Chapter 2 #2
Agony stabs into me, as if someone had shoved a burning spear right through my chest. I once more try to drag in a breath, but I can’t make my lungs work.
Orion suddenly appears before me. Tears still cling to my eyelashes, so his face is blurry before mine when he bends down and efficiently unlocks the metal bonds that are keeping me trapped to the chair.
The moment they’re gone, I shove myself out of the chair so that I can straighten and hopefully breathe better. But my knees immediately buckle.
I crash down on the hard stone ground with a thud, but I can’t feel the pain. In fact, I can barely even feel my body at all.
Gasping desperately, I try to drag air back into my lungs while grief strangles my throat and regret crushes my chest. It doesn’t work. Panicked whimpers spill from my lips as I curl up on the floor while tears continue streaming down my cheeks.
Orion just walks out the door without a word.
Broken sobs rip from my throat. Gripping the leather across my chest, I clench my fist in an effort to stop the agony in my heart.
My entire chest aches so badly that I wish someone would kill me just so that I can escape this feeling.
The grief and regret from my parents’ death alone is crushing me.
It’s so heavy that I don’t think I will ever be able to pick myself up from this floor.
The memory of Jessina slitting their throats, which I have now watched hundreds of times in vivid detail, continues flashing before my eyes even when I squeeze them shut.
I can’t feel the stone floor. I can’t even feel my own body. All I can feel is pain.
Panicked, I suddenly realize that Draven must be able to feel this through our mate bond as well. And that is the last thing I want.
After our bond was shattered and then reforged, I realized that I can choose when I want him to feel what I feel.
And right now, I really don’t. I don’t want him to hurt the way I do.
I never want him to feel pain ever again.
So I stop the flow of emotions through our mate bond completely while agony continues tearing at my chest like wolves.
A thud sounds from right next to me. As if something heavy just hit the floor.
Forcing my eyes open, I stare at the person who is now lying on the floor a few steps from me. It’s a fae man. He’s shackled and gagged, and he is struggling furiously while glaring up at someone.
“This guy raped and murdered his neighbor yesterday,” Orion Nightbane says from above us while pointing at the shackled man.
I don’t even ask permission.
Reaching for my magic, I summon a bone white flame of fear and slam it right into the guy’s chest.
Pleasure immediately floods my entire body.
At long last, I gasp in a full breath as my lungs stop constricting. A sob escapes my lips.
Pouring my magic into the guy, I breathe in that intoxicating feeling that I get whenever I create an emotion out of nothing. It’s like being wrapped in a warm, comforting hug or floating on a perfectly soft cloud. It makes me feel as if everything is going to be okay. As if I am going to be okay.
I keep increasing the guy’s fear in order to prolong that sense of sparkling pleasure inside me. But when it reaches such high levels that his mind is about to shatter, I’m forced to release my magic.
Crushing regret and searing agony immediately crash over me again.
Panicked, I summon a black flame of despair and slam it into the guy’s chest.
Pleasure once more floods my system. I suck in a shuddering breath of relief.
Still lying on the floor, I keep pouring my magic into that black flame of despair until I feel better again. Then I release my magic.
And then immediately summon another emotion.
I slam emotion after emotion into the guy’s chest until he is shaking and thrashing on the floor. But I don’t care. I need this. I need to feel this comforting pleasure. Without it, I won’t survive.
Calling up yet another emotion, I shove it into his chest.
His heart gives out.
My magic abruptly disconnects as he dies. I panic, whipping my gaze around for someone else to use it on.
Orion is leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches me with an impassive expression on his face.
I’m half a second away from slamming my magic into him when I finally manage to rein myself in. I can’t. It’s Orion. If I create an emotion in his chest, I won’t be able to remove it.
But you need it, my mind whispers.
Gritting my teeth, I try to block out that treacherous voice and the terrible craving inside me that insists I just need to feel that pleasure one more time. Then I’m done. Then I’ll be fine.
With great effort, I manage to resist that overwhelming urge.
Dragging in a breath, I push myself up to my knees.
My head spins, and I have to brace my palms on the floor and press my forehead against the cool stone ground for a few seconds to compose myself.
Grief and regret still pulse inside me like a second heart, mingling with the awful craving that now thrums there as well.
“I knew you’d be grateful, but prostrating yourself like this before me?” Orion says, and I can practically hear the smirk in his voice. “My, my, Selena. Keep this up and I might actually start to like you a little.”
I snap my head up.
Orion is still leaning nonchalantly against the wall, his black and silver eyes glinting in the dim light as he watches me.
Cold dread washes over me. Orion. Oh Goddess, he saw. He saw me use my magic on this man over and over again like a fucking addict. What if he tells the others? Then they’ll start to see me as a liability. I don’t want them to think that I’m the weak link. I refuse to be the weak link.
“We probably shouldn’t tell the others about this,” I blurt out.
Orion tilts his head to the side for a few seconds, as if considering. Then he says, “I agree. If Draven finds out what I subjected you to, or at least the true extent of it, he’s going to try to kill me. And I would hate to have to kill him now that Haldia has finally finished healing him.”
A jolt shoots through me. Healing him? From what?
Goddess above, the battle! The Icehearts tricked us into breaking the wards on the Green Clan’s archives and then sent both Diana and Kander to take us out. I shoved Isera out of the way, but Kander’s attack hit me instead and wiped my memories. And Draven…
Ice spreads through my veins. Draven, Galen, and Lyra were fighting an entire host of silver dragons while Diana and her Purple Clan were hesitating on the ground.
“What happened?” I press out, my frantic eyes on Orion.
“Diana and her people finally decided to help,” he replies. “But they were still outnumbered, and all of them were wounded quite badly while they bought time for Grey to open the portal.”
“Are they…” I swallow. “Are they okay?”
“Yes. They’re sleeping right now, and have been since we got here.”
Here. The Unseelie Court. Worry snakes through my chest as I remember something else that was revealed in that forest outside Frostfell.
That Isera has been lying all this time and is in fact not a descendant of the Seelie Queen.
Which means that her bargain with Orion is based on a lie, and he therefore doesn’t have to help us anymore.
I lick my lips nervously but don’t dare to bring that up. Instead, I finally struggle to my feet.
Orion watches me with eyes I can’t read as I at last straighten on the floor.
“It’s a good thing that it was you who was hit by Kander von Graf’s attack,” he says.
Hurt flickers through me, but in my already aching chest, I can barely feel it. “Because I’m the least important one?”
“No, because you have the most traumatic memories that involve people you care about.”
I blink in surprise.
“Painful memories alone would never have worked,” he explains.
“It’s only because your incredibly traumatic and graphic memories involve people you truly love that I could make the pain so overwhelming that your mind was forced to remember who those people are, which in turn made you remember who you are. ”
“Oh.”
He shrugs and then flicks a glance down at the now dead criminal on the ground.
“And we’re also lucky that it was you because you are the only one of us who would be able to snap out of the pain and desolation that my magic plunges you into when it’s used to this brutal extent.
Creating emotions from nothing floods your body with euphoric pleasure. ”
My heart jerks.
“Oh don’t look so shocked.” He gives me a pointed stare.
“Jocasta might be your emotion magic teacher, but she is my subject. Remember? And she is the leader of the Black Faction. I’ve had dealings with her a number of times over the decades.
” He flicks another look at the dead rapist. “Why do you think I brought him for you to use?”
I clear my throat. “I, uhm…”
“My point is that out of all of us, you are the only one who can use your magic as a lifeline to claw your way out of despair and return to normal. That’s why it’s a good thing that it was you.”
Return to normal. Right.
My chest feels like it has caved in from the grief and regret that is still crushing me.
When I look down at myself, I half expect to find my chest torn open and bloody flesh hanging down around the hole where my heart should be.
And that terrible hunger to use my magic again is burning inside me, craving that addictive pleasure that will drown out all those awful emotions that now thrum inside my aching chest.
But sure. I’ve returned to normal.
That is what I will let him believe, at least. That is what I will let them all believe. At least until I can make it true. Until I have actually returned to normal.
Because I refuse to be the weak link.