Unwilling (Book One of the Compelled Trilogy 1) (2 page)

Where the man’s eyes should have been sat only jagged red holes, with blood seeping down his cheeks like tears. His brown hair was long and held back by dark string and the wind danced through it, making it seem like the head was swaying, caught in some deadly dance between Elias and the Devil, though she was beginning to wonder if they truly were one in the same. Rowan cringed, knowing the man would more than likely have been alive when he had had his eyes ripped from his body. Rowan could just imagine his screams echoing around the forest, the birds picking up his shrieks and replaying it back to him, almost as a game, as he begged for his inevitable death, whimpered for the freedom and painlessness of no longer having life fill him.

“Where is it?” Rowan asked, her voice eerily calm, though her heart was racing and pounding and striking her rib cage so hard it might bruise and she felt like falling to her knees and striking at the ground and screaming until her voice was hoarse and raspy, destroying the broken splintered world with her bare hands until nothing was left standing but her and Elias and she could demand the answers that had so long and agonizingly eluded her. Rowan stood, unflinching, the others unaware of her inner demons.

“Here,” Jonquil said to her, moving to stand beside a tree located behind the grisly effigy. Rowan made her way to the tree, all eyes following her gravely as she stopped beside the tree. It was almost dark now, stars popping their way into the sky as it faded from red to deep blue, tiny pinpricks of hope in an otherwise bleak surrounding.

Rowan eyed the mark, hating it with every fiber of her being, wanting to erase the image from her mind but it plagued her, filled her, and followed her as she followed it. It was his signature mark; he left it almost everywhere he went. Rowan could count the number of times on one hand where this forsaken mark had not been present. Sometimes he would carve the mark into flesh, wood, or once even stone, though Rowan could only guess at how long it had taken him to accomplish that feat. This carving was about the size of her palm, it would not have taken him very long to create.

Rowan could imagine him standing here, calmly, a small dagger perched in his hand like a paintbrush, his brow furrowed in concentration as it had when they were children, as his latest audience, the eyeless head, watched him work silently. Rowan placed her hand over the carving; she felt its slits and groves, the way it twisted around the smooth bark, forever marring the dark wood. She wound her fingers around the chilling picture, as if committing it to memory though it was already seared into her mind. The smooth curved lines of the eye stared intently at her, not as if it was carved into wood, but as if it had a life of its own, as if someone was actually watching her out of the eye. Rowan shivered, a chill snaking its way down her spine despite the warm evening.

Rowan’s stomach churned in knots as she traced the last of the image, letters; words, sprawled at the bottom in ancient words her and Elias had learned as children.
Shockel loviled ser Moval. Shockel loviled Tal.

“He is lost to me.” Rowan repeated, heavy-hearted, to the men surrounding her. A bird trilled in response, in either mockery or solidarity she did not know. The warm evening was eerily silent as she closed her eyes and rocked on the balls of her feet, hoping she did not collapse. Rowan wished to be somewhere, anywhere, far away from this wretched cottage and the dead that would add to the ghosts she dreaded seeing in her constant nightmares.
Elias is lost to me
, she thought one last time,
my brother is lost to me
. She sighed deeply as she accepted that Elias truly was the monster everyone else had known him to be. She could no longer hope for anything else.

TWO

TEN MONTHS AGO- OCTOBER

Rowan sat beneath the Great Tree bundled in furs and rubbed her palms together to stop the tingling feeling that had crept into her fingers while she had sat in the early winter cold. She sat with her back straight, looking at her home, which rose in front of her like a formidable fortress. Her father had bought the home from a traveling prince when she was a very small child, who had to have had dozens of children, judging by the size of the mansion. The home was isolated in the woods, and it was at least a two-hour walk to get to Market, though Rowan didn’t really mind the walk.

There was a river that Elias liked to fish in in the summer a little ways away from the house, though Rowan had only ever been there once or twice. Sometimes Rowan liked to imagine all the children that might have lived in this expansive, elegant, home. Rowan could hear them now, running beneath the Great Tree squealing in laughter as they chased one another. Rowan could imagine the smell of baking bread as their mother cooked for them, humming to herself as she busied herself about the kitchen, glancing with a smile out the kitchen window every so now and then at her children.

Sometimes on quiet days, when Rowan knew mother was sick and wouldn’t be coming out of her room, she liked to wander the halls. She’d open the dozens of rooms and sit on the bed and imagine what her life would have been like if she had been born into the family that had lived here previously, instead of the one she had been born in now.

Rowan loved the house. She loved the history and all the little stories the house would tell her as she came across a nick in the wood, or when she found hidden objects locked away in an upstairs armoire.  Rowan was lonely, and despite the house being large enough to house masses of people, only the four of them lived there, isolated away from everything. Rowan often wondered if they were being sheltered from the rest of Lamarina, or if Lamarina was being sheltered from their mother.

Rowan sighed, fearful to go back in the house despite the fact that she had begun to lose feeling in her fingers and toes. Her breath puffed out in clouds that floated away in the frigid air in front of her and Rowan watched it swirl away, wishing she could take flight and leave as easily as her breaths could.

Rowan stood, shaking dry red leafs from her clothes that had fallen on her from the Great Tree and taking small steps back toward the house, hanging her head to shelter her face from the chilly wind. Rowan pulled open the back door and stepped into the large kitchen, shaking herself to get off any excess leafs. Mother would be awful mad at her if she tracked them all through the house.

The house was harshly silent and Rowan’s heartbeat thundered in her ears as she stepped from the kitchen, making her way hastily toward the secret room where she knew Elias would be. Rowan had discovered the room on one of her adventures of the house. She had been in the study, pulling books from a large shelf that dominated one wall, when she’d heard a clicking noise and the shelf moved aside, revealing a small room hidden conspicuously behind the shelf. Elias spent most of his time there, and Rowan knew that’s where she would find him now, willingly lost in a desperate attempt to avoid his family. Well, mother, anyway.

Rowan’s feet slipped silently over the ornate rug as she made her way through the house. Rowan knew her father would be packing and their mother would be screaming at him and tearing everything from his bag, making the process hours longer than it should have been. Rowan slid into the study, closing the heavy elaborate door behind her. She padded to the massive bookshelf and pulled the book of
The creation and history of Varisin as told by Jordon Monchaste
on the far right, the mechanisms that held the door closed loosening as they allowed the shelf to creak open, revealing the hidden room.

“Is father done packing?” Elias asked her absentmindedly, not even bothering turning around to look at her. Rowan hurried into the cramped room, tugging the shelf door closed behind her.

“No. I haven’t heard a word from him all day. Do you think this trip will be as long as he says it will be?” Rowan asked, her voice edged with fear though she did her best to sound impassive.

“I don’t know. Rowan.” Elias answered absently, cocking his head to the side as he brushed a stroke across his painting. Rowan remained silent as she looked at what he was working on, coming to stand beside him. She felt small beside him as he towered over her, a good foot and a half taller and still growing.

Elias’s painting was ominous. It had a black background, with a round spot of light in the bottom corner.
It’s a well.
Rowan realized. A small boy was at the bottom of the well; his fingers were bloody as if he had tried to climb out of the despairing hole. Tears streaked down his face and his eyes looked lost and broken. Rowan felt her heart break to look at the picture, a million tiny fragments of sadness and pain and the need to protect reaching out to the small boy.
Is this how my brother sees himself?
Rowan thought, inclining her head to look up at Elias.

Elias stared at the painting, his eyes shadowed, his mouth set in a frown. He had red paint flecks on the front of his shirt, and his hands were nearly caked in black paint.
He’ll have to change his shirt before mother sees.
Rowan thought distractedly to herself. Elias looked haunted and lost in a world of his own making, as he always did when he was painting.

“It’s…” Rowan started, not sure what to say about the sinister painting as she studied her brother. Elias looked a thousand years old and a million miles away from her. “Where do you go Elias? Where do you go when you paint?” She asked him, and he turned his head to look at her, his eyes dilating and squinting as if seeing her for the first time.

Elias creased his brow, as if concentrating hard on something. “There’s something in me Rowan. I can feel it. It’s bad, and it wants to be free.” Elias responded. Rowan furrowed her forehead at his puzzling response, not sure how to respond to him. Elias turned away from her, scooping some white paint onto his brush and sweeping it gently over the canvas, the way only an experienced artist knew how.

Rowan wished she could paint like Elias. Rowan wished she were good at anything really. Elias was always assuring her she would be, she just had to find that one thing she was passionate about. Rowan turned from him, looking at the other paintings stored in the room. They were beautiful and she wished they didn’t have to be locked away as they were. Things with this beauty should be shared, not stored where no one save for her and her brother could admire them.

Rowan absently touched a watercolor Elias had done of a ladybug. She was still in awe of the way Elias had been able to capture the exact red of her wings, and the way the light from the sun had caught in the grass, he even caught the way the grass had tilted slightly as a breeze lazily floated through it.

Rowan sat in a small chair in the corner of the room and recalled the picture Elias had made of the Great Tree, made of moss and bark and leaves. It had been stunning, but as they had been bringing it into the house, their mother had seen them.

“Things this beautiful don’t belong to monsters.” She had snarled at them, ripping the mosaic from Rowan’s hands. Elias had stood submissively, watching silently as their mother had shredded his work into ribbons, the moss and twigs falling to the floor like trash. They had been more careful after that not to let mother see Elias paint, smuggling his canvases and colors from Market into the house with hushed whispers and thumping hearts and fevered darting glances down halls.

Rowan normally could have sat there for hours, watching her brother paint, but this day she was restless and felt the need to move around, so she slipped out from the study to wander the halls of the house. Rowan passed her and Elias’s room, the door closed tightly. Rowan knew they could each have had their pick of the rooms of the house, but they felt safer, stronger, when they were together, with their beds shoved together in a corner, as far from the door as they would go.

Rowan ran her finger along the wall, gliding it across the textured wallpaper as she walked, letting her feet carry her through the familiar halls.

“Rowan?” She heard a tender voice say behind her, jumping at the sudden sound spoken in the tranquil hall. Rowan turned to her father, who stood behind her. He was a small man and Rowan, even being only 17, was already starting to grow taller than him. He had large hands, and his hair was mostly gray now, save for a few streaks of brown here and there. The features of his face were close together but he had large kind brown eyes, and whenever Rowan looked into them, she felt like she was being embraced. “I’ve been looking for you.” He announced cheerfully, stepping closer to her. He smelled like soap, and Rowan could tell his clothes had been recently pressed.

“Are you going then?” Rowan asked, trying to keep her voice steady though she could feel the familiar terror creep into her.

“In the morning, yes, the illness in Resenet is spreading and their healers are no longer able to control it. I must get down there as quick as I can to help treat the patients.” He answered. Rowan knew that her father was an amazing doctor, people all over Lamarina would often call on him to treat them, and he made an exuberant amount of money, but Rowan could not help but wish that her father were a farmer, or even a butcher. Whatever allowed him to stay home and not leave her for weeks at a time with
her.

“Oh.” Rowan said, her voice sounding small and frail.