Chapter 14
Poof. I'd disappear.
“Soren.”
His name spilled raw and broken from my throat.
He peered down at me with a hollow gaze, crouched on one knee. A cold finger moved a wet strand of hair away from my vomit-soaked cheek.
“I told you I would kidnap you,” he said with a sound emptier than his eyes.
A breathy laugh escaped me before I remembered the rancid stench on my breath. I clamped my mouth shut despite no change in his expression. Then I used my hands to slide backward, wiping my face with a grime-coated arm.
The burn of the dust against my scraped palms barely registered with my nervous system. There were too many other things to focus on at the moment.
Like, how did we move so quickly? How did he find me? What would happen next?
I dipped my chin so that my breath hit my thighs instead of his face.
“You think it’s funny,” he spoke again.
It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t sound angry. He didn’t sound anything about it. Just flat.
My slight smile vanished. I shook my head.
“Funny?” I had to hold back the gag that came up as my stomach still tried to sort itself out.
“You just kidnapped me at lightning speed. I’m no longer a Citizen, thanks to you.
And, now, everyone wants me dead. My entire life has been blown to smithereens.
There’s nothing funny about this.” Yet, a dry laugh punctuated that very sentence.
His brows furrowed. He reached to smooth more of my hair away. Even though I’d backed up, he didn’t need to lean to reach me.
“You laugh when you’re anxious,” he said in that flat, empty tone again. The rough growl and angry scowling that I usually got from him were nowhere in sight.
I licked my lips.
Big mistake because, Ew.
“You don’t have to kill me, you know?”I said around a hiccup. “Everyone else is already trying. You can leave me here. Someone’ll finish the job for you.”
He tilted his head to the right.
“Kill you? I’m saving you.”
All the adrenaline from the moment I saw that headline on Pulse crashed to a halt. My head dropped to my knees. My scraped-up skin stung like hell. My whole body screamed in pain. But I couldn’t be bothered by any of that. Tears started pouring again. Sobs racked my frame.
Was this what saving was supposed to feel like? It felt a lot more like going up in flames.
I’d almost died about twenty times in one night. Even though I’d survived, my life was over. They'd revoked my citizenship. They must have known about my plan to kill Azazel. They had branded me a terrorist in front of the entire world.
Everything I had worked for vanished in one night. There was nowhere that I could run and hide. In my head, I allowed myself to tumble down into a dark void with no desire to try and climb out.
What was the point of any of this?
A warm and heavy weight rested on my shoulder. A thumb nudged through the matted mess of my hair and brushed the bare skin of my neck. It was neither fire nor ice. I could barely feel it.
I lifted my chin to see that Soren had moved closer despite there being no need for it. I tried to scoot back again, but my bleeding palms met the mud-slicked floor and sent a jolt of pain up my arms.
Soren instantly ate up the space I’d made, rendering my pained attempt futile.
“Useless,” the voice hissed.
“What do you want from me?”
My voice was so small, I wasn’t sure he had heard me at first.
“I’m your Guardian, Eliana. I want to protect you.” His voice sounded too loud. No, that’s not right. It was too low.
This time, when he raised his arm, I was ready. I pushed myself upright and leaned back, grasping to put even the smallest amount of space between us.
My chest rose and fell faster to try to get air that my lungs didn’t seem capable of processing. Cold sweat broke out across my skin. I didn’t know if I was going to puke or pass out. Nothing he said should have triggered a panic attack like this.
“Why weren’t you there?!” I screamed. The words tore out of me, shrill and cracked with sobs.
If he were my ‘Guardian’ as he liked to call himself, shouldn’t he have been there sooner? He only showed up once I was safe.
To kidnap me.
“Where were you?” I whimpered.
Soren reached again, but I pushed to standing. I ignored the burn in my knees as I straightened them out and tried to make myself as tall as I could to appear as if I had even an ounce of power in this guy’s presence.
He stood and stepped forward, all in one motion.
His icy grip bound my wrist, and I was caught before I ever had a chance to run.
There would be no chase with Soren. I couldn’t have escaped him even if he’d given me a head start.
The cold vice around my arm and his swirling black eyes liquefied my skeletal system.
His next words and the edge that laced them sliced through my panic. “That won’t happen again. I’m not letting you go now.”
I sniffled and stared at his shirt instead of his eyes. I tugged at my bound arm.
He only tightened his grip.
“What if I don’t want to go with you?” I mumbled, still sniffling.
His voice dropped into the growl that felt more familiar. “I’m not giving you a choice.” Then his other hand came to my chin. Ice cold. “Look at me, Little Shadow.”
Little Shadow.
It was the first time he’d called me that. I didn’t get it, but it felt too accurate. I was a shadow flickering in a dim light on the brink of extinction. If that light went out, I’d be gone.
Poof. I’d disappear.
At least I knew what he was calling me this time, unlike whatever “Xiao Ying” was supposed to mean.
I glanced up, then away, before finally locking onto Soren’s face. Silver strands whispered in the black pools of his eyes. The same light that barely held my existence shimmered inside his gaze.
“From here on out, you’re with me,” he said.
My tongue poked out to lick my lips, but he made a guttural sound from his throat through his nose. I froze and pulled my tongue back into my mouth to seal my lips shut like a chastised child.
“That’s a bad habit,” he scolded as he dropped his hand. “You need to stop.”
I sniffled again.
Soren finally turned away and walked toward the nearest window.
As he moved, my body relaxed enough to register the pain from my cuts, scrapes, and bruises.
A whimper eeked out.
It was slight as could be, but Soren’s head snapped back around. I couldn’t see his eyes with the light coming from behind him transforming his mammoth frame into a nightmare silhouette, but I could feel them tearing into me.
His tone confirmed as much.
“Zuri can help you once I get you to the inn. Until we leave, sit down.”
Sitting sounded fine.
The process of sitting? Not so much.
Though panic still crawled in my joints and tears threatened to spill, I finally realized I had no idea where I was—some abandoned warehouse or factory.
Significant and concrete, it had a coat of dust along the floor.
Oh, and my puddle of vomit. Eight square pillars were the only obstructions in the rectangular space.
I couldn’t hear any other sounds outside of a faint dripping and the breathy, achy ones I made.
“Zuri?” I asked, my voice cracked and nasally.
“She’s a healer.”
“She’s at the inn?”
“Yes.”
Uncomfortable silence failed to distract me from the pain of my wounds.
“So, you’re taking me to the inn?” I tried for more information.
He waited too long to answer, and I was about to ask the question again. Then he gave a distracted, “Yes,” and looked back out the window.
“When are we leaving?”
“Sit down.”
I huffed. This guy was seriously annoying.
“Why are we waiting here?”
That grisly figure stalked toward me, his shadow shifting as the light from the windows twisted around his approach. “You need to rest before going through that again.” Soren nodded toward the floor where my day’s meager meals and stomach acid taunted me. “Now, sit.”
I took two steps back to get some space and attempted a nonchalant lean against one of the pillars to ease myself down. I only took my eyes off him for a second. Then he was there, an arm around my waist and a hand under my arms, lowering me to the floor.
“Thanks,” I whispered as I was finally able to sit down again.
He said nothing and silently returned to his post at the window.
I leaned back against the pillar, and I think I closed my eyes for just a second.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t on the concrete floor anymore. I was against something warm, firm, and moving. The light from the windows had shifted and dimmed. I could make out Soren’s face when he stepped through a narrow shaft of light.
He was carrying me.
“I can walk,” I grumbled groggily.
“Last time,” he whispered.
It was the softest I’d ever heard his voice, but I couldn’t even appreciate how un-terrifying he sounded in that moment.
That softness had been his definition of a warning before his pace went from a human stroll to flinging me through space and time again.
I couldn’t make anything out. Light tunneled around me.
Pressure built around my skull and behind my eyes.
My vision started to go black, and my head slumped toward his chest against my will.
Then we stopped.
A large hand cupped my head, keeping me against him.
Both arms held me so tight that I could barely breathe, much less vomit.
Even though the motion had ceased, my head still spun in cyclones.
On second thought, we were still moving, actually, but at a slower, more manageable pace.
My eyes screwed shut, and my breaths were shallow until they weren’t so much anymore.
I felt myself being lowered until my body came to rest on something soft. Soren didn’t take his arm out from behind me. His other hand slipped from under my legs and came down gently over the top of them to pull me back against him.
Sound seeped back into my senses. It was fuzzy garbling at first. Then I could hear different octaves, different voices.
They weren’t distinct but were different.
I clung to any sensory cue from the outside world that I could grasp because my inside world was spinning at a deadly rate toward a big black hole.
Someone rolled me onto my side just as my body gave up and convulsed. The force of it shoved my upper body forward an inch so that my head tilted over the edge of whatever surface I’d been placed on, and I was able to puke somewhere rather than all over myself.
On the third heave, my eyes cracked open. With hazy vision, I could see that I was not vomiting on the floor but into some bin. Another round. Someone pulled my hair out of my face. It was a hand much smaller than Soren’s. Their slight denim-clad frame was in my waxy peripheral vision.
“It’s alright, sweetheart.” Winifred’s voice rang clearer than I could have anticipated. “You just rest for a bit.”
When I finally stopped vomiting, I took someone’s advice for once in my life. My eyes closed, and then I passed the hell out.
I didn’t dream that night.
Thankfully.
I’m sure it would have been a nightmare reel if I had.