Chapter 30
Esme
The first thing I felt was pain. Not the sharp, stinging prick of a knife, but a duller ache—like an overworked muscle.
Then came the thirst, far worse than the aftereffects of any night of drinking I could remember. I opened my mouth to ask for water, but was cut off by a voice that chased away that first clench of pain immediately.
“No, don’t try to speak. It’s okay. I know what you need.”
I couldn’t see, not yet. My vision was still sparking white, shying away from the light. A straw was eased into my mouth and that voice told me to take small, slow sips.
The first swallow had me wincing with renewed pain.
“You’re okay. Move slow. Your throat will be sore for a few days.”
The next sip of water was a little easier, now that I knew to expect the scraping feeling.
Shapes started to appear, shadows beginning to form in the blinding light.
“Can we turn down the lights? She can’t see.”
Ford.
I tried to say his name, but it only came out in a crackling groan.
His hands were bracketing my face a second later, his thumbs sweeping over my cheeks. They slipped across my skin too easily—from tears, I assumed. “Don’t try to speak, sweetheart.”
It took more effort than I wanted to admit to keep myself centered, to not succumb to that oh-so-tempting urge to dissolve into hysterics.
Things were starting to take shape—my mind adjusting right alongside my vision. I was clearly in a hospital bed. I’d nearly…died.
The last thing I remembered was that musty, cold room. Falling into Ford’s arms. Pain and fear.
Another blink and Ford’s face came into focus.
“You look like hell,” I croaked out. His face broke into a harrowed smile and I almost took it back. He looked wonderful.
“I’ve been sitting vigil at your bedside for three days. Not much time to freshen up,” Ford said, shifting his hands down to grab one of mine and bringing it to his mouth.
“To be fair, I did make him shower once a day. And change,” someone—Soren—said from the corner of the room. I moved my head slowly, not terribly excited by the prospect of looking away from Ford, and saw him and Bellamy sitting on a small couch in the corner of the room.
Bellamy was sobbing.
“I’m,” I had to swallow between words, trying to keep the wince off my face. “Okay.”
That only made Bellamy cry harder, throwing her hands over her face then her entire upper body over Soren’s lap.
“Fucking barely,” Soren said, sounding like he was speaking through a mouthful of gravel.
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly, then looked at Ford when he groaned in protest. Probably at the fact that I was speaking. My throat was sore, but I felt better than I probably should. “I was up and moving for a little…”
Soren was the only one to snort at that description. I’d nearly taken someone’s head off in revenge for Ford. Again. Though this time it didn’t feel as haunting. “Adrenaline and the Bond. The cut on your neck was quite deep. It nearly severed your jugular and sliced your trachea.”
The Bond was the only reason I was alive, then. Keeping me just on this side of living, allowing me to heal fast enough to cling onto life.
No one really knew the mechanics of how the Bond’s healing powers worked, just that it was triggered when you were protecting your paranima.
If I had to guess, what happened fell somewhere in between—not enough to have me heal overnight, but enough that I was feeling far better than most would at this stage of their healing.
I don’t think anyone wanted to say out loud how different things would have been without the Bond involved.
Ford, however, seemed to be very clearly thinking it. His hands were tightening on me, his eyes going unfocused.
“Can we have a second alone, please?”
Another memory slammed into me, one of the look on Ford’s face when I’d reduced our relationship to nothing more than some primal instinct from the Bond.
We really, really needed to talk. I needed to apologize. Lay my feelings for him out in the open and hope he forgave me.
Just as Soren was nodding his head, him and Bellamy moving to stand, Peter burst into the room with two doctors in tow.
“Hello,” I said, then watched as the word hit Peter like a bullet. I wondered if my voice was ever going to go back to normal or if it would be a constant reminder of what happened to us.
“You broke a promise, young lady.”
If Peter didn’t look genuinely upset, I would have responded with something snappier than, “I’m sorry.”
In truth, I had broken a promise. When I’d woken up after Ford’s rescue, Peter had made me swear that I wouldn’t put myself in harm’s way again like that. It wasn’t something I could entirely control, but we’d both known what he meant. Then he handed me a bottle of blue pills and my world changed.
“I’m just,” Peter’s voice cracked over the word, “glad to see you’re okay.”
“You can say it.” I attempted a smile, but could only pull my lips so far until my throat started to hurt. “That you told us so.” Without those trackers, I would be dead right now.
Peter shook his head with a laugh, then put his hands over his face as a sob broke out of his throat.
“Peter?” I asked, echoing everyone’s confusion.
He dropped his hands from his face, then placed them lightly on my ankles at the foot of the bed, squeezing once. “You gave me quite the scare, that’s all.”
“Okay…” I looked to Ford to see his expression, but he was looking down at my hand, still clasped between his.
We really needed to be alone, to talk about some things. Before we could do that…
“Do we need to debrief?” I asked, trying and failing to straighten up in bed.
Peter shook his head. “Ford told us everything.” Then proceeded to recap, in rather grave detail, what happened.
Ford said everything I would have. How Elijah seemed to be acting without Caspian’s approval.
How he knew that we’d uncovered their secret—that the Bond didn’t exist on Muli.
How Soren and Bellamy were still clearly a target.
Even that, though unconfirmed, Elijah’s interest in the Bond seemed borderline obsessive.
“Where is Freya?” I’d asked in the middle of that conversation.
“With Sky,” Ford answered, speaking against the skin on the back of my hand. Just those two words, just the warmth vibrating from his voice into my skin, and I felt like I’d jumped forward a day in healing.
“He’s doing okay?” My sweet, sweet boy. I was sure he was part of how we’d gotten back to camp. I probably gave him quite the fright—again.
Ford nodded. “Antsy. Will really only let me and Freya touch him, so she’s been with him so he doesn’t chomp someone’s finger off.”
“Thank you for taking care of him,” I said, too tired to keep the affection out of my voice, probably out of my expression, too.
Then Ford’s face fell and I wondered if I had actually died and this was the hell I’d been forced into, having to exist in this awful limbo where Ford still believed that I didn’t love him.
It was suddenly very, very important to me that we get time alone. Uninterrupted at that.
I knew that wasn’t going to happen until we had some very long discussions about where we stood.
“Can someone just tell me how close to all out war we are so I can go back to sleep?”
Bellamy, bless her, was the only one who laughed, albeit a lightly scared chuckle.
“We’re not there quite yet,” Peter said. “If Elijah was truly acting alone, we don’t want to blow up peace negotiations just yet.”
“Well, someone needs to kill him.” I would be very happy if that person was me, and I could drive a knife right through his stupid face.
Maybe I was still on a healthy dose of pain meds, because everyone was trying to cover up a smile. I thought that was a very reasonable thing to say.
Peter, the ever serious one, continued, “We are sending Bellamy and Soren back to Vir. Both for their own safety and to discuss the treaty with the Emperor.”
Good. Smart.
“In the meantime, you will be healing. We are going to put together a few teams to—”
"Kill Elijah?” I asked hopefully. Ford still wasn’t cracking a smile, which I really did not appreciate.
“To find Elijah, or even Caspian.”
Clearly, the look on my face was on the wrong side of excited, because Peter held a hand up between us. “The planning of which will take time. In the meantime, I’m keeping everyone local.”
It seemed the reason I was the only one protesting was because I was the last to learn about it.
Peter already had his defenses well-planned.
“I will send you back over the Bridge without a second thought if I catch even the slightest wind that you are planning to disobey orders. I already have Freya to deal with, I don’t need you on top of it. ”
Freya, who was famously hard to control. Peter had stopped a while ago, knowing that it was more beneficial to let her go off on her own and hope she shared whatever she found than force her to run off in secret.
Honestly, I was surprised he had even let her take off the tracker at all, but I guess that kind of ruined that whole trust thing.
“We’ll discuss this later,” I said, growly and half hopefully.
“You,” Peter said, pointing at the center of my face. “Are on bed rest for at least three days. I don’t want to hear it. Three. Days.”