than just a physical connection. It wove the tapestry of the partners' lives together until they were so interconnected that separation was impossible.

A frown tugged at Ryker's lips as he navigated through the phone.

"I assure you, it's possible. Look," he said gruffly, his voice far harsher than it had ever been in the Choosing.

Anger radiated off him like steam. Once again, he slid the phone over to her, careful not to touch her hand.

The moment she saw the screen, it was like someone threw her headfirst into a lake of pure ice .

She shivered, goosebumps erupted on her flesh, and her stomach turned. She wanted to tear her eyes away and look elsewhere, but she couldn't make her body function.

The blood she'd consumed soured in her stomach, her heart pounded, and her shadows screamed. Their cry was haunting, loud, and unending as they throbbed in her veins.

She'd seen death many times before, but this…

Oh, gods. This wasn't just awful. This was gruesome.

Her hand trembled as she traced the screen.

The handsome man from the previous photo was nowhere to be seen. In his place was an ashy corpse. Emery Sylvain, or what was left of him, was on his back on a translucent sheet of ice.

A bloody wooden stake protruded from his chest. Black marks spiderwebbed across his gray, sunken skin. His flesh stuck to his skeleton like a dried piece of fruit. His black eyes were wide, and his face was contorted in a never-ending scream. His right arm was outstretched towards the heavens and frozen in death, his Binding Mark stark against his gray flesh.

This was the kind of death there was no coming back from, even for vampires.

Acidic bile rose in Brynleigh's throat, and she gagged.

Oh, gods.

Throwing her hand over her mouth, she dropped the phone and stumbled to her feet.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled through her hand. "I… I can't."

Staggering to the bathroom, she fell to her knees in front of the toilet. The porcelain was cold between her hands as she retched. All the blood she'd consumed earlier came up, but she didn't stop. She kept going until there was nothing left within her.

Every time she closed her eyes, that image flashed through her mind. Her stomach cramped, and her heart ached as she imagined Emery's pain as he died.

There was no doubt in her mind this was real. There was no faking that kind of image.

Eventually, when her stomach was empty and she had nothing left, she stood. Rinsing her mouth out with water, she washed her trembling hands.

A shadow stood in the open doorway, watching her.

"Emery Sylvain was staked," Ryker said calmly, as though they were discussing the weather and not a man's final death.

She stared down at the sink. Although she thought she knew the answer to her next question, she needed confirmation.

"A Representative killed him, didn't they?"

Long, horrible seconds passed before a grunt of acknowledgment came from Ryker.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Brynleigh's head spun with this new information. No wonder Jelisette was filled with so much hatred. No wonder she was out for Representative blood.

It was all starting to make some sick, twisted sense.

Clutching the counter because she wasn't certain she'd be able to remain upright on her own, she slowly turned around.

"They truly were Bound?" Horror laced her every word. "That man and Jelisette?"

His lips were set in a grim line. "Yes."

And now, Emery was dead.

She'd never seen a staked vampire and hadn't known it was so… so… horrifying. She would have nightmares about that man's death for years to come.

If she lived that long.

Every single experience Brynleigh had had with her Maker flashed before her eyes. Suddenly, Jelisette's temper, coldness, and inability to care about anything all made sense.

"When did this happen?" Brynleigh whispered.

"Right before the One Hundredth and Eighty-Third Choosing."

She quickly did the math in her head. Their Choosing had been the Two Hundredth. So a hundred and seventy years ago, Jelisette's Bound Partner had died.

Nearly two centuries had passed while Jelisette lived with half a soul. Brynleigh's heart ached as she imagined her Maker's daily, excruciating pain .

The immeasurable grief. The sorrow. The agony of being half a person.

Her legs trembled, and dizziness swept through her. She didn't even know vampires could be dizzy, but this was a day of nasty surprises.

"I need… I need to sit down."

Ryker nodded, his mouth pinched in a line as he moved aside.

Releasing the sink, Brynleigh stumbled to the living room and dropped back into her chair. Her head fell into her hands, and she forced her lungs to intake air.

Every breath hurt.

Was this what Jelisette felt like every minute of every day? Was she drowning in grief and sorrow and pain?

Eventually, Ryker reclaimed his seat across from her. She felt his gaze on her and looked up to meet brown, dispassionate eyes.

Gods.

The anger lining the hard edges of his face was a knife driving into her side. This was too much for right now. Too soon.

Her gaze plummeted. She picked at a stray piece of lint on her borrowed sweater and shook her head.

"Why tell me this?" she muttered. "Why not just leave me in that prison?"

Was his goal to hurt her? Was that why he hadn't killed her yet?

Instead of taking her life swiftly, he would kill her with a thousand empty looks that stung like stakes, cold stares as beautiful and deadly as blades of silver, and utter loneliness as harsh as a million lifetimes without blood.

That would be the more painful way to go.

Before him, Brynleigh hadn't known what a true partnership could feel like. She hadn't known it was possible to have another person complete you.

Perhaps the worst thing to come from all this was that she'd learned the value of having someone love her, only to have it stripped away.

For the longest time, silence was the only thing between them. She wasn't even sure Ryker had heard her question.

"I… I couldn't leave you there," he confessed.

Couldn't .

Such a strange word. It denoted a lack of ability, but that didn't make sense. Jelisette apparently had no problem lying to Brynleigh, hiding a Binding, and abandoning her in prison, so why was it so hard for Ryker to do the same?

Confusion roiled through her as she tried to parse what he was saying. "Why not?"

He inhaled sharply.

"I just… couldn't." There was that word again. "In order to get you out of the… interrogation?—"

"Torture," she quietly interrupted, rubbing her wrists. The sweater hid the ruby marks, but they were still there. Even now, she felt the ghosts of those manacles on her wrists.

"What?"

Her voice was soft as she canted her head. "They were torturing me, Ryker."

Memories of her time in the prison flashed through her mind. Screams and pain and agony, all intermingled with grief because she thought Zanri had killed her husband. She'd been so lost in the hurt, and she thought it was her penance because she'd gotten him killed.

Except…

He was still alive. He'd been alive the whole time.

"They were inflicting never-ending pain on me. The least you can do is have the decency to call it what it fucking was ." She paused as a tear ran down her cheek, and then she whispered, "Torture."

Brynleigh wasn't ready to dive into the specifics of what had been done to her—what he had allowed to happen—but she could do this. That simple word acknowledged her pain and suffering, and she needed him to say it.

Storms passed through his gaze again before he briskly nodded. "Understood."

So formal. So detached. Her heart ached once more. Maybe that would be her constant state of being now.

Ryker continued, his voice monotone and his eyes hard, "In order to get you out of the torture , I had to make a deal with Myrrah Challard."

A deal .

Her shadows twinged, and a pit formed in her stomach. Whatever was coming would be bad.

A large part of her wanted to shut this conversation down, but she wasn't sure where that would leave her with Ryker. Instead, she twisted her fingers together.

Brynleigh supposed she had Victor and his merry band of torturers to thank for that new development. She never used to get nervous, but then again, being used as a living pincushion for several weeks changed a woman.

She chewed on her lip. "What kind of deal?"

Ryker's eyes darkened, and the tang of his magic filled the air. Had he always had this much power so close at hand? She hadn't noticed it as much before.

"Ever since our… wedding,"—he seemed to choke on the word, and his nostrils flared—"the military has been conducting an in-depth investigation into Jelisette de la Point."

She swallowed. "An investigation?"

That didn't sound good. But then again, nothing these days sounded good.

Ryker stared directly at her, his eyes drilling into hers. "Your feline… friend was very talkative after a few days of encouragement."

"My friend… Zanri?" All the blood drained from her face, and she gripped the armrests. "He's alive?"

She thought that Ryker had killed him.

The captain's jaw clenched, and he gritted out, "Barely."

That one word spoke fucking volumes.

Brynleigh's heart pounded as she processed this latest development. On the one hand, fuck Zanri. He'd betrayed her and came to kill Ryker. He was the reason she was in this mess. On the other hand, she'd been through hell, and to think that Zanri had probably suffered worse…

Grateful her stomach was empty, she groaned and rubbed her temples. She couldn't process this right now. Not on top of everything else.

"I see." Her voice was monotone.

Ryker's fingers twitched as though he wanted to reach for her but decided against it. "It was during that time that we uncovered Jelisette's Binding to Emery Sylvain."

"The dead vampire."

"Yes." His jaw feathered, and he held her gaze. "That's not all we discovered. We also learned that Jelisette is connected to the Black Night."

Too much.

This was all too much.

Brynleigh's head pounded as she stared at Ryker. Her trio of torturers had asked her about the Black Night, but she didn't know what that was. That hadn't changed.

"I've never heard of the Black Night," she whispered.

Ryker assessed her for a long moment before he nodded.

"I believe you. But that doesn't negate that even if you don't know what it is, Jelisette certainly does. The Black Night is a rebel organization, and she's one of their members."

He said the words with as much certainty as one would when declaring the grass was green.

Brynleigh knew rebels existed within the Republic. But this. This was a joke. It had to be a joke, right? How could her Maker be a part of this? If the Black Night were who Ryker said they were, and Jelisette was working with them…

She stared at the fae captain, waiting for him to laugh and tell her this was a prank, but he didn't.

Her heart throbbed, and she couldn't wrap her mind around this. First, the Binding. Now, a rebel?

How could Jelisette be one of the people hell-bent on overthrowing the current structure of the Republic of Balance? She'd been at the Masked Ball when the rebels' bomb went off. She was the one who saved Brynleigh's life.

It didn't make sense.

It couldn't.

Except, deep in the back of Brynleigh's mind, a niggling sensation insisted this might make the tiniest bit of sense. Jelisette had hidden her Binding. Why was it impossible that she'd hidden this, too ?

Maybe every single fucking thing Jelisette had ever said or done was a lie.

Maybe Brynleigh was just an Isvana-damned naive idiot who believed everything she was told.

She curled her fists. Had Jelisette and Zanri laughed at her expense? Had they played games with her, finding her gullibility amusing?

Brynleigh had trusted them. She thought they were looking out for her. Maybe the actual game had been to see how many lies she would believe before she found them out.

Minutes went by, and Brynleigh considered everything she'd learned today. The rebels, the Binding, the deception.

No matter which angle she took, she kept arriving at the same conclusion: she'd been played. If Jelisette was a rebel, then everything— everything —had been a lie.

The game, the rules, and Brynleigh's involvement in the Choosing had all been part of something far bigger than her.

And that meant…

Fuck it all.

Curling her fists, Brynleigh drew in a deep breath. She was done.

This would either be the biggest mistake of her life, or it would bring her to freedom.

Looking at Ryker, she asked, "What do you need me to do?"