Chapter 37
EVER
Eli drops my hands and scowls at the unrelenting water. “Shit. Come on.”
The rising flood is freezing despite the heated springs from which it spills.
I hop from one set of toes to the other, arms folded over my chest. The cold is only a minor distraction from the gravity of everything else—the death of my mother, how Zandrite wants to kill me, how good of a fuck Eli is and how that’s all he wants to let me feel toward him because of a damn curse.
But I’ll chip away his control on my heart like I’m degrading the effects of his curse, blending the dark and light into gray.
The feelings mount faster than I can stuff them. My mind is too stubborn to let go. The more I juggle my thoughts, the higher the water rises.
“We have to get out of the lower levels.” Eli grabs my upper arm, leaving his boots behind and trying to take off at a run.
But the water is already up to our calves.
Our steps drag. The water follows us up the inclining passage.
“Everything leads up from here, but it’s a maze with hundreds of ways out and just as many dead ends. ”
“Where is it all coming from?” I ask, attempting to convince myself it has nothing to do with me and looking over my shoulder as Eli hauls me along at the speed of his long legs. I can barely wade through the icy water.
“The walls. The springs. Both. I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before, not in any life.” He pants, his cheeks rosy over the amber brown glow of his skin. He pokes his head into every room coming off the passage.
“Why are you so out of breath?” I ask, puzzled. I’ve seen him fight and run and climb without huffing once.
We finally outpace the rising water, and he barrels on, faster, squeezing my arm so tight the bone aches. “I’m not,” he rasps, then bends his neck around another wall and stops completely.
What is he doing? I tuck my head next to his, searching the room.
But I don’t have to look hard to know why he stopped.
Kelter is inside, his back to us. I’d know those sandy waves and ears anywhere, only not his bare ass.
I look away, but I can’t quite shake the sight of his cheeks squeezing tight as he thrusts forward, his brown pants around his upper thighs.
My cheeks flush, an unsettling chill sweeping over my skin.
“You knew I wasn’t done yet!” Kelter hisses angrily.
I turn my head back, thinking it must be over if he knows we’re here.
But no. A woman’s arms wrap around his neck, her ankles crossed over his lower back, pale in tone compared to his tan skin. Her moans of pleasure only make him drive into her faster, harder.
Eli rubs his face in desperation, biting out each word. “Don’t care. Stop fucking her.”
“Get out, Eli. The magic will kill me if I don’t finish.” Kelter lifts the woman’s ass higher before smashing her back against the wall again. Every thrust produces a high-pitched grunt from her.
Eli’s body tenses, short, tight breaths expelled one after the other. He plows a hand through his curls and growls.
“What’s your—” I’m left floundering for words when his hand shifts to his crotch, adjusting his now obvious hardness. “This turns you on that much?”
“No,” he gasps.
Kelter flips his upper half around. “Ever? You’re here. I thought he left you in—” His eyes narrow on Eli, the motion of his hips unrelenting. “You blocked her from me.”
The woman grasps Kelter’s hair, pulling at the back of his head.
“You’re just a little distracted, brother.” Eli bends at the waist, smacking a hand onto each thigh to support himself. A groan escapes the depths of his chest.
“Oh.” My legs nearly give out. “Oh shit. You feel all of this.” My stomach crunches into a ball. “You feel him fucking her.”
“Like it’s me,” he admits, standing tall again and rolling his head back. He forces air in and out. I try to go, but he grabs my wrist. “He needs to get out of here too.”
The water catches up to us, bubbling with vengeance and cooling the backs of my hot knees.
“If it helps…” Kelter says, pausing to come inside the Half Link, his moans overcoming his words.
The sound of their slapping skin echoes.
He smacks a bloody, bandaged hand flat on the wall as his hips jerk.
Eli drops to his knees, another groan demanding its way out of him.
“I felt every second of him with you,” Kelter finishes with a gasp, looking over his shoulder at me with deep hurt in those hazel eyes, his nose bent out of place and more purple bruises than tan skin.
A wave of horror knocks me flat. Eli told me, but it’s easy to ignore the truth when caught up in the moment. “You don’t have to make it worse!”
Eli pushes up again, staggering as he barrels across the room. Cold water splashes in every direction. He slings an arm around Kelter’s neck and pulls him backward with a violent yank. “You will never say that to her again.”
Kelter tries to peel the woman from his front, revealing the side of her perfect face, but she tightens her legs and clings to him like a final breath. “I haven’t finished!” she whines.
I recognize her—Paisel, the only Half Link woman who stood up for me. She smiles when our gazes meet for a passing second.
Eli releases Kelter with a shove. “Give me back my knife.”
“How does he have it again?” I ask. He shouldn’t have yet another piece of Eli.
“The wimp is a whole lot more likely to die than me. I gave it to him when we split up so he could take Sola and Coen with him and get out of here.”
“You can’t die. And I already got them out.
I just couldn’t go with them.” Kelter huffs and rakes a hand up from his neck into his hair and speaks into Paisel’s ear.
“Finish then. We have to go.” Water sloshes against the back of his thighs, his ass clenching as he returns to ramming Paisel into the wall.
“Now!” Eli demands.
“Why couldn’t you go?” I ask Kelter. “And what is going on with you? You’re out of control and being an ass. Look around you.”
His back muscles tighten, but he doesn’t turn around as he speaks, doesn’t stop his rhythmic motion.
“Maybe I’m out of my damn mind. Do you not realize that I just went through everything you went through?
That I felt you two together, felt the fear for your life, felt him claim your heart.
” He hoists Paisel’s slipping body back up to where she started.
“I can hardly function, much less find my way out of here. And I couldn’t leave with Coen and Sola because my cravings were too strong.
I would have hurt them. I needed release. ”
It’s still not okay. I spin my rings to calm myself. “Kelt.”
Kelter groans and drops Paisel in front of him.
Icy water splashes up. She lets out a shrill yell, steadying herself then holding him again the second his pants are back around his waist. Kelter pushes her away and turns around, the impression on his chest like a blaring light between us, painful to look at. “I don’t want your pity.”
“That’s not—”
“Get it together,” Eli says. “We need to get out of this shit hole now.”
Kelter grabs Paisel’s waist. “Fine. But I’m taking my own way out.”
“I don’t care what you do as long as you get out of here. I have enough going on without feeling you die. And Never doesn’t need to be near you anymore now that you’re fully linked,” Eli says, still flushed and breathless. “There’s no reason for us to stick around this place. Or you.”
And I don’t care either. Except I do, and wish I didn’t after what he said to me. But also, I do need to be near him… or want to. I can’t help it. He’s my link, and he’s right about one thing. How is he supposed to function like this? How can either of them?
I follow Kelter, Paisel and Eli into the hallway. “Kelt, please. I came here for you. Let’s get out of here together, then we’ll figure all this out. I haven’t even talked to you about the teva fields yet.”
“I can’t be around either of you right now,” Kelter says, then walks in silence until he and Paisel part ways with us a few turns later. No goodbye. Only a hardened look that strikes the soul.
Eli drags me through the passages. Left. Right. Left again. Any direction that appears to go up. But the ups become downs, and every direction feels wrong, the cold water pressing in on us with the same force and insistence as my thumping heart.
Walking is useless with the water now at our necks.
And it’s so damn cold that my limbs resist movement.
Our feet lift from the ground. I scramble to his back, wrapping my arms tight around his neck, my legs around his waist. Light stones shine through the water like rays from tiny suns below, diminishing the higher we rise.
He grunts and loosens my terrified grasp on his neck before kicking off the wall, propelling us forward.
My shirt sleeves billow around my shoulders.
He kicks so hard I think we’ll pop out into the open of the upper level any second.
But the passage is endless. He must have taken a wrong turn.
Or twenty. We swim up and up the incline, still not catching up with the rising water.
I try to tell the water to stay calm, to surrender. If I had anything to do with this, I can undo it. I put all my mental energy into it. I even beg. But this couldn’t have been my doing, because it continues to fill the passage, paying no mind to my plea.
Eli’s arms sweep in wide arcs at his sides. Faster and faster and never enough. My head bonks the ceiling, water up to my chin. My teeth chatter. “Eli!”
He stops and pulls me from his back with a swirl, holding my hips painfully tight and treading to keep us afloat. Our noses touch.
“Whatever happens, don’t come back for me. Take a breath,” he says.
My entire body throbs, every pounding pulse saturated with panic. “You’ll drown!”
The man actually smiles. “I’ve lived through worse.”
“Wait!”
He doesn’t.
He flips me around and dives underwater, holding my hips from behind and driving me forward. I suck in all the air that I can and seal my lips before my nose goes under. Water fills my ears. Slicks over my eyes. Covers my head.
And every breath I’ve ever hauled through my airway I took for granted, because only a second without air has me missing its lightness, the crispness of a sharp inhalation.
My lungs ache in its absence, the breath I gathered seemingly useless with the dread that crushes my chest. Bubbles escape my mouth, precious air all used-up.
Possibly, filling myself with liquid might not be anywhere near as bad as I thought. Maybe dying isn’t as awful as my visions, not as messy or gory or traumatizing. Maybe it would carry me from consciousness like drifting into sleep.
Eli stops again, ripping me downward and grabbing my head. I’m plucked straight from my toxic mind. His thumbs nearly puncture my skull with the grip he has on me, his eyes gleaming black in the distorted light of the passage.
He presses his mouth to mine. My chest expands with the air he forces inside, his air, refilling me. And with another hard shove off the wall, we’re swimming again. I kick my feet, determined to help, to get us out.
But his hands slip from my hips, no attempt to scrabble back around me.
And I’m on my own with nothing but two lungs full of air.
No no no. I can’t swim. He knows this.
I kick and thrash, attempting to turn my body around. But why? Only dark water looks back at me, taunts me, suffocates me. He can’t die, but that doesn’t mean he won’t feel the unimaginable surrendering—a breath of water. My fingernails curl at the thought. Please tell me I didn’t do this.
Where are you, Eli?
What if I scream? What if I use the last of my air to make enough underwater noise to lead him to me?
Then I could succumb to the pull of death while in his arms. I could squeeze him tight while my body ceases to function, while my heart gives out.
And then what? He can have my essence? Be cured of his broken immortality?
Live forever in this fucked-up world? And what about Kelt? Did he make it out?
A vision drowns my mind, the questions submerged in liquid, asphyxiated.
A dim light hugs Eli’s body as he drifts farther away, one hand left extended. Toward me. And his eyes… no. Wide open, pure white. No depth, no recognition. Nothing.
I blink, my lashes weighed down with water drops. The passage comes into view, the floor and walls slick with mud. I breathe. Air. I’m actually breathing. I rise slowly and pull my sodden shirt down to cover me with a shiver. It clings to my muddy skin. Where is he? What happened?
I shove the hair from my face as I walk toward the faint light in the distance, checking room after room and peering down passages. Vacant. Desolate. I assemble the strength to run. I have to find him. And Kelt. And get out of this nightmare.
But something catches my eye. I retrace my steps, stopping in the doorway of a small room, empty save for the little boy balled-up in the corner.