Chapter 29
Esme
Death was harsher than I’d expected, I thought, my vision blurring as blood poured over my chest. Death was laughing, a low, impressed chuckle.
Delirium coated my senses, making my focus latch onto all the wrong stimuli. It was why the laugh was the first thing I registered, rather than Ford breaking free of his chair, pulling away with his hands still tied to the thick legs.
There were soldiers on him within seconds, trying and failing to restrain him.
I had to be dead, and this was the afterlife. A blissful sleep where I got to watch Ford flick fully grown adults off him, knocking them down so forcefully they wouldn’t be getting back up.
When the skylights shattered, I was absolutely certain I’d died. Figures jumped through the broken window, rolling onto the floor and back up with an expert level of efficiency and grace.
I laughed through a bloody mouth. For all my sins in life, I’d clearly ended up in a hell where our rescue came a second too late.
Move, the Bond growled at me, its voice strained like it’d been screaming at me. Instinct took over then, trying to throw myself back on the ground, hoping that the chair would break under my weight when it could withstand a thousand—if not a thousand thousands—times that force.
Two quick pops rent through the air, and I slammed to the ground a second later as the wood exploded underneath me. The wind was knocked out of me, making me struggle to breathe.
“Sorry!” someone yelled, right as that figured hopped over me like a gazelle.
“Slow down!” someone else yelled, that voice more masculine.
I was trying really hard to understand what was happening, but my body was battered and my mind hazy. I had no choice but to confront my reality when a Muli soldier picked me up off the floor by the hem of my shirt and slammed me into the wall.
My mind snapped into focus from the adrenaline. Nearly every Muli soldier who’d been standing guard over us was on the floor, unconscious or something worse.
Soren was holding someone on the ground who was struggling like a trapped animal, while Bellamy and Freya were restraining a man double their combined size together.
And Ford, sweet Ford. Well, sweet to me.
I couldn’t really warn the poor kid what was coming for him. I was pretty sure my trachea had been sliced clean through anyways. I really didn’t know how I was still alive.
Ford stalked towards us, slamming his hand on the back of my attacker’s neck and throwing him across the room as if he weighed no more than a feather.
Without him pinning me to the wall—and, it appeared, conveniently stopping the bleeding—I slumped towards the ground in a ball of useless limbs. There was a sickening snap and a burst of pain. My ankle, maybe. I was too dizzy to care.
I was weightless again a second later, scooped up into the warmest arms I’d ever felt. I breathed in deep, hoping to fill my lungs with Ford’s scent.
Instead, I smelled his blood.
The Bond, who had fallen into a instinctual, action-first state through this ordeal, snapped to attention. I let it take over, wanting the same things it did.
A low, primal growl ripped from my throat as I twisted in Ford’s arms. I must have shocked him, because I was able to jump down and lunge for the first soldier I laid eyes on.
They’d hurt Ford. He was bleeding. They’d made him watch as they hurt me.
Snarling like a rabid animal, I went for the first person I saw, lying on the ground groaning, barely conscious. The Bond didn’t care.
My eyes zeroed in on the broken wood on the floor. Hmm, great weapon.
It was so close. I could see myself using it to draw blood. A liter for every ounce they’d taken from Ford. I would accept nothing less.
“No!” I tried to scream, the word only coming out in a hoarse whisper, when I felt arms wrap around my middle, stopping me in my pursuit.
“You’re hurt,” Ford snapped in my ear, sounding like he was pissed at me for Elijah’s torture.
It was enough to pull my attention off the soldier lying on the floor.
I twisted around, trying to break free of his hold again.
The only thing more important than him was getting vengeance for what had been done to him.
“I hate to interrupt this romantic embrace,” Soren chimed in, looking disdainfully on the way me and Ford had our fingers digging into each other’s forearms. “But we really must leave before Elijah comes back with reinforcements.”
Right. I had to blink a few times to recall all the details of our situation.
Then the details of our situation, in which I could barely speak and had blood all over me and had a gaping wound at my neck, caught up with me and I collapsed to the floor.
?
Ford
It was a strange thing, to watch your life die before your body followed.
But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, I died the moment Elijah slid that knife across Esme’s throat.
I’d dissolved into nothing more than a sack of skin and bones with the sole purpose of saving her. Realizing I’d failed was the final moment of my life.
There was nothing after that, not for me.
Not even able to understand what she was saying to me. Scoffing at the Bond and everything that had happened between us. Reducing what we were to each other down to a physical compulsion.
There would be time to unpack how I could have been so wrong—hell, if I even believed her—later.
Right now, Esme was still very much dying.
Everything had happened so fast. The last thing I consciously remembered seeing was blood spring from Esme’s throat. I’d thought I died in that very moment.
Then, somehow, I was standing and had two very useful stakes of wood attached to my hands. It was a very, very good thing that my mind was somehow still functioning, because the Bond was out for blood.
I damn near stabbed Soren with one of those stakes when he got a little too close, only realizing it was him because of the shock of white blonde hair on his head.
What I really, really wanted was to run after Elijah. Esme hadn’t been able to see it, her back turned to the larger room, but our little dungeon was only part of a bigger system.
There were at least two hallways branching off, some underground bunker that could go on for miles for all I knew.
Thank fucking God for Peter and those trackers or else Esme would have…
She still might! The Bond shouted, deeply displeased.
Right.
Everything started to move very fast again. Soren was barking orders at people and Bellamy was barking orders back at him.
Freya was standing off to the side…on guard or something?
I couldn’t focus on that right now, not with my hand around Esme’s throat and her blood seeping in between my fingers.
Her eyes were closed, body limp. I was clearly bordering on hysterical, because the only thing I could think was that she looked quite beautiful. I’d only had a few moments of seeing her truly at peace, most of them in a secret, unguarded moment between the two of us.
“Ford!” someone yelled at me, making me snap my head up with a growl.
Soren already had his hands up in surrender. “We need to go out the way we came.”
I looked up to the thin windows at the top of the room. “I need to carry Esme.”
“I know you do,” Soren said, and I was glad at least someone understood what I was feeling right now. Like my skin was on fire and my insides were melting.
He handed me a strip of something, ordering me to wrap it around her neck after I’d already started doing it. I could hear myself whispering to Esme, telling her what I was doing, that it would be okay, that I was going to get her out of this.
Later, I would have to confront whether this was all useless, whether it would make me seem like I’d already fallen headlong into insanity after losing my Soul Mate. But for now, I was choosing to believe she was going to be okay.
It was of no consequence that I couldn’t bring myself to check her pulse yet.
I wouldn’t be able to leave her and then we’d all be stuck here.
“You go first,” I all but yelled at Soren, remembering that this whole thing had originated with an assassination plot against him and Bellamy.
Soren looked like he was going to argue with me, then dropped it at something he saw on my face. He grabbed Bellamy and launched up the ropes still hanging from the broken windows, disappearing into the sunlight with her a second later.
“I’ll go last,” Freya said, her voice echoing in my ears. She was still staring down the hallway. Helpful, really, but with a stillness I’d never seen from her.
Shifting Esme over my shoulder as gently as possible, I began the climb up the wall. Slower than I would like, having to switch hands with each pull up to keep the other secured to her.
When I was at the top, Soren’s hands reached through the window and I had to consciously resist the urge to snap at him for trying to touch her.
This is to keep her safe, I told the Bond, who was still growling like an animal protecting its latest kill.
Even then, it was my own instincts that had my hands clenching around Esme’s body, resisting just the barest bit as Soren pulled her through the window and out into safety.
I launched after her a second later, damn near falling on top of her in the rough grass.
I could feel her heartbeat like my own, and I could tell it was slowing. She looked so pale, so…lacking of life.
Terror, sudden and violent, racked my body. What had been the last thing I’d said to her? Hopefully I’d managed something kind, even as I was blind with rage. Not at her, at the situation.
Okay, maybe a little at her. Dismissing all there was between us.
I’d asked her about it when she woke up. Give her the chance to explain. Make us talk instead of pushing everything down like we used to.
When she woke up.
"Freya, let’s go,” Bellamy yelled, sticking her head back into the window. She had to repeat herself twice, each time getting increasingly louder and more panicked until the rope when taut and Freya bounced through the window a second later.