Page 8 of Burdened Bonds
“There’s nothing we can do, Tristan,” I say, standing to my feet. Ellie rushes to Tristan’s side. The tears descending her cheeks in violent sobs that rattle her entire body. “It’s a pernicious curse. Your mom took it from you to save you.”
“No!” he says, shaking his head. “No!” he repeats, his gaze back on his mom, horror and pain – so much pain – crashing across his face. “Mom, no!” he chokes out. “No!”
She’s struggling for breath, the dark shadow tight and dark around her throat. Somehow, she manages a smile. It’s weak, but more honest an expression than anything I’ve ever seen on her face before. She lifts her hand, resting it against his cheek.
“My beautiful boy,” I read on her lips.
“Mom, please,” Tristan says, shaking her with less force now.
“Be careful, Tristan. Of your father.”
“Mom. Don’t. Give it back to me. It was mine. My time. My death. Not yours. Not yours!”
She smiles warmly and I can see how proud she is of her son.
“I love you,” she says, and then her eyes drift shut, the last breath whines out of her throat and her body slumps.
“No!” Tristan screams, cradling her lifeless form. “NO!” He repeats the word over and over again, each one more faint than the last. But then his jaw hardens, his eyes too, and loud, angry, erratic spells crash from his lips, his magic flickers in the air. It’s weak, depleted, useless. Most of it drained by the battle, his injury and the deadly curse. “My magic,” he moans.
Ellie wraps her arms around him, tugging him gently away from his mom.
“She saved you, Tris,” she whispers to him. “She gave her life for you.”
“Why?” he whines uselessly. “I don’t deserve that.”
“Because she loved you.”
Rhianna’s friends approach the slumped body of my aunt and gently Winnie lifts her into a more comfortable position, a more dignified one, so that if anyone walked in now, they might guess she was simply napping in her chair.
“She shouldn’t have ... she shouldn’t … why? How? How the fuck did this happen?” Tristan says, his face as tear-stained now as my sister’s, tugging at the strands of hair on his head.
“You were hit, badly wounded in the attack in the hall,” the Moreau boy says. “Remember? I tried to heal you but Icouldn’t. You were …” he holds his friend’s distraught gaze, “you were dying. There was no other way to save you.”
Tristan storms around the table, fury raging across his face. He knocks his hand hard against his friend’s chest. “You should have found a way. You should have stopped her.”
“Tristan,” I say firmly. “There was no other way.”
“It should have been him, not her,” he screams. “Not her. She deserved better. She deserved more. He made her life a misery.”
He doesn’t say who he means. But I can guess.
“She loved you, Tristan,” Ellie says.
He buries his face in his hands, rocking his head from side to side. His shirt is ripped and singed and soaked red with blood. He’s lost his shoes and his hair is black with soot.
He groans like a wounded animal, snot and tears streaming from his chin. Then he snaps his hands away and looks around at us all wildly, his eyes streaming with pain. He spins around, his gaze spiraling over the six of us circling him. And then he jolts to a halt.
His face cracks in even more pain, as his body snaps taut like a wire yanked tight.
“Where’s Rhianna?”
5
Rhi
“Tristan!”
I blink open my eyes, sitting bolt upright in my bed. The movement and an intense agony in my gut make me woozy, and my vision and the world spins around and around before finally righting themselves.
