Chapter 750: Make It Up To Me
"Stop," Ashlynn said as soon as she realized that Nyrielle was planning to leave. "If you love me, if you really, really love me, then don’t go. Just, just stay right there," she added as she screwed her eyes shut and clutched her head.
It had only been a few minutes since she woke, and already she felt like she’d been cast adrift at sea in the middle of a storm.
Jocelynn had betrayed her because she wanted to be with Owain. The pain of that discovery flared within her mind like a searing hot brand, and thinking of it provoked an answering fury and rage that demanded blood be spilled.
But Joceylynn wasn’t here, and neither was Owain. Nyrielle was though, and the way she’d betrayed Ashlynn, using the Mesmerizing Gaze to fill her mind with happiness and joy that her heart wasn’t capable of feeling at the moment, just to keep her prisoner here.. It hurt. It hurt more than Ashlynn had thought that Nyrielle was capable of hurting her.
Owain would never have let Ashlynn have true freedom. He’d have bound her in chains of duty and obligation, hammered into place with violence and pain. Even worse, Jocelynn would help him, stabbing her sister in the back to weaken her or killing her because she was in the way.
But what Nyrielle had done... It was like binding her in the same soft, silk ropes that had come to be a part of their most intimate moments. It wasn’t the first time that Nyrielle had threatened to take away her freedom. She’d said something similar in the High Pass when Ashlynn risked her life fighting the ancestral spirits possessing Hauke without using their bond to call on Nyrielle for help.
Only this time, Nyrielle had done it. She’d really used her power to keep Ashlynn from fleeing, and she promised to do it again.
Nyrielle had betrayed her trust and she knew it, she knew that Ashlynn couldn’t accept being manipulated that way, but she did it anyway. The part of Ashlynn that was deeply wounded wanted to lash out, wanted to gather all of the power she could to strike out at Nyrielle with all of the hurt she felt from what Owain had done to her, what Jocelynn had done to her, and now, what Nyrielle had done to her as well.
Standing in the dark, Nyrielle stayed motionless, allowing the storm of emotion raging in Ashlynn’s heart to batter her as a small, pathetic form of penance for the wrong she had done. And at the same time, she clung to Ashlynn’s word ’stay’, like it was a mighty tree that could hold her up even when she felt like collapsing to the floor.
Her Ashlynn wanted her to stay, so she would stay, all the way until the sun rose if she had to. Even that would be better than being told to ’go.’
"You promised me," Ashlynn said as she struggled against her darkest impulses, fighting to reason her way through Nyrielle’s actions instead of just reacting to them. "You promised me that you’d protect me from my nightmares. That you’d keep me safe while I slept and give me peace until I could find it for myself. You promised me that, didn’t you?" Ashlynn asked, opening her tear-filled eyes to stare at Nyrielle’s figure in the cool, blue-green light of the crystal lantern.