NOVEL NEXT 339 Feeling Ill 2
As Zagan struggled to understand what disturbing process was happening to him now with a beating heart in his chest, he sent a hastily typed text to his second.
'I must return to Gray Vale. I will not be long. Bring Zosime back to containment and wait for more instructions. The Luna is in containment in the castle, and the Winter has on cuffs. I instructed Brandt to keep them fed.'
While Zagan was typing, the loud knocking of the heart in his chest ceased its beat once again. It felt like he had been thrust into the world of color and life, blood rushing loudly in his ears, before it all came to a screeching hault and knocked the breath back out of his lungs. The room fell dark and cold, the soft rosy pink of health faded from behind his skin, and once again Zagan was sucked out of the living world into a frozen, undecidable space where he existed between life and death.
It was alarming. He felt back to himself in the sense that the silence within him had returned, but when he raised his hands in front of his face, they were ashen gray. He pulled a section of hair over his shoulder and found that it had also returned to its brittle colorless white. But he had just drank blood—it should take weeks for him to become this corpse-like. This was not typical at all. Now he was going to have to return home and find out what this meant with as few others knowing about it as possible.
"Penelope Winter," he hissed in the empty room.
If he didn't want to be discovered returning to Gray Vale, he would consider bringing her with him. But bringing an alyko into vampire territory would certainly get her killed and it would also get him discovered. So he would be making the trip alone, and hopefully it would be quick. His precious alyko could not be left for long.
———————
Penelope sat up in the bed in August's room.
"It's gone," she sighed in relief. "That horrible pain is gone."
August was sitting next to the bed studying her with the Veiled, trying to see if there was any clues as to why she was feeling ill.
"Did you see anything?" Penelope asked, placing a hand over her chest where the ache had been that vanished in an instant without any explanation.
"It looked like a dark aura around your heart, if that makes any sense," August replied. "And then it disappeared right before you said the pain was gone."
"It had to be Zagan," she whispered.
The unexplained pain was terrifying, especially since she didn't know what caused it. And why didn't she remember him drinking her blood? She turned her wrists over to check for a conspicuous bite mark somewhere and saw the gold bangles instead.
"What are those?" August asked, noticing the gold bracelets as well.
"Shit. They are cuffs," she cursed. "They keep alyko from using their abilities." Penelope pulled up her pant legs to check her ankles, and—sure enough—they were there too.
"Why would he do that to you?" August frowned and checked her own wrists.
"He must not trust me. I don't know," Penelope grumbled.
"But I don't have them. Shouldn't I have them, too?" August asked. "Not that I'm complaining."
"They wouldn't work on you anyway with the talisman around your neck, but he doesn't know that. My guess is there is something else in place for you," she looked around the room as August raised her hand to feel the sacred silver medallion around her neck that belonged to Graeme's father and was now the secret to protecting her here. She wished she would have left it for him in case he needed it as well, but the crow brought it to her that night. It must have thought she needed it more than her mate.
"I'm going to leave before he finds me in here," Penelope finally said, kicking her feet off the side of the bed.
"Why? The servant guy who brought the food knows you are in here anyway," August frowned again. She didn't want to be left alone here. What was she supposed to do with herself?
"If he finds us talking, he may get suspicious about the enchantment and who knows what he will want done to you next," she replied.
"But how am I supposed to figure out how to kill him if I have to keep pretending that I can't remember anything?" August asked.
What kind of plan was this? And now Penelope couldn't use any of her abilities?
"We don't know enough yet," Penelope hissed. "We will take the opportunity while your memory is supposedly blocked to learn as much as we can. We don't even know where the other alyko are on the island yet."
"And how are we supposed to learn where they are if I am stuck here pretending to be a college student who got lost in the woods?" August asked.
"Patience, dear," Penelope answered, making her way to the door. "Like you said, we are going to win this, but we need patience to do it. I will come back to check on you in a little while. Make sure you eat, okay?"
"But…" August began to object, and then she watched as Penelope appeared to bounce off of the air in the middle of the doorway and stumble back. "What… what just happened to you?"
"Great," Penelope grunted as she got back up. "That's what he did. He put you in a cage, which means now I am in a cage, too."
"What?" August gasped, approaching the door that Penelope couldn't seem to walk through. She put her hand into the space within the door frame without any issues and then did a dramatic leap through the air into the hallway.
"It's the talisman. You are not affected by the barrier since you wear it. He must have had one of his other alyko create this to keep you in," Penelope groaned.
The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr𝒆e(w)𝒆bnovel