Freed from Gravity (Bound and Freed #2)

Chapter 11

Eleven

SENAN

I know Boris isn’t standing in front of me with glowing eyes and teeth sharpened into shiny white spikes, yet my adrenaline surges as if the saw in his hand, dripping blood onto the cobblestones, is about to cleave me in two.

I try to skirt back from where I’m sprawled on the ground, but my boots slip in the puddle beneath me, smearing water?—

Wait. It’s too red to be water.

Shit .

It’s blood.

And it’s everywhere , overflowing the edges of the portal like a river flooding its banks, rising higher and higher, sweeping my body away with the current.

Allette sprints down the alley, her arms outstretched as if she has a hope of reaching me from so far away. I try to scream for her to stop. To turn around. To save herself. But the blood rises to my chin. My mouth.

Thick, coppery liquid gushes down my throat, swelling inside my lungs, stealing my breath, sucking me beneath the surface. I thrash and kick, but there is no light to tell me which way is up. No surface with air waiting on the other side.

Hands clamp down on my shoulders.

Guttural screams flood my ears.

“Senan, wake up.”

My eyes fly open, my vision swimming. Allette sits next to me on the bed, pale as the moonlight streaming through the window.

Another dream. That’s all. Just another dream.

If it wasn’t real, why can’t I fucking breathe?

Warm liquid splashes across my thighs, dribbling down my chin onto my chest. The room spins like a kaleidoscope, colors and shapes drifting in and out of focus.

Those soft hands stroke my hair and caress my cheeks as Allette’s terrified face comes into view.

Fresh red blood splatters across the stained sheets she has washed and changed every day this week.

Once my breathing steadies, she pushes off the bed and tugs down the ruined quilt, rolling it into a ball and throwing it into the corner with the rest of the soiled linens.

“I’m sor?—”

She whips toward me. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

But I am sorry. So very, eternally sorry for what I’ve done to myself. To us.

The spark of hope that used to light her eyes has turned to golden ash.

If I’d known what a burden I would become, I never would have left the castle. “Go sleep on the sofa. Let me take care of this.” As soon as the room stops spinning, that is. It’s like I’m on one of those topsy-turvy carnival rides Kyff used to love so much.

Why won’t it fucking stop?

“How do you plan on doing that when you cannot even hold up your head? Come on, let me help you onto the sofa.”

I don’t want to sit on the fucking sofa. “No.”

“Now is not the time to be stubborn.”

Funny she should speak of time when I have so little left. “When is the time, then? Next week? Next month? Next year ? I’ll be dead well before then, so excuse me if I want to be stubborn today. Now, get out.”

“Senan…”

“Please, just get out!” I don’t want her around when I’m in such a pathetic state. Don’t want her anywhere near me.

Allette’s short shift flutters as she drifts out the door like a ghost.

I hate myself for turning such a vibrant, promising woman into a specter.

I hate myself for so many things.

The door slams, rattling the sconce on the wall next to the chest of drawers filled with what little we own.

Hurting Allette is the last thing I want to do, but I cannot let these be her final memories of me.

I have only a handful of fond memories of my mother, like when she used to read to us at night or chase us through the nursery. The picnics she used to make us go on in the mountain park. The birthday parties she used to throw us.

The horror of seeing her waste away has eclipsed everything else.

Blood is all I can smell.

Blood is all I can see.

Right now, I’m not even sure I want to be alive.

My dry lips crack a little more with each trembling exhale. When I finally summon the strength to push out of bed, it takes forever for me to clear the sheets and the towels Allette placed beneath where I sleep to soak up excess blood. With the amount I cough up every day, it’s a miracle there’s any left in my veins.

The short pants I wore to bed aren’t salvageable, so I change into a clean pair of trousers before stumbling into the bathing room to wash up in the sink. Water swirls down the drain, staining the porcelain a deep pink.

I am so fucking tired of fighting.

After rinsing the vile taste from my mouth and cleaning my teeth, I step quietly into the living room to keep from waking Allette.

Only my girl isn’t sleeping. She is glaring at me from the kitchen, the dark circles beneath her eyes making her look like an angry raccoon.

My beautiful, angry raccoon.

Her knuckles are white from strangling the limp dish towel between her hands. “You will not speak to me like that ever again, Senan Vale. I am your mate. You have given yourself to me, for better or worse, and I will not be pushed away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” She throws the towel onto the counter. “No more apologies, no more feeling sorry for yourself.”

I think I’ve earned the right to feel a little bit sorry for myself.

“We need to find a way back,” she says, as if returning to Kumulus would solve all our problems instead of creating more.

My head begins to thump, and it has nothing to do with the poison killing me. Pretty sure my will to live washed down the drain with all the blood.

“How do you propose we do that?” Even if I wanted to return to the fae realm, the moment we set foot in Kumulus, Boris will finish what he started. It won’t just be my life on the line then; he will kill Allette as well.

I did this to myself; I deserve this fate.

My girl does not.

She needs to accept this reality like I have. “If you didn’t manage to find a way back in almost half a decade, what hope do we have of making our way to a portal in the fucking sky?” It’s not like some magical ladder is going to appear.

We’re on our own.

Instead of wasting time and energy on something that will never happen, I need to focus on finding ways to help Allette survive when I’m gone.

Except I have no skills—unless you count fucking and baking the perfect cheesecake.

Neither of those is going to help us right now.

The way Allette crosses her arms makes her chest look delectable. Probably not the thing I should be noticing at present considering I can hardly stand, but if I expire here and now, there is nothing I’d rather be looking at.

“I used magic on the way down,” she says. “Perhaps I can do the same on the way up.”

“What about me?” I’ve tried everything I could think of since that hour we spent in the sun, but there isn’t so much as a spark.

Even if I could access my power, fire does fuck all besides destroy everything in its path. My element certainly can’t bring me to the portal.

“You’ll wait down here,” she says.

“Absolutely not.” As if I would let her go on her own.

“You have no right to tell me what to do. If I choose to return to Kumulus, there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

No sense arguing with her when she’s like this. Better save my breath for when she feels like listening to reason.

Gods, I’m tired.

I cross to the living room and sink onto the sofa before she notices the way my knees wobble.

Allette eases down next to me, her voice breaking. “Don’t you want to try?”

What is the point in trying when you are sure to fail?

“It’s like you don’t want to survive this,” she murmurs.

“Of course, I want to survive.” I want to build a life with Allette. To make her laugh for the next century. To see her belly swollen with our child. To become a father. To live and laugh and love with her as we always planned.

But wanting doesn’t amount to much when fate is determined to fuck you over.

Her fingers capture mine, intertwining like the vines on my arms. “Then let’s find a way back home together.”

It’s fucking freezing.

What I wouldn’t give for a bonfire right now. I’d be sitting smack dab in the middle, worshiping the flames as they consumed me.

But no.

Allette won’t let us build a bonfire because someone might see us. As if there are any other fools outside at midnight in the middle of fucking winter.

I hate this realm and everything in it, except for the woman waiting in the middle of the standing stone circle.

I stuff my gloved hands into my pockets. “How did you do it before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Helpful,” I mutter, hacking away at a snow drift with the toe of my boot. When I glance back up, Allette is glowering. At least I think she’s glowering. It’s hard to tell because no moon or stars light this night. It’s like the gods have abandoned this realm altogether.

They must hate snow too.

She lifts her gaze to the sky. “I panicked, my adrenaline surged, and it just sort of happened.”

My magic was always easier to call on with my adrenaline high. Maybe that’s where we should start. “Then let’s get your adrenaline up. I can think of one way that we will both enjoy.” As a bonus, it would certainly warm us up.

Her chuckle is a puff of white. “You’re not strong enough for that.”

“If the day ever comes when I don’t have the energy to fuck you, you have my permission to stab me in the heart.”

“Senan, I need to focus,” she groans.

Right. She needs to focus, and I need to?—

Oh, wait! I don’t need to do a fucking thing because I’m useless. Might as well flop down onto the ground and let the snow drift over me until I’m buried in an icy tomb.

Seeing no other options, I do just that. At least the ground isn’t as hard as usual. The way the white stuff hugs my body is kind of nice too. It’s much more pleasant than the last time I laid in the snow. Probably has to do with the fact that I’m wearing four coats.

Allette laughs.

It has been far too long since I last heard that joyful sound.

I ease onto my elbows to find my girl with her arms splayed, snow swirling like a white cyclone around her, lifting her dark locks into the sky.

“You did it… Allette! You did it!”

Her smile flashes as bright as day when she turns to me. “I did it!”

How does she still have so much power? I tear off my glove and hold out my own hand, focusing on the part of my chest where I used to feel my fire, calling on my dormant magic, and?—

Nothing happens.

No spark. No smoke.

Not a fucking thing.

Biting back a curse, I stuff my hand back into my glove. It’s not like I could do anything with my magic anyhow. “Can you fly?”

I still don’t want her traveling to Kumulus without protection, but I wouldn’t be much help even if I could haul my ass up through the clouds.

She directs the cyclone toward the ground, disturbing the snow until her boots rest atop a patch of stiff grass.

Come on, Allette. If anyone can do this, it’s you . “Make it lift you up.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“I’m doing my best.”

The hope spreading through my chest dies before it can do any more damage. Sometimes trying only to fail is worse than not trying at all.

Still, I force a smile to my lips. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Why? I couldn’t even lift myself off the ground.”

“ Yet .”

Her hands twist together as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Do you really think I can do it?”

“Allette Vale, I think you can do anything.”