Unwilling (Book One of the Compelled Trilogy 1) (5 page)

Three heartbeats

Rooted to the spot in disbelief.
What will he do?
Rowan thought and hurried after him. She could hear him laughing still, short bursts that flung from his mouth uncontrollably, shattering the silence of the house and filling the halls with his hysteria.  Rowan followed the sound to the kitchen, where Elias had left the door to the backyard there open. Snow drifted lazily into the room, making Rowan shiver despite the fact she still had her fur wrapped around her.

She stood in the frame of the door watching Elias robustly dig a grave in the solid ground, as he had not been able to earlier that morning.

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“Let’s leave Elias.” Rowan begged her brother that night. “We can just go, you and me. We can leave Gavaint, we’ve never been anywhere else! We could go see all of Lamarina! We could sail the Jamine Ocean, I know you have always wanted to paint it. Or we could go all the way up to Daria; people in the Market say the Capital is beautiful this time of year.” Rowan pleaded, knowing she sounded desperate, frantic. Her eyes followed Elias as he paced the room.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

“I can’t. I can’t go.” Elias responded, shaking his head vehemently. Back and forth. “I must make her pay for everything she’s ever done. Every bruise, and scar, and all your nightmares!” Elias said, his words tumbling from his mouth as he whirled to look at Rowan, his eyes dancing mischievously in the moonlight. Then he resumed his pacing.

Back and forth.

“It does not matter Elias, please!” Rowan cried, wishing he would stop moving.

Back and forth.

“I promise, Rowan, soon.” Elias said, nodding his head. Back and forth. “It’s the most amazing thing. It’s like being a Tal.” He muttered to himself, smiling wickedly.

Back and forth.

He’s mad.
Rowan thought.
Just like her.

Back and forth.

Rowan slipped out of their room unnoticed, Elias muttering to himself. Rowan closed the door behind her and rested against it, even in the hall she could hear his footsteps trekking through their room.

Back and forth.

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The days that followed were some of the worst of Rowan’s life. Maybe even worse than the days when mother had beaten her. For the things Elias had their mother do, the things he could think of nearly shattered Rowan, for him.

“Slap yourself.” Elias said the first day, using that soft voice that Rowan already despised. “Till your red, and blistered.” He bounced excitedly, his eyes darting as he watched his mother resist. Rowan stood in the corner, her brow furrowed low over her troubled blue eyes. The first slap rang out, a loud sound that hung heavy in the air, dangling in front of Rowan like a horrible sickening reminder that the best part of Elias had died with their father. Rowan could see the struggle within her mother; she could see her mother trying to disobey, pushing against the indiscernible bonds that held her captive.

“Elias?” Rowan said stepping toward him. He turned on her angry, his face twisted in a scowl of hatred, pushing her away from him and she staggered, her back slamming into the wall behind her so hard a sharp twinge shuttered down her spine. Elias turned away from her, his focus drawn back to their mother, who was sobbing uncontrollably, each slap leaving her face a darker shade of red.

Rowan fled from the room and cried on her bed until her throat was hoarse and the tears simply would not fall any longer, leaving a painful lump in her throat and a harsh bruise in her chest that seemed to Rowan might never heal.

The next day Rowan walked in on her mother bashing her head against a wall, her blood splattering down her face like paint had splattered Elias’s clothes.

“I did it for you Rowan!” Elias told her enthusiastically when he caught sight of her, as if he were giving her a great gift, a present to be treasured all her days and all her nights.

“Why would you do this?” Rowan cried, looking at the stranger that stood before her.

“I did it for you!” He repeated incredulous that Rowan wasn’t jumping with joy at his generosity.

“This isn’t for me Elias. None of this is.” She told him angrily, backing away from him as though he might lash out at her next.

A day after that Elias had mother walk outside in nothing but her undergarments and stand outside until her body was a hideous shade of blue and she was so fatigued she could no longer remain upright and she collapsed into a sniveling ball in the snow. Rowan looked disgusted at Elias, and dragged her mother into the house.

“Don’t help her Rowan!” Elias shouted, his features warped into a glare.

“Leave me alone, Elias.” Rowan said hotly, struggling to drag her mother to her room. She hefted her mother onto her silk sheets, where she lay immobile, her body like ice. Rowan covered her with thick blankets, tucking them in under her. Her mother neither responded to nor acknowledged her daughters presence. Rowan left her mother’s room feeling exhausted and older beyond her years.

The next morning Rowan woke to sunshine drifting into her room, out of habit she looked to Elias’s bed, but quickly remembered he wasn’t there. The last few days he had taken to sleeping elsewhere and Rowan could only guess at what he spent his nights doing. Rowan groggily made her way down the stairs, rubbing at her eyes.

“Please Elias.” She heard her mother sob and Rowan cocked her head, stepping off the stairs onto the landing with dread and walking down the hall to the living room, where her mother’s voice had drifted.

“Say it.” Rowan heard Elias say, his voice low, that loathsome musical note laced through it. Rowan hated that voice more than anything in the entire world. She hated the way he was able to speak so soft, and the beautiful way the words floated through the air even when they were sounding out the most atrocious things.

“When you were younger I tried to drown you, your father stopped me, and if I hadn’t been pregnant with Rowan he would have killed me. When Rowan was born, I would not feed her for days. But you children would never die, no matter what I did or how hard I hoped, you’d never die!” Her mother sobbed, Rowan felt sick to her stomach as she staggered down the hall.

“What else, say it.” Elias demanded urgently.

“Please Elias no more, please.” Rowans mother begged, her voice hoarse and cracking from God’s knows how many hours of this torture, as Rowan stepped into the room.  Rowans mother sat on the large sofa, her shoulders hunched and silent sobs rocked her body though Rowan couldn’t see tears on her face. Elias held a long slim knife in one hand, blood dripping from the blade with a soft plop onto the hardwood underneath. Thin gashes marred her mother’s arms and face, blood covering the majority of her body as if she had just stepped from a bath with red water. The wood and sofa under her mother was stained red, saturated in thick blood.

“ELIAS!” Rowan yelled.  Elias turned to her, his eyes haunted and she could barely find a trace of the brother she loved under the beast that looked out of his eyes.

“No more, please no more.” Her mother moaned on the sofa, staring dazedly at the floor, her body wobbling where she sat.

“Isn’t this what you want Rowan? To make her pay for what she’s done to us?” Elias asked, outstretching his hands as if to draw Rowan toward him. Rowan took a step back, afraid of the stranger that stood before her.

“No, Elias. I never wanted this. I hate what you’ve become. I HATE that thing in you.” She said through her teeth
,
the words like venom in her mouth as she spit them out.

“But we could be Gods Rowan, this power in me could give us everything we ever wanted. I could give you the world if you only ask for it.” He said, his eyes shining. Her mother moaned behind Elias, slumping over onto the couch. 

“I only want my brother back.” Rowan said softly.
If he even exists in there at all.

“Soon.” Elias assured her and strode from the room, dropping the blood-tinged knife to the floor as he went, leaving Rowan to clean up the mess he had made. Again.

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“Sister! Come look, I am almost done and then we can leave this accursed place!” Elias exclaimed to Rowan the following morning.  Elias burst into their room where Rowan sat on her bed staring absently at the wall, drinking a cup of steaming bitter tea.

Rowan looked up at him startled, rousing from her thoughts to look at her brother. His black hair was tousled, unbrushed, and reaching almost to his shoulders. The same blue eyes that Rowan had stared at her with a feverish exhilaration and the true smile Rowan knew to be Elias’s, looked at her so earnestly Rowan couldn’t help but smile back hopefully and take the hand he offered her. Elias grabbed her cup, placing it on a small table they kept in the room and she let him drag her hastily out to the back, towards the Great Tree.

Rowan stopped short when she realized what he intended. “Elias, you cannot do this thing!” She shouted at him as he hurried ahead. Elias stopped beneath their mother, his breaths puffing out in clouds from the cold as he turned to look at his sister. A thick noose hung around her mother’s neck, the bench propped under her in its familiar spot. Rowan could tell she wished to struggle. Her body would tick every now and then, her face contorted in an ugly cry, made uglier by the large dirt brown scabs crisscrossing along her pale skin. Wailing from deep in her soul crushed the silence between Elias and Rowan.

“Elias, my son, my
Tal,
my
Moval,
I beg of you, please. I never meant to-“

“Shut your mouth!” Elias screamed at his mother, she fell silent though her desolate tears seemed to fall with a deafening loudness.

The first time Rowan ever used it she had never meant to. She didn’t even know that she could. If she could have gone back in time, she never would have done it, though she did save her mother’s life that day.

Rowan walked to her brother placing her hand on his arm, trying to desperately reach the brother she knew to still be buried inside this brother she did not. His eyes flicked twixt hers, the excitement in them diminishing.

“Elias, you cannot do this, it has been enough. Please, you cannot compel her no more.” Rowan felt a spark of heat a flickering fire a raging inferno beginning to leap to life in her chest, lazily working its way through her, making her limbs tingle but Rowan pushed back against it and the feeling quickly died. Rowan was left feeling tired and cold and for a brief moment, a miniscule second that barely mattered, as if she wanted the heat inside her to come back. “For the love you have of me please stop, let this vendetta die.” Elias took a step back. He looked between their mother and Rowan, a deep confusion working its way across his face. He looked as though he wanted to argue; instead, he hurried off, slipping back inside the warmth of the house silently.

“You’re just like him!” Their mother shouted viciously to Elias’s turned back, her voice cracking. The moment Elias disappeared back into the house Rowan’s mother tore the noose from around her neck. She collapsed onto the bench in a dirty heap, with her head buried in her hands. Rowan said not a word to her mother, as she too went back inside.

Rowan didn’t see Elias or their mother for the rest of the day, and she went to bed that night fatigued, her head lost in a hazy cloud. She didn’t think of the repercussions of what she had done. Using the “gift” hadn’t felt as Elias had described, Rowan didn’t feel the adrenaline, the power surging through her. She only felt tired, and perhaps a little sad. It felt more like a curse to her than a gift, a rampant firestorm that would consume her and devour everything that made her who she was until there was nothing left but the Beast inside.

When Rowan crawled under the covers and closed her eyes, she did not expect to be woken just a few short hours later by her panicked brother.

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The door came crashing open and Rowan bolted upright in her bed, her heart jolting inside her chest.
Its mother come back to finish me off at last.
Rowan thought alarmingly in her sleepy state. When she only saw Elias, she breathed a sigh of relief.
I’m being silly,
Rowan thought, and tried to calm her frantic heart.

“Rowan, it won’t work!” Elias cried flinging himself into the room. “It won’t work! She is coming for me and she means to kill me!” He whimpered. A look was on his face that Rowan had never before seen her brother wear. Not when they discovered father dead, or when mother came in the night. He was only ever brave, never letting Rowan see the fear he had. Now, he looked like an animal, his eyes darting hysterically, his hair disheveled. He had small cut on his neck and blood dribbled down into the collar of his off-white sleeping shirt.

“Elias, I’m not sure-“ Rowan started, puzzled.

“You must listen Rowan! I cannot compel her any longer. I must go! I must leave! I am so sorry, but-”

“ELIAS!” Rowan heard her mother roar deep in the house, causing her brother to stagger backward. He looked stricken, the blood draining from his face. He shook his head once at her, and disappeared back down the darkened hall. “ELIAS! I WILL KILL YOU FOR THIS!” Her mother bellowed.