Chapter 29 NADINE
I lay awake in the dark, staring at a ceiling that wasn't familiar enough to comfort me and wasn't strange enough to distract me. The room was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that pressed in on your ears until you started listening for things that weren't there.
I hadn't slept. Not really. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him the way he'd looked on Cronack: the black eyes, his aura all wrong, and his hands around my throat. God, those hands. I blinked to replace that image with the image of before. Golden. Calm. Almost amused by the universe.
I turned onto my side and curled inward, pulling the blanket tighter around myself like it could hold me together.
I missed him so much it hurt. The ache wasn't sharp anymore.
It was deep. Constant. Like grief had hollowed out a place in my chest and refused to leave.
I could still feel the bond—faint, stretched, trembling—but there.
I wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
If he were gone, truly gone, maybe my mind could start accepting it.
But he wasn't. He was just… out of reach.
"Dravok," I whispered into the dark. My voice sounded small. Pathetic. I swallowed and tried again, softer this time, like he might be asleep somewhere nearby, and I didn't want to wake him.
"Stay." Tears slid down my temples and into my hair. I didn't wipe them away. I didn't have the energy to pretend I wasn't breaking. "Please," I breathed. "Stay with me. Come back to me."
I pressed my hand to my chest, right over my heart, right over where the bond used to feel warm and steady instead of thin and frayed. I could feel the faintest whisper of his presence. Just enough to know he wasn't gone. Just enough to make the absence unbearable.
I don't know when the room changed. There was no sound.
No shift in the air. No warning. One moment I was alone with my grief, and the next—the darkness thickened.
It wasn't the absence of light. It was weight.
Pressure. A presence so vast and cold that my breath caught instantly, my lungs refused to draw in air.
I tried to move.
I couldn't.
Panic flared white-hot, immediate and absolute. My mind was awake—too awake—but my body didn't respond. My fingers wouldn't twitch. My legs wouldn't kick. My throat wouldn't even tighten around a scream.
Sleep paralysis.
The word surfaced automatically, a reflex of old knowledge.
The rational part of my brain scrambled for something clinical to hold onto.
This isn't real. This is just—the thought died.
Because this wasn't confusion. This wasn't my mind misfiring between dreams. This wasn't what scientists explained away as sleep paralysis.
This was intent.
The darkness pressed closer, not touching me, not needing to.
It filled the room, the corners, the space above my chest where breath should have been.
My heart was beating erratically now. My chest should have been heaving, but it kept moving steadily up and down as if nothing were wrong.
As if I weren't scared out of my mind. This…
this presence. It was more than frightening; it was all-consuming.
It was hate in its purest form. A hate so absolute, so destructive, it went beyond mortal fears.
I wasn't just afraid for my life… in that moment, I would have gladly died.
I would have embraced it. No, this was… corruption, merciless evil.
It didn't simply destroy it… consumed for all eternity.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it spoke. Not aloud. Inside.
He's never coming back to you. The voice was vast and layered, like countless echoes folded into one. It didn't rage. It didn't sneer. It knew.
My heart slammed against my ribs, terror surged so hard I thought it might break me free through sheer force.
No!
He's mine now.
The pressure increased, pinning me more completely than any physical weight ever could. I tried to blink. My eyes burned, but they stayed open, locked on the darkness above me.
He's found his true purpose.
The words slid through me like poison, cold and intimate, settling into every doubt I'd been trying not to voice.
He's finally what he was always meant to be.
"No," I tried to say.
Nothing came out. I fought harder, pouring everything I had into one single command.
Move. Just one finger. Just a twitch. If I could move even a little, I knew I could break it.
Wake fully. Get away from whatever this was.
I imagined it vividly—my hand jerking, my body rolling off the bed, me crawling across the floor toward the door, toward light, toward him—the darkness pulsed in response.
You felt it, didn't you? the voice continued, unhurried. How easily he let go of you. How natural it felt.
That was a lie. I knew it was. I clung to that knowledge like a lifeline.
"He fought," I thought desperately. "He fought you."
The darkness shifted, amusement rippled through it like a distortion in space.
He fought because he didn't understand yet. My chest tightened painfully. Now he does.
The pressure became suffocating. Not crushing, never enough to kill me. Just enough to make me helpless.
You were never meant to last. You are a variable. A disruption.
Tears streamed freely now, sliding into my ears, down my neck. I couldn't wipe them away. I couldn't even close my eyes. Inside my head, panic spiraled, but beneath it, something else stirred: Anger.
Hot. Furious. Defiant.
No!
You don't get to tell me who he is. You don't get to rewrite him. You don't get to take him from me.
I focused everything I had on the bond, on that thin, trembling thread still connecting us. I reached for it, not gently, not carefully, but with raw desperation.
Dravok.
The name wasn't a word this time. It was a pull. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened. But then… something answered. Not strongly. Not clearly. But enough.
The darkness recoiled, just a fraction, like something that hadn't expected resistance.
You think love will save him, it said, colder now. Love is temporary.
The darkness might have been right, but the bond between Dravok and me was more than mere love. In that moment, I didn't just know. I didn't just feel it. I accepted that our bond was eternal.
The pressure eased, just slightly. But it was enough for me to force everything I had into one final effort.
Move!
My finger twitched.
The darkness snapped back, furious now, its calm certainty cracking.
This isn't over, it warned. You can't keep him.
The weight vanished. I gasped violently, sucking in air so hard it burned. My body jerked, muscles unlocked painfully all at once, and I rolled onto my side, curling up as if I could protect myself from the echo of it.
The room was empty. Silent. Normal.
I lay there shaking, tears soaking the pillow, and my heart was racing like I'd just outrun death itself. Maybe I had.
Slowly, carefully, I reached inward again. The bond trembled. It was still there, still holding. I pressed my forehead into the mattress and sobbed, quiet, broken sounds torn from somewhere deep inside me.
"I'm not letting go," I whispered into the dark.
Not to the Abyss.
To him.
And for the first time since the ordeal began, I wasn't just afraid of losing him. I was afraid of what I would have to become to keep him. But even that fear wasn't enough to make me stop.
"Stay," I whispered again, in a raw and unsteady voice.
And somewhere—far, far away—I felt the faintest answering warmth.
Just enough.
For now.