32 #3
Catching my gaze, Cooper steps back without a word, and I lower to a knee beside the Exot’s head.
Once I’ve leaned in close enough so only he can hear, I whisper harshly, “You made a mistake coming after my Bonded and brothers. I don’t kill unless directly attacked.
I consider myself an extremely fair man—a good man. But for her . . . I’d do anything.”
He’s hardly moving, but I know he’s not dead—the announcement for his elimination hasn’t found us yet—so I know he can hear me.
I know he’s listening, that these words are the last he’ll ever hear, my blade, the tip of which I position directly over his heart, one of the last things he’ll ever feel.
“You have no idea, no fucking clue, how that feels. You have no idea how consumed I am by her for me to completely disregard my morals for her. No idea how strong my love is.” He doesn’t make a sound as I slowly start to push down on the hilt of my sword.
He can’t with the organ stuck in his mouth, suffocating him to death.
“And you tried to steal that from me.” My teeth grind, and my eyes prick at the memories that rush at me.
“The agony you caused . . .” The breath that leaves me is harsh and unsteady, my grip on my armoury stick the same as I press down harder.
“You tried to destroy my family . . . but all you succeeded in doing was killing your own.” If you could even call what Aider, Troy, and Player 84 were that.
I jam the curved blade right through skin and bone, spearing the organ beneath.
Panting raggedly, my neck drops, arm tensed and shaking.
“Player 87: Eliminated.”
Recollecting myself, I close my eyes, taking a few moments to myself.
But I’m reminded I don’t have a few moments when that robotic voice echoes through the maze again:
“Nine minutes remaining.”
Shit.
Head snapping up, I demanifest my Avri, only giving myself a millisecond to absorb Player 87’s unseeing eyes before I push to my feet and turn to my brothers and my woman.
I don’t have time to read their facial expressions, to know what they think of me after that, because Ezla turns on her heel without a word and commands, “Let’s go. Now.”
***
“One minute remaining.”
I can hardly hear past my pounding heart, it’s rhythm overwhelming my senses.
“Faster!” Ezla barks, ten steps ahead of us as we sprint down one of the many long black halls of the maze.
It’s identical to every other, and we’ve already met three dead ends.
Ezla’s been doing exceptionally well as always, but this maze has already crashed my brain’s lights out with its complexity, and she can’t always get everything right first try. Not here.
“I—I can’t!” Alby pants out from the back of our group. “I’ve—never run—this—f-fast before!”
None of us have, and that’s the real issue here. This maze is absolutely humongous. Never-ending. We can all run for ages at a decent pace, but it feels as though we’ve crossed a hundred miles in the eight minutes we’ve been moving.
Arms and legs pumping as fast as humanly possible, I manage to get out with what little breath I have, “Just a—little further—Alby!” And I don’t know that for sure, but I have to believe it, because they all look to me, and we need this hope right now.
Ezla rounds the corner, and relief crashes into me from her so forcefully that I almost topple right over. My legs are hardly holding me up as it is.
Her voice comes a moment later to confirm what I already suspected: Hurry! The middle is here!
With a burst of energy, I force my aching legs to go faster. They’re in the kind of pain, the kind of strain, where they almost feel numb, and I’m sure they’re going to go the fuck to sleep after this for a long, long nap. And there will be an after this. I refuse to accept any other outcome.
After rounding the corner, I let out a breathless laugh to see a large rectangular space at the end of this hall, the middle of which contains a two-inch-thick platform large enough for about ten average-sized Players to stand on comfortably.
It’s iridescent, like Avri pixels are in their original form, and it honestly looks like a slice of fucking heaven right now.
Alby cries out, and my neck snaps around when we’re halfway down the wide hall, seeing Tate, who’s second last in our group, the size of him making it harder to maintain a decent pace for a long time, turning and catching him before he can fall over.
Careful, my shy boy, Ezla hisses as we keep running, the weakness in my legs more obvious to me now after they’d faltered when I’d checked on Alby. None of you will be on the taalk when the countdown reaches all zeroes. Keep moving for me. Come to me.
Obeying her as always, all of us force ourselves to our limits.
“Thirty seconds remaining.”
“Fuck!” Cooper rasps beside me.
A step behind us, Tiger gasps out, “We can—make it!”
You will make it. There is no other option for you. You are mine, Ezla tells us firmly as she reaches the middle of the maze.
Yes, Ezzy!
Coming, HC.
We’re all coming to you, Love, I send out for all of us, and I’m more and more sure that that’s true as the platform gets bigger and bigger, clearer and clearer.
“Twenty seconds remaining.”
Ezla runs onto the platform of Avri and whirls around to face us.
Come to me, my Bonds, she repeats as the Avri beneath her is taken over by inky-crimson for a moment before it returns to its default.
You must only reach the platform; when we are on here, the Avri records us as successfully making it to the middle.
I meet open space a moment later, leaving the hall with my brothers behind me.
Forty feet, thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five . . . My surroundings pass by in a blur, and soon enough, my dark green energy is expanding like a splat of wet paint beneath my boot.
Doubling over, I can only suck in lungfuls of air, Cooper joining me in the same second with a wheezed curse.
“Oomph!” All the oxygen Tiger’s managed to get in exits him in one great big woosh of air as he lands flat on his front with an undignified thump after launching himself onto the platform. Oh, that’s good, he groans down the bond, uncaring about his painful landing.
A beat after that, Tate and Alby are there, more splotches of green expanding outwards from them before iridescence returns beneath our feet.
The platform starts to rise at once.
It’s smooth, but I still startle, and my hand whips out to my left instinctively to stabilise myself.
It latches onto Ezla’s slim wrist, and I tense all over, continuing to struggle for breath as I snap my head her way.
“Ten seconds remaining.”
The relief that had drenched me only moments ago ebbs away, replaced by that pain from earlier when Ezla gives me no emotion, only an iced-over mask.
Whatever she’d been feeling when we ended Aider’s Bonds together and during our mad rush for our lives is gone, tamped down on.
And I get it, really. The Bonding Games Champion isn’t someone who can be controlled; she’s notoriously cutthroat and always in charge, and that’s what she prides herself on being.
She’s uncomfortable enough discovering she has a softer side with us, and people out there can be vultures, picking celebrities apart and trying to discover deeper meanings.
I know she wouldn’t want the world to see the bits she’s discovering beneath all the cruelty, not when she views that as a weakness she never wanted to have.
I’m pretty sure that’s why her laugh earlier cut off so quickly—because she realised what she was doing.
She doesn’t seem too averse to declaring her claim on us to the world, but that’s possessiveness, not a vulnerable emotion, and the words I’d said without thought have had a bigger impact on her than they would have on anyone else when it suggests it’s possible to influence her, that she can be stopped, that she’s not as indestructible as the globe believes her to be.
To put it simply, she doesn’t want anyone to know she has a heart.
She only wants everyone to fear her and respect her, and with her life experiences, I completely understand that, why that need is so strong.
I’m sorry, Love, I repeat my words from before, pushing the apology down the bond that’s still luckily open.
She stares emotionlessly at me for a few more moments as we rise higher and higher. Stomach tied up in sickening knots, I struggle to swallow around the lump in my throat.
Without a word, without any of her true feelings seeping into the bond, the love of my life looks away from me, standing straight, expression blank.
A suffocating weight presses down on my lungs, making it hard to retain any of the oxygen I’d just managed to get in as The Bonding Games Champion I used to know takes over.