Chapter 18 #4
Soren knew what I was about to do without so much as a word from me.
He just shook his head and continued, “By the time we got to her, she was already starting to sweat blood.” A sign of physical exertion most only ever learned about.
Once you experienced it yourself… “The second she realized she’d made it back, she collapsed.
” Soren didn’t share than when I did, I’d promptly snapped three bones in half.
Two in my leg, one in my forearm. “Then…” Soren trailed off with a shake of his head.
Yeah, I wasn’t happy about what came next either.
“It took several minutes to restart her heart.”
I felt Ford’s chest seize underneath me. “What?” he asked, more of a breath than anything.
I laid my hand over his, feeling my pulse hammering against my wrist. I pressed down harder, hoping he could feel it. The Bond was likely freaking out, and he was doing a good job wrangling it.
“The only thing that kept it at a steady rhythm was skin contact with you,” Soren said.
“We had to tie your hands together to get you back to the infirmary still touching.” A fierce blush warmed my face.
I hadn’t known that. “Once we were able to get your injuries cleaned, Ford, she stabilized quickly. She was healed by morning—the Bond’s convenient little trick, but… ”
“It was gone by the time I woke up.” The Bond, that was.
It had been the Bond that kept me alive, but while I was out, Peter and the doctors had decided to administer an experimental dose of the suppressant.
Developed to try and keep paranimas alive if their Match died.
Entirely selfish, of course. Every single person who experienced the Bond—a mutual one, that is—would have happily followed their Soul Mate into death and whatever came after this life.
It was the Empire’s decision, wanting to keep a paranima alive and use their grief to drudge up support for the war.
Too bad for them, the opportunity hadn’t presented itself yet.
Until me.
I’d thought I was dead when I first opened my eyes. My body hadn’t felt mine anymore, missing some deep, integral part of me. That feeling had settled into numbness a few days following, and after a month or two, I couldn’t even tell you what was missing.
Bullshit, the Bond snapped. It was proud of what it had made me do.
I decided it was time to save Soren from having to explain the entire tale.
“The doctors and Peter asked me when I woke up if I’d like to explore other options of dealing with the Bond.
” I shook my head, an old well of shame building back up again.
“I remember killing those people. Not my mental state, but I remember the act of it in flashes. Peter thought the Bond went a little haywire because it had been so repressed. I didn’t want it to happen again, especially if I was only going to continue to repress it. ”
Something I’d said, or maybe this entire conversation, had turned Ford’s anger into a palpable thing, something I could taste on my tongue like blood. It surged powerfully, before I watched as he tampered it until it disappeared.
What remained, I didn’t know how to handle.
I stared at the side of Ford’s face, dumbstruck. He turned to Soren and nodded. “Thank you. For taking care of her.”
I wasn’t looking, but I imagined Soren was a little confused, too. Eventually he said, “I’m gonna head inside. We’ll see you back at the inn.”
There was a brief swell of panic that built in my chest at being left alone with Ford.
Soren was a mediator of sorts, able to keep things on level playing field.
I handed the panic over to the Bond, letting it soothe me with soft words of comfort, unable to understand why I’d ever be unsafe around Ford.
It was that decision that prevented me from jumping up like a spooked cat when Ford turned to me, hand pressed to the back of my neck so we could pull our foreheads together.
With gruff words, he said, “You need to let me take care of you. Just for right now. Appease m—the Bond, then I swear I’ll put this behind us. ”
There was awe in his tone, a reverence that I’d seen on his face but hadn’t believed until it carried through to his voice. He was mad at what happened, clearly, but he wasn’t mad at me. He wasn’t shaming me for what I’d done.
I was forced to confront the fact that somehow, in all of this, I hadn’t considered Ford. Sure, all of this was about him, and I knew enough to know that he would shoulder this guilt the same way he shouldered responsibility for those in his life.
But I hadn’t fully understood what it would mean for him to know. For how it would make him see me. For some deeply unfair reason, I’d expected scorn. For him to turn his nose up at my dramatics and dismiss my antics as that of an impulsive teenager.
I didn’t expect him to look so…honored.
To react with such tenderness, like I became something precious with the knowledge.
It was that realization that gave me the strength to nod and let him carry me away in his arms.