Horse Stone (Book 1 of Ilyrian Series)

Chapter 43

The room... was beautiful, at least from an artist's perspective.

The walls were covered with canvases of different sizes, some filled with designs that others had made while some were left blank, waiting to be painted on.

In the far back corner, there was a wall that was filled with different colors of paints, the colors all over the spectrum, and some were even colors that I hadn't seen before.

"Well?" the doctor asked, seeming pleased with himself.

"This is all..." I trailed off and shook my head. "It's beautiful," I whispered.

Dr. Weiner nodded. "Yes, it is," he said. He cleared his throat and studied me. "Do you know why I brought you here?"

Still speechless, I shook my head, no.

"It's because a little birdie told me that you liked to draw," he replied.

Did Lucas talk to him about me?

I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

Dr. Weiner cleared his throat, and I tore my gaze away from the room and toward him. He had a soft look in his eyes while he studied me, and I raised an eyebrow in question. "Well?" he asked, and the eyebrow went higher. "Aren't you going to go ahead and go in?"

I turned my gaze away from him and looked back into the room.

The urge to paint filled my body, and I took a hesitant step into the room, followed by another and another until I stopped in front of a canvas.

Gently, as if I was about to cradle a newborn babe, I took one of the canvases down and walked to an easel where I set it down.

I could feel Dr. Weiner watching me while I moved through the room in a trance-like state, but I didn't care.

I grabbed the paints that I wanted and walked back to the easel with the sudden urge to paint.

"What are you going to paint?" Dr. Weiner asked after I made it to the easel.

I didn't respond.

"Hadley?" Dr. Weiner asked again, but I didn't respond. "Hmmm," he said and wrote something on his little notepad, but I didn't care.

I painted on the easel with the colors that I had selected and painted to my heart's content. I didn't question the fact that I didn't need to clean the brush that well after I was done with one color and went to another.

It magically did.

I was in a daze while I painted. I didn't care about anything or anyone.

All I cared about was the picture that was slowly taking form; the colors working well with one another.

As soon as I was done, I stood back and looked at it. I couldn't tell what the picture was in my state, but I didn't care. I didn't care about anything at that moment, not even about the male that came near me and stood just behind my shoulder.

The sound of a clipboard falling out of someone's hands stirred me out of my daze, and I looked behind me to see Dr. Weiner staring at the picture I had drawn. His mouth was agape, and I could see fear, concern, and worry in his eyes.

Confused, I turned my head and faced the painting, and my heart dropped to my stomach.

Ethan...

His hard brown, almost black, eyes stared back at me. A smirk, filled with this evilness that I had never seen before, was on his face, and he looked dark and cold.