Chapter 3
The Blade Is Healed… Maybe
TALIA
“To answer your question, there are only a few flickers of her here and there, but mostly the snake,” Rafe murmurs.
His arms are warm around me, and I like the feeling, but he sounds so tired and worried. I don’t want him hurting. I need to talk to him and get him to understand.
“I could feel you two fighting before you came, and now you’re bickering.
You’re both so damned stubborn. I’m too wiped to give anyone a lecture, so I’ll save the stomping for later.
First, I need to eat a food truck’s weight in people and all the other stuff I said, then I might be ready to bitch.
” The bottle clinks again, and I assume she’s refilling.
“Taurus, if you could help with the shield thing, it would be super.”
If she thinks he’ll let that criticism go, she’s got another thing coming. Even if I am hurt, he won’t let her win this round with her attitude.
“Woman, I’m not at all pleased with the stubborn label.
I’m also not pleased that my primary got so hurt thinking he cared more for me than for her.
Then the idiot tells me he loves me while she’s still out of it.
Now might not be a good time for your stomping, until I figure out what the fucking hell is going on with her.
She can resolve the bloody issue from there, but don’t forget that she’s my world.
I’m from her. What’s not okay with her, isn’t okay with me. ”
It’s silent for a moment, and I don’t know what’s happening. Rafe is holding me, and he’s shaking. I don’t know if anyone else can tell because he’s not touching them, but he’s shivering.
Why is he doing that? Why isn’t anyone talking?
The glass clunks on the bar again, and I feel the tension in the room rise, prickling over my skin. Again with the bottle, then silence. I feel like something is going on, but it’s not mind speech. I sense that, and no one is doing it. They’re mute.
Finally, she speaks, her voice low and almost robotic. “I don’t want to fight. Help get her back. Do what you need to fix her. She’s your primary, and she’s your world. Everything else is unimportant.”
Defeat flickers in the air for a moment before it disappears. The bleeding stopped when he arrived. I can’t taste anything to verify, but it feels like surrender. I don’t know what is going on with her, but I’m afraid that something terrible has happened.
Maybe it’s even my fault.
My heart hurts for a moment, until I remember Taurus is right.
I’m lying here broken and decimated. My spouse chose this time to profess his love to my mate.
That is the crux of our problem. All the doubt and fear creep back in, taking over in a way that makes it hard to focus on what they are all doing.
Why would he do that? Didn’t he realize how callous it sounded? Did he not think about how much it would hurt me to find out if I heard him? Doesn’t he care about my feelings? Isn’t that what got us here?
“I will need both of you to do this,” my primary says, his voice firm.
“We can help you do this, and the rest can go from there,” Deli replies, her tone flat. “I don’t know how much help I can be—given my state—but I will try.”
I feel a few tears dropping on my arm, and I know Rafe’s crying again.
“We don’t want you to go—either of you. We love you both,” Taurus says.
My primary has switched to being gentle with them instead of yelling or threatening. The only reason he would do that is that his wife must look ready to keel over and run for the hills or both. He’s not so kind to people who have taken part in causing me pain, even if it’s unintentional.
I know he loves me, but contrary to what he told her, she is his entire world and the stars above. I don’t even know if I could compete, and I have no problem with that. But something about her is bothering him, and he’s curbing his rage to keep it from manifesting.
“Okay.” She still sounds distant, and since I can’t see or feel her, there’s a lot she’s holding back in that one paltry word. She hasn’t even responded to his declaration. Hell, she’s barely responding to anything besides that bottle of scotch.
“This will be tricky. You need to build a shield of your own but leave a small conduit that reaches out, so it refills her shields. The chain has to be visible so I see it and feel it, but strong enough to protect yourself from getting fried. The line will let me siphon energy over to her. I only need enough to help shore her shields up, not drain you. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure we’ve got that covered,” his wife says, her voice full of sarcasm.
Does she have experience in building emotional shields that I don’t know about?
She could. Deli seems to have an endless array of talents she doesn’t mention until she needs them.
She never makes a big deal of being a proficient gymnast or a magick user or one hell of a singer once we know.
It’s almost like she masters things because she’s bored and then moves on to the next thing.
I don’t know what comes next: ballerina, equestrian, sushi chef, linguist, candlemaker. It could be anything.
Maybe their pain hides behind a shield, though. More than once, I’ve caught whiffs of damage from one or both. It’s never for long, and it always disappears as quickly as it came. She may hoard it all to keep it from touching us.
That’s a discussion for another day, I think.
“She’s right. We can,” Rafe whispers.
Again, there’s no rise from my primary on the bitter response from his wife. Normally, he’d snap back, so something strange is going on. They need to hurry the hell up and let me see why she’s behaving so out of character.
“Right then, this will feel weird. You may be used to building shields, but I doubt you’ve tried draining them, so bear with me. If you two build yours and let me know when you have a line formed for me to grab onto, that would help.”
Everything goes quiet, so I know they’re focusing on the task. The long hair holds me against his chest. I hope the cat remembers to wall off her powers after the light show at the beach. Her strength—even depleted—is something I don’t plan on messing with.
I’m uncertain if she knows what she can do.
“Okay, I see the stoat’s line now. It isn’t half bad,” Taurus muses. “Looking for yours, wife.”
I don’t know why it surprises him that someone whose primary is a priestess and who has an Empath for a wife, has at least a little clue about shields and all things mystical.
A delicate sniff from the other side of the room announces that Deli is ready, and I hear the smile in his voice when he finds her line. “It’s sparkly blue even when you’re feeling run through, my love. I shouldn’t be surprised, should I?”
“You should not,” she replies. “Shields draw energy from those who build them. If you want them to hold up, they need to reflect both what they are blocking and what they are protecting.”
Taurus wanders around inside me, tinkering with the source of my empathy. He siphons off their contributions, and I think about what she said.
She knows more than a thing or two about walls and shields and emotions.
I don’t think she’s an empath, but I think she’s developed the skill to help her deal with the powers inside her.
At the beach, she talked about nature: feeling and hearing everything around her.
Being connected to the natural world must require a lot of boundaries to keep from going crazy with all the noise.
Add to that magick and a cantankerous kitty, and you have enough things battling for control of you to be a crown in medieval Europe.
Deli learned to control it all by doing what she told me—cutting off the lines or controlling the flow. That’s interesting.
Every part of me is feeling stronger and less wasted as Taurus works. I know it won’t be long until I’m able to speak. I never thought I’d ache for the day I could yap my trap more, but here it is.
“How does she look?” Taurus asks.
Quietly, Rafe responds, “She’s getting color in her face. I might have seen a foot move.” I feel his gaze on my face. I know he’s holding my hand, and he’s trying not to squeeze hard.
Taurus refilled everything I needed, but he left their lines connected as a temporary insurance.
I feel a piece of them all inside me—the people I love—making my heart swell.
It’s different from anything I’ve ever felt before.
I concentrate hard, trying to kick the afghan off me as my body temperature rises as I heal.
Rafe’s presence is calming and soft, making me sigh a little.
When I move my legs more Taurus pulls their lines away. It leaves emptiness, making me wonder what it would be like to be that connected all the time. Is that what it feels like for him with the cat? If so, I know why she has no fear and has every confidence in him.
The feeling is all-consuming.
“I think we might have done it. Who wants the honor of waking the woman? I need to tell you, though; she’s not much of a morning person.
She’s all chipper and shit; it’s enough to make a bloke heave.
True morning people know mornings are for sleeping in with loved ones,” Taurus says, chuckling a little under his breath.
Her laugh is forced; I can tell by the sound, but she says, “Why not invoke the fairy tale over there?”
“There’s a bloody fairy tale about something like this? It boggles the mind.”
“I meant any bloody fairy tale where the prince kisses the lady and she wakes up.”
Hearing her gripe almost makes me smile. If she stops sounding like she’s ready to throw in the towel, it must be better, right?
My husband shifts a little. He has not said a word since Taurus finished healing me. “I suppose I’m the closest one, then.”
Something about this entire exchange bothers me, and I can’t put my finger on it, but they’re being noisy, so it’s time to wake myself up. I open my eyes and blink, murmuring low, “Am I missing a party?”