Chapter 2 #3
"I’m so sorry you felt forced into that. I don’t want it to be like that with us, Rin."
Vesperin had never heard her name shortened like that. It was something sweet, delicate. She found she liked it.
"You lead, and I follow. If you want to sleep, we will," he said quietly to her.
"I don’t want to sleep. I want you tonight. But not… all the way. Not everything. I want to feel you. I want to feel alive with you."
She didn’t say why she felt so hurried. The fighting had grown more violent. She was afraid for him every time he left. She wanted to suck up every moment they had together, in fear that one day it would be their last.
But if she gave him everything tonight, what if that was goodbye? So she’d hold onto this one thing.
If they’d found each other once, they could do it again—in their next life.
Vesperin tried not to think of that. For now, tonight, they had each other.
Kiton nodded and kissed the space between her brows. "We can do that, Rin. We are alive—together."
They didn’t speak any longer, only his soft murmurs spoken over her flushed skin, as his mouth traveled down to her breasts.
He licked and sucked her nipples into his mouth, tongue laving over them, and when she was trembling and on edge—because no one had touched her like this before, with her pleasure in mind—he moved lower, down her stomach, between her thighs.
She wasn’t quite the shy girl she’d been a few years ago, but no man had touched her like this. Her legs closed, and he kissed her knees and upper thighs until they fell open once more.
When his mouth descended to her core, she tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him away. "Wait. What are you doing?"
He looked up at her from between her legs, and the sight was sinfully decadent. "I want to taste you. Is that okay, Rin?"
Trembling, she nodded—and he finally pressed his mouth to her dripping heat.
She was undone beneath his lips.
When she was spent, he crawled up the line of her body to press his lips to hers. She tasted herself on them and hummed at the subtle note of her arousal.
"I love you," he whispered, and they fell asleep like that, curled together.
In the early hours, before the sun was up, he kissed her forehead and extricated himself from her.
She leaned into the warm spot left on the sheets from his body, one hand reaching for him.
He hadn’t asked anything of her in return for bringing her to climax; it made her want to please him even more.
Vesperin’s fingertips drifted over his thigh as he redressed in his uniform.
"I want you to make love to me when you return. I’ll be here, waiting for you," she said softly.
His brown eyes darkened. "I’ll always come back to you, Rin."
She watched him leave. And long after he left, she lay there, staring at the dark ceiling until her exhaustion grew to be too much and she fell back asleep.
She awoke to thick smoke in the air, choking her.
Vesperin ripped away from the bed, sheets tangling around her legs and tripping her in her haste to stand.
Dark smoke filled the room. The window was cracked, the fog outside seeping within.
It was not harmless like the normal fog that filled the city, but thick and burning with every inhale.
She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.
She coughed, something wet and hot shoving past her lips and splattering on her palm. When she pulled her hand away, it was coated in blood.
Vesperin stumbled toward the door, panic setting in. A chemical bomb. This was an attack.
She fell to her knees before she reached the door. Her head thumped on the floor, and her bleary eyes traveled to the large window—beyond, all she saw was fog. Dark and cloying, it seeped over the closed window and blotted everything out.
Iron coated her tongue as blood began to bubble past her lips in earnest.
Her eyes watered, filling with red as blood began to slide from the corners of her eyes. With every breath, it felt like she was being burned from the inside out.
Vesperin dimly realized she would die here, all while Kiton was out there, thinking he would come home to her in bed, waiting for her.
Her lips formed the weak shape of a plea.
A voice reached her through the darkness. A man’s.
"Close your eyes."
It was soothing to her when she should’ve been beyond the point of being comforted.
Vesperin’s eyes slipped closed. Darkness blanketed her.
"This will be over before you know it."
The voice sounded like it was coming right by her side, but when her eyes opened, all she saw was darkness still.
Something warm settled over her eyes, as if a soft cloth was being laid, to blot out the smoke.
The cloth smelled nice. She tipped her chin up, desperate to replace the chemical scent of the fog with the faint mineral scent that clung to the material.
It reminded her of home. Some distant place she could only find in her dreams.
A bloody tear slipped from her eye and disappeared into her hairline.
"Breathe it in, Star of mine, and let go."
She took a deep breath, seizing as the smoke filled her lungs. The life drained out of her.
"I’m so sorry. Forgive me for letting this happen, but it had to, so in the far, far future, it can all align just as it needs to. If you suffer this now, you will be so happy later. Trust me."
The words grew distant; she struggled to hold onto them.
Vesperin faded into nothing as her organs shut down.
Lucien’s hands shook as he deposited a low dose of benzodiazepine into the IV line, hooked to a bag that hung by the bedside. Vesperin’s breathing pattern was calm—for now. But he knew from experience that it was only a lull.
He set the empty syringe down on the bedside table, fingers trembling as his thumb rubbed over Vesperin’s pulse point.
He counted the beats under his breath. The thudding of her heart was fainter than it had been minutes ago, as a seizing fit had gripped her.
She’d stuttered incoherently. He’d been able to understand only a few words.
"Out," Vesperin had gasped. "Free—"
Echoed memories of Tarz, where they first recognized each other as Soulbonds.
The words could be entirely coincidental. On their own, they were inconspicuous, had many different meanings. But it was what she said after that…
"Find me in the next."
The very same words she’d said to him as he’d been forced to watch her execution. Lucien had held onto those words as his skin had melted from his bones.
Why would Vesperin lie here before him after being tortured and left at the front door of Rhyden Valkar’s hidden base in Solar City, and say those same words?
Lucien dislodged his glasses as he rubbed his palms over tired, bloodshot eyes.
"How is she?" Auren asked from behind him.
Lucien turned where he sat on the edge of the bed. The base was quiet. The others were out. Auren had only just returned, then, after being called to reap, Lucien guessed.
"She’s stable right now," said Lucien, turning his gaze back to Vesperin.
Auren came to stand by Vesperin’s legs, his scythe hooked over his back, blonde hair falling into his eyes as he shoved his hood back. "It has been nearly a week. Her fits have not quelled?"
Lucien shook his head, swallowing thickly.
He recited the words from memory. "Cyrus said she was calm when he first found her at the door—beaten and bruised, but these fits only started after a few days.
A side effect of whatever torture had been wrought on her.
" Lucien worked to control the rage that surfaced at the mere thought.
His V girl, tortured. "I suspect they used a method of electricity.
Repeated low-voltage shocks likely caused cumulative neural damage.
Her chest and lower stomach are still red as well.
They must have alternated the shock points to avoid focal necrosis. "
Lucien’s fingers drifted over the plain sheets; his hand brushing against her cold, still one.
"The post-traumatic seizures won’t stop until the swelling in her brain goes down.
We have to wait it out and keep her stable and as comfortable as we can.
" He’d explained it time and time again—to himself and to the others.
Auren merely nodded, having heard this many times already. His expression was sedate.
They were trying the best they could here, but cracks were seeping through.
They’d sheltered at Rhyden’s Solar City base since Cyrus had found Vesperin broken and unconscious at the door. Lucien could hardly remember it all from shock.
They couldn’t risk a hospital—not when Sabine and Talor were out there.
Lucien knew they experimented on Vesperin.
He’d heard firsthand accounts from Kiton.
Hell, he’d seen the aftermath himself after Kiton had died.
He knew exactly what it looked like when she stumbled in, weak and dazed.
This—this was nothing like those experiments. This was true torture.
Auren had portaled to Lucien’s office at Solar City General, bringing back nearly all of his supplies.
An oxygen tube, which they’d had to use for the first few days while she’d been at high risk for hypoxia. Benzodiazepines to abort the convulsions. He loathed drugging her, but it was the only way to keep her from seizing herself into cardiac arrest.
Lucien suspected cerebral edema from trauma to the blood-brain tissue. The intracranial pressure from the brain swelling had resulted in the seizures. He couldn’t know more until they were able to get her stable enough to leave.
Lunar City.
It was their last option. Solar City was no longer safe. They’d have gone a week ago, but Lucien was worried that moving her so soon would exacerbate her symptoms and stall her healing.