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voice. It was like sticky syrup against my soul—warm yet you wanted to wash it off before it dried there.
    I nodded in numb disbelief.
    Thom returned the gesture before he ran, the door snapping shut as I forced myself to stand.
    Even through his plea, through the way it twisted my soul, I still couldn’t ignore the screams that rang through the air. The pain of my friends was something I didn’t think either part of me could ignore. Thom should have known better.
    My legs shook beneath me as I leaned against the bed. My arms an unset gelatin as I used them as supports. The mattress gave far too much way, and I almost went down before I was able to catch myself. Then another shake of the abbey surged through me, awakening my magic with a pulse that empowered me.
    I needed to get there.
    I needed to pull Ryland out of the hell his father had created for him. I needed to see Joclyn, to know she was okay.
    With each shake of the building, each scream, my determination grew. My body felt stronger, even though each movement only sent a new wave of muscle aches and weakness through me. I wasn’t even sure how I was staying upright with the pain that held every inch of me, with the way I was leaning against the cold stone that was little more than ice against my hands and the bare soles of my feet.
    I clung to the wall as the abbey shook again, making my head spin and my knees try to buckle.
    With forehead pressed against the cold stone, I waited for the movement to stop, for the strength to continue, only to have the silence broken by a scream that pierced my heart, a plea that never should have seeped past that girl’s lips.
    “I want to kill him!”
    “No, Joclyn, you don’t,” Ilyan’s voice came right after hers, the pain behind his only adding to the shock of Joclyn’s plea, to the knowledge of who she was speaking of.
    “I do!”
    “No, my love, no,” Ilyan consoled, his voice strained with patience and love that, given the situation, seemed very out of place.
    His footsteps grew louder as they approached, the heavy taps of Ilyan’s shoes frantic against the stone as they walked through the cross hallway right in front of me. Ilyan held her tightly against him as she fought and wailed, beating on his back with fists clenched so tightly they were pure white.
    I took the last few steps as quick as I could, my body dragging along the stone as I leaned against the corner, pressing my face to the smooth, rounded stone. I watched their retreat, watched Joclyn as she screamed, as she wailed, as her blood red eyes looked past me to the battle she had faced and the boy she wanted so desperately to rip limb from limb.
    I looked at those eyes, the streaks of color speaking of agony and madness, and my heart dropped. The same lunacy I had seen in Ryland so many times before now stared at me, unseeing. It was the same panic and broken spirit trapped somewhere deep inside a mangled soul.
    I had seen firsthand the torment Ryland had been placed under, and I had heard of what they were trying to do to Jos. However, I hadn’t really put it together.
    I hadn’t really acknowledged that they might have hurt her the same.
    “What have they done to you?” I whispered more to myself than to her. For once in my life, I wished I had killed Edmund all those years ago when I had had the chance, that I had seen his actions for what they were when I was only a child.
    That I had stopped this before everyone I loved had been hurt by him.
    I watched her until they turned the last corner toward Ilyan’s wing, her screams nothing more than echoes in my mind. The abbey was filled with silence except for the tense rumbles that came from somewhere behind me, from the men who carried the immovable figure I recognized at once as Ryland, his lips still tinged blue.
    Blood dripped over his skin, his mouth lolling in the same way it had when Cail had beaten him, when Edmund had used him. His heart and soul were as battered as they had been his