The beast and the blessed novel by Ashley Breanne novel Chapter 165

Fifty-Eight: Joselin

Joselin's P.O.V.

Cyrus threw up for a long while. The healers pushed me aside when it went from stomach acid to blood. As much as I detested vomit, even though I was able to hold back some of my own, I stayed. He needed people, and I needed answers.

A line of sweat appeared across his forehead, and every time his eyes instinctively closed as he lost his stomach, he would jerk them right back open. He hadn't been kidding about the darkness he saw when he closed his eyes.

He looked haunted and terrified. The man, who typically looked like a teenager, was nothing more than a scared little boy right now, and it broke my heart.

Tobias had his chest to my back with his hands on my hips. While half of my mind was on Cyrus in bed, there was nothing I could do until this wave of nausea passed.

The other half of my mind was zeroed in on how Tobias had his thumbs sliding along my waist to show that he supported me.

It was so comforting, but I was still waiting for him to tell me that I smelled different or that he could hear or feel a little heartbeat inside me. I wondered if he would know before I did since I was stalling.

Once again, I pushed aside those thoughts. I didn't have the courage to take a test right now, nor did I have the time to run to a store, get one and then take it without anyone seeing me.

Deal with Cora first.

I had to keep reminding myself to stay on task. Cora was the threat here; the potential of a baby inside me was not. It was a distraction, one that I could push aside until I received confirmation that it was even true. Until then, I could continue to pretend it wasn't real and focus on the actual issue.

When the healers stepped back, they looked uncertain and uneasy. Flora's hands were up like she was backing away from a rabid animal and looked exhausted.

She had healed him several times, but it hadn't held. Trauma and magic were powerful things.

Cyrus was handed a glass of water. He took a large sip, gargled it, and spat it into the bucket.

My stomach rolled, and my mouth watered as I fought back the bile pushing its way up my throat.

"Tell me what you know." My demand made Tobias tighten his hands on my hips slightly, and while he was worried, I also sensed his amusement at my statement. I needed to get answers and get the hell out of this room before I was sick too.

If I did that, I would look weak, and it would only raise suspicion. Neither of which I wanted.

"Always so pleasant," Cyrus muttered with a grimace of disgust as he moved his tongue around his mouth, more than likely still tasting his vomit. His lips pursed, and his eyelids lowered as his stomach jerked as if he were going to gag again, but instead, Cyrus took a deep breath and laid back.

"Now." I couldn't wait any longer. We didn't have time for more delays. We needed to be ready to take action as soon as we located Cora.

"It was like there was a flimsy wall between me and Rona. I could feel and see her, but she was trapped. I had been able to talk to her, to Rona. I don't know how it worked, and it was only for a short period." He looked off into the distance, his eyes staying open abnormally long between each blink as if trying to avoid returning to the darkness.

"Cora was controlling her." My statement was met with a nod. We already knew that, but hearing the confirmation from someone who had actually been in Rona's head almost made me feel relieved. I knew she was a terror as a kid, and I assumed that Cora controlling her had been recent. So, I still wasn't a huge fan of Rona, but knowing that the motive behind her most recent actions wasn't her own, that she had been under someone else's control, made me hate her a little less.

"Yeah, but Rona had been resisting, fighting against her. She had been using Cora's leg to track her. Rona was trying to find out what Cora was up to, but she didn't figure it out until I showed up here."

This was it.

Cyrus took another sip of his water, shuttering as he swallowed it. "Rona suspected that Cora was after me after you brought me back here. That's why she was so determined to find out what I was. Rona didn't want my power for herself; she just wanted to find Cora's weakness. She wanted to figure out what my connection to Cora was."

I moved forward, placing my hands on the foot rail of his bed to stay out of the way of any vomit or the healers in case they needed to rush to him again.

His eyes were brighter than ever before when he looked at me again. The pale yellow stood out sharply against the bright red of his bloodshot eyes." Do you know what it's like to be trapped in a corpse? I felt her soul leave her body. I felt the darkness close in, wanting to suck the life from her empty vessel, but I was still in there. No matter how much I screamed or fought, I couldn't get out."

I swallowed hard. Any thought of apologizing and begging for forgiveness for his blood being taken was long gone. I couldn't bring it up now, not after that.

“Did she say anything else? Anything that might lead us to her, anything about her plans?" I pushed, wanting to get him out of the spiral the memories of the torture would drag him down into.

“She didn't say anything about a plan." His response made Natalie's shoulders visibly drop with disappointment. "She just kept speaking in Latin over our yelling. Then there was a lot of growling, and it went silent. I was brought back to my body after that."

"That's what I had been afraid of. Cora had been so careful up until now. I think her plan had been to use or absorb Rona's magic so she would be strong enough to take yours without having your body present. But since the bears interrupted her and Rona died, she could be up to anything. She is probably feeling frazzled and will be unpredictable while trying to devise a new plan.’

I bit the inside of my cheek as I thought about what I would do if I were in her shoes. But until I knew what her end goal was, I couldn't. Was it really just to kill Cyrus or to take his powers? What did she want to do with them once she had them?

“She's probably looking for another power source now that she lost Rona." A voice from the doorway stated, and I looked over my shoulder, seeming to be the only one unaware of the three unannounced people who had joined the room.

Aurora stood in front of Charlie and Damien, and I tried not to look at the light coating of dust on their hair. It hadn't been there before, and there had been no wind when I was back at Rona's house.

A lump formed in my throat as she nodded at me in acknowledgment, covered in ashes. She must have cremated the body.

"You wouldn't happen to know who she was involved with, would you? Someone who had turned on her?" Natalie asked with hope in her voice.

“I haven't been around the castle in almost two decades. That last person I had seen her with was Talia." Aurora moved to sit down at the table, looking tired and distressed from today's events.

I choked on my spit. "I'm sorry, what? Did you just say that Cora and Talia had been together?"