Chapter 8 #2
And drops me.
My stomach lurches as I suddenly plummet downwards. Winds rush in my ears and my hair streams up over my head. I want to scream but the sound gets stuck in my throat.
Then a strong hand wraps around my wrist.
I suck in a gasp as my fall comes to an abrupt halt that tears at my shoulder.
Tilting my head back, I stare up along my outstretched arm and find Draven hovering in the air above me.
His hand is still wrapped around my wrist, and that is the only thing keeping me in the land of the living right now.
If he lets go of my wrist, I will fall down through the clouds and die painfully on the ground somewhere far below.
“Draven,” I gasp out, my pulse hammering in my ears. “Pull me up.”
But he just hovers there, his wings beating the air, and makes no move to pull me farther up so that he can carry me to safety. That unnatural hatred burns like wildfire in his eyes.
“What the fuck did you just do to me?” he demands.
“What?” I shake my head. “I didn’t do anything.”
“That… tug.”
My eyes widen. Right before he dropped me, I felt a sharp tug on our mate bond.
I stare up at Draven, my head suddenly pounding.
Did he… feel it too? Back at the rock wall in the underground forest, I just thought that he felt some kind of emotion.
Not the actual tug that I felt on the mate bond.
But maybe he has actually started to feel our mate bond again as well.
“You felt it too?” I ask, my voice trembling with hope.
“I…” he begins, looking uncertain for a moment.
Then his features harden again. “I fucking hate you. I hate you because nothing makes sense around you. Nothing about you makes sense. I hate your voice. I hate how you move. I hate looking at your face. I hate everything that comes out of your mouth. And yet…”
My heart starts beating faster. “And yet?”
He licks his lips. His massive black wings beat the air on either side of his muscular body. Out here, halfway between the cliff and the closest floating island, we’re too far away to be seen by anyone else. Right now, it’s just me and him.
His grip on my wrist tightens as he clenches his jaw again. I wait, my stupid hopeful heart beating erratically, for him to answer my question.
“It would be so much easier if I just let you fall,” he says at last. “Everything would be so much better if you weren’t here. Because you ruin everything. You always ruin everything.”
Pain slashes through my chest like sharp claws as those words once again hit me with surgical precision. And the fact that they’re coming from Draven’s mouth make them utterly unbearable.
With his merciless eyes still locked on mine, he begins loosening his grip on my wrist.
My heart leaps into my throat as he begins lifting his fingers from my skin.
“Draven,” I blurt out, trying and failing not to sound like I’m pleading. “Draven, please.”
“Don’t,” he snarls. “Fuck, I hate it when you say my name.”
But he stops loosening his grip. I don’t dare to say anything else, so I just hold his gaze while blood rushes in my ears.
A frustrated noise rips from his throat.
Then he tightens his grip on my wrist again and abruptly flies us the final distance to the floating island. My stomach lurches as he practically tosses me onto the ground and then spins in the air and flies back to Isera and Orion without another word.
I hit the ground hard on my hip, the impact sending a jolt through my entire body. My shoulder aches from hanging by my wrist like that for so long. Waves of black rage and dark despair crowd down on me from all sides. I try to suck air into my lungs, but I can’t breathe.
Curling up on my side, I bury my fingers in the soft earth beneath me and grip it so hard that my hand begins to shake.
Draven’s words echo endlessly through my skull.
Because you ruin everything. You always ruin everything.
His hate-filled eyes as he glares down at me are burned into my mind. I can still feel his phantom fingers on my wrist. How his grip loosened. Can hear the sincerity in his voice when he told me that everything would be so much better if I weren’t here.
I try once more to drag air into my lungs, but the pressure on my chest from that black wave inside me is so intense that I feel like my ribs are going to shatter. I feel like I’m drowning.
I can’t keep feeling like this. I need to pull myself together. I need to snap the fuck out of this. Goddess damn it.
Summoning my magic, I create a warm sparkling yellow flame of joy in my mind and then I throw it out across the island. The first person I make contact with gets it shoved straight into his or her chest.
Pleasure immediately floods my body.
I gasp as my lungs finally expand and air fills them. Suddenly, it feels as if I’m floating on a perfect cloud. As if I’m wrapped in the perfect warm hug. I drink in that feeling like I’m starving. It helps force away the endless ocean of suffocating feelings that threatened to drown me.
While drawing in another deep breath, I finally unclench my hand and push myself up from the ground. Dark clouds churn in the sky above me, and the air tastes like a brewing storm. But inside my body, only that addictive pleasure thrums.
I don’t even know who it is that I am permanently changing with my magic, just so that I could get this burst of relief and pleasure.
And I don’t even care. I feel no remorse. No guilt. No shame. Nothing.
I feel nothing.
Goddess above, it’s so fucking nice not to care.