Chapter 28 #3
Silence.
“I will kill your entire family.”
A rustle of legs, but still nothing.
“What about your little horse, huh?”
I tried to beg him, but my throat was wrenched shut by the Bond. I didn’t think I was capable of saying anything other than his name. I was pretty sure I let it out, seeing as Ford’s leg twitched.
“I will send the largest weapon we have right through that goddamn Bridge and blow up your entire world.”
Again, Ford didn’t appear to hear him at all. Elijah hadn’t even asked him a question. I didn’t know what he wanted from him other than to parade his worst nightmares in front of him.
Then, slowly, even a little softly, Elijah said, “I will kill her.”
The sound that left Ford was utterly inhuman, nothing more than a foaming snarl as he thrashed and thrashed against his restraints and the hands holding him down.
Elijah took two steps back. If I had half a mind to hold at the moment, I might have realized that they were a little unsteady.
“Well…” he said, opening up his stance so I could see his face again. Something had changed in his expression. The humor had fled, maybe.
Maybe Elijah did have a heart, unable to stay stoic when Ford was in obvious, full body pain—like there was a million white-hot pokers stabbing his skin.
“Ford,” I cried again, choking on his name. “I’m okay, baby. Look at me, I’m okay.”
Ford settled just enough to meet my eyes. They stuck and held and I saw everything I would miss with him lying in that comfortable green.
I tried like hell to keep my own defeat out of my expression, pushing my cheeks up into a watery smile. “I’m okay,” this one, not higher than a whisper.
Ford nodded, until his eyes drifted over my rumpled shirt and down to my leg, where Elijah’s knife was still sticking out of it. I’d forgotten it was there, that dull ache the weaker opponent against the splitting agony in my chest.
Ford’s fury came back in a blink, his face flushing red as he fought and fought and fought with nowhere to go.
“Oh my fucking God,” Elijah bit out, stomping over to me and unceremoniously yanking the knife out of my thigh. The shocked yelp of pain that escaped me only sent Ford deeper into a blind rage.
The next thing I knew, I was tipping up to the ceiling. I flailed—well, as much as I could with my hands tied behind my back—trying to catch myself from an impending fall that never came.
Instead, Elijah dragged my chair over to Ford, planting me right in front of his so that Ford’s knees were touching my injured leg.
A leg that I couldn’t care less about at the moment. Not when I could smell Ford and feel the heat radiating from his chest and, oh, I could let my head fall forward into the crook of his neck.
“Esme,” Ford whispered, pouring my name into my ear in a gruff whisper until I started to hear my own breaths again. The Bond was still snapped taut with primal terror and fear, but it had the object of its desires close enough to touch.
I had no regard for our lack of privacy nor our predicament as I rolled my forehead against the strong muscle at Ford’s neck, wanting to burrow right into his skin where I might finally feel safe.
I wasn’t sure how long Elijah let us sit there, folded together as best we could, but it was long enough that the bleeding in my leg started to slow to a steady ooze.
For a brief moment, I believed we were going to be okay. That was, until I started to feel a pull on the back of my chair.
In a state of blind panic, I bit down on the skin of Ford’s shoulder, picking up the collar of his shirt—the only way I could think to hold on to him. I was prepared to break my teeth in half to hold onto that tiny scrap of fabric.
Elijah reached between us and broke us apart, dragging my chair back with no regard for my pleas.
“I let you have your little moment,” Elijah said with a sneer, as if the entire concept of affection was beneath him. “Now, it’s about what I want. And I want to see what will happen when I kill one of you.”
I laughed. The kind of insane, denial-filled laughter than could only come from complete and utter shock.
That simply wasn’t happening. Ford wasn’t going to die. I told Elijah as much, my voice filled with far too much levity.
“Oh, no, you won’t be seeing that. I’ve already seen—or really heard—what you can do.
Put on quite the show, didn’t you?” Elijah flipped his knife, the same one that had been embedded in my thigh some odd number of minutes ago, catching the point between his fingers then sending it back up into the air to grab the hilt.
Once his fingers closed around it, he lifted the blade towards Ford.
“I’m more interested in what he will do. ”
If I thought I’d known fear before, that was nothing compared to the sheer terror that flooded my chest at his words. I could handle pain. I could handle torture.
I couldn’t handle knowing Ford would break under the weight of the Bond.
“Please,” I rasped, looking Elijah dead in the eye. It felt wrong to move my gaze off Ford for even a second, but I needed Elijah to see my desperation. “Please don’t.” My words starting falling out in a panicked ramble. “You want to know so that you can take out Soren and Bellamy, right?”
“Esme.”
I couldn’t stop to look to Ford, my words falling out too fast. “See how long it takes the other to go in case you can’t get them both in one sweep? Then it doesn’t matter who you—”
“Esme.”
“—kill first. It can be me you watch. You don’t have to—you don’t need to…”
Whatever else I was going to say was lost in the indifferent expression on Elijah’s face.
I looked to Ford, seeking out answers. My brain felt like it was breaking under the weight of its own lack of understanding.
Ford looked broken. Shattered. Eyes wild and streaked with blood and something sub-human. Like I’d already died right in front of him. Like he would follow in a matter of seconds.
An image of him lying lifeless on the ground slapped me across the face, lighting a fire of pure survival instinct under my ass.
Protect. Protect. Protect. That, from the Bond.
He has a family. That, from me.
He had a family. One that relied on him. One he loved and that loved him back. One that would never come back from this.
I was pretty sure he loved me back. If he felt anything close to what I felt for him, he would happily welcome death if I was gone.
But he would die hating himself. Feeling like he failed at the one thing he’d set out to do every day of his life—to take care of his family.
I needed to give him a reason to stay. In one final, probably insane and misguided, act of kindness, I needed to make him stay.
I straightened slowly, keeping the shift subtle. From the type of panic that came from losing the love of your life to a more animalistic version—something base, something impersonal.
"You’re really going to do this?” I asked Elijah.
It was then, with a clearer mind than I’d had in hours, that I saw it. The tiniest little hesitation. The corner of his mouth tilting down in a frown before the muscle in his cheek pulled it up to a smile with all the manipulation of a puppeteer.
“Yes. I am.” He said it like yes, I have to.
I looked to Ford, at his head hanging between his shoulders, exhausted from fighting, both his restraints and this reality.
“Then me first,” I said, voice too clear and too bright. “If you would.”
Ford’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing like he no longer recognized me. I couldn’t meet his eye, snapping my attention back to Elijah—who just looked lightly amused again.
“I was planning on that, serpenia,” he said, using that cursed nickname. “But your sudden acceptance of the matter is making me curious.”
I laughed, shaking my head. My mouth tasted like ash. “You said it yourself. I went crazy once. Don’t really want to do that again. Especially without—” I paused, letting my eyes lighten with a thought then tilting my head to the side.
I made sure Ford saw it. This was entirely reliant on his ability to nearly read my mind. If I thought about that too long, about what that meant about who we were to each other, I’d lose my resolve.
But he saw it, knew what I was thinking about. A few little blue pills that could keep him alive.
Unfortunately, Elijah caught it, too. He crouched down in front of me, taking my face in his hand in a rough grip. Ford’s answering snarl ripped a hole through my chest.
“What was that?” Elijah snapped, his fingers pressing in painfully.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, casually and carefully.
Ford did, Ford knew. I could tell he was confused, but I had no way of telling him that, hopefully, he would be busting out of here by the time Elijah got around to killing me.
Soren or Peter or someone would talk reason into him and make him take those pills.
No telling whether they would work for sure, but I had to give him the chance to try.
“Esme,” this time, it was Ford who was snapping at me. Not really a bite, more filled with shock and confusion. I was only able to look at him for a second, but that was all it took to read his expression. Full-scale betrayal.
The horrible thing was, I understood it. I would probably have reacted the same if he was asking me to try and go on without him. But he was too close to the issue right now. He was too enthralled by the Bond to remember he had other things to live for.
The Bond, on my end, sensed what I was about to do and began screaming at me—loud, clanking sounds of disgust.
“Ford,” I said, with a tone of dismissal I hadn’t used on him in a long, long time. “I told you I don’t want to go through that again. And, sorry, but we’re kind of at a crossroads here. You’ll be fine.”
Elijah scoffed, thinking he would have Ford tied up until he withered away into nothing.
Ford blinked, trying and failing to make sense of me.
He knew as well as I did that our—his—rescue was hopefully imminent. It was my acceptance of the situation he didn’t understand. I needed to make that clearer.