Chapter Twelve #3
Yet he keeps coming, crowding me back until I’ve retreated all the way across the kitchen. His voice is calm; his expression is anything but. “Do you think you can hide from me?”
I do not answer.
The air between us grows denser as it compresses to an arm’s length. Charged, like the sky before a storm. Every particle of it seems to sizzle in my lungs.
A messy lock of hair falls into his face. He does not pause to push it away. “Do you think your guilt is thick enough to obscure the things you want?”
“Guilt?” My back hits the wall, halting my retreat. “I don’t feel any guilt.”
“Again, with the lies.”
My teeth clench. “You’re being an ass tonight.”
“Just tonight?” His smirk is dark. Dangerous. He takes another step—a final step—and my heart stumbles a beat.
I clear my throat nervously. “I don’t know what’s come over you, but—”
“Perhaps I’m tired of this game.”
“I’m not playing any games.”
His body stops just short of mine, so close we are very nearly touching. My head tips back to keep him in view. His eyes at such proximity are impossible to escape, the blue piercing straight through me, the dark lashes fringing them thick enough to make any kohl-clutching courtesan jealous.
I press my spine so hard against the wall, I’m certain it will bruise. I do not dare breathe. I fear if I do, the slightest expansion of my lungs will cause our chests to brush.
“If you’re trying to intimidate me,” I hiss, “it’s not working. You can be the pushiest prick in the realm, I’ll not cower before you like some wilting flower.”
His lips twitch briefly with amusement, but soon twist into the cruelest of smiles, his humor vanishing so quickly it gives me whiplash. “Pushy I may be, but at least I’m honest. Can you say the same?”
My lips part, but he cuts me off before a single retort escapes.
“You want to be here. Whether you can admit it or not…I can feel it. Today, when we channeled…That high, that rush…You’ve never felt anything like that before.
And I didn’t need the godsdamned bond to tell me that.
” His face swoops down so it is aligned with mine.
His cheekbones are sharp as blades; his words somehow sharper, though they come out in a whisper.
“I know because I’ve never felt anything like that before, either. Not in my exceedingly long lifetime.”
My lungs seize, incapable of function.
“Even now, beneath your annoyance, I can still feel traces of it,” Soren continues. “Your mind moving with mine. Your heart pounding in perfect sync.” His voice, always so melodic, turns serrated. “Connected. One. You felt it, too. I know you did.”
“I didn’t feel it.” A friable declaration.
He grins darkly. He knows I’m lying. He does not call me out on it.
Instead, his hands come up—one bracing on the wall behind me, the other collaring my neck.
I suck in a startled gasp as his strong fingers wrap like a featherlight noose.
He can no doubt feel my pulse racing under his fingertips. But then, he does not need to feel it.
Not when he is inside my head.
I tell myself to pull away, but I am oddly paralyzed in place—by his body, by his touch. By his words most of all.
“You are a bird that’s been kept in captivity for far too long, skylark.” His mouth is so close, I can feel his breath on my lips, sweet with berries and wine. “It’s time you try out the open skies for a change. If you go back to Caeldera, you go back to your cage.”
“And you’d rather keep me here? Another bird in your aviary?” I croak. “That’s just swapping one set of bars for another.”
His jaw tenses with uncharacteristic tightness, a fissure of pure frustration. He quickly smooths it away. “Is it easier to paint me the villain in your story than to admit I might be right?”
“But you aren’t right.”
“No?”
“You don’t know anything about me or my life.”
“I know a great deal more about you and your miserable life than you can imagine.” His eyes glitter ominously.
His fingertips glide against my throat, a lethal caress.
“I know you spend your days toiling at the sickbeds of strangers. I know you spend your nights locked away, alone, in the apartments of a dead apothecary. I know you rarely eat, rarely rest, rarely speak, and never smile. I know your friends have fled to every corner of the Dyvedi plateau, and the few who remain in the city are none too eager to pass hours in your company. I know you are deeply lonely, little wind weaver. And that loneliness has cut you to the bone, chiseled away your wild, reckless spirit into a melancholy skeleton.”
The words lash through me, devastatingly honest. I cannot refute them. They are true, every one.
“You are disappearing before my very eyes. You paint the skies with your sadness. You walk through this world, wings clipped. A ghost, terrified to make any impression. Afraid to offend or draw attention.” His sigh is laced with displeasure.
“Gods, you cannot fault me for trying to prevent you from returning to that dismal fate.”
“You…” My face slackens with shock as his words trigger a new realization. “Have you been…watching me?”
“I have eyes everywhere. Even the Fire Court.” He sounds completely unrepentant. “Especially the Fire Court.”
“But that’s—” I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why?”
“I have made it my business to know about you since I first heard of your existence. Long before you arrived in the Northlands.”
I flinch.
Before?
What does he mean, before?
“No. No, that’s not…”
“Oh, yes. From Thawe Bridge to the Cimmerians. From Vintare to Coldcross to Caeldera.”
“The mountain. The wildfire. You were there,” I breathe, staring at him. “You helped me ford that river. The day we met.”
He does not answer. His jaw is tight. His eyes are swimming with maegic and something else. Something deeper. Something downright terrifying.
“Why?” I ask, practically panting.
“Why what?”
“Why were you there?”
He does not answer this, either. Not verbally, anyway. But as his fingertip traces the thudding pulse point at my neck, I feel his maegic whisper through me, a silken blow that makes me quake.
“If you would rather dwell in your own darkness over things you cannot change, that’s your choice,” he says, eyes locked on mine. “But if you let it, it will eat you alive. You will lose yourself in your grief. Your regret. Your losses.”
His mind brushes sinuously against my mental blockades. His maegic threads deeper into mine.
“You blame yourself for Fyremas, though it was not your fault,” he says inside my head, seamlessly shifting to a psychic connection. “Worse, you fear that Pendefyre blames you, too. If he does, he is an even bigger fool than I previously believed him to be.”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Mind!” I grit aloud.
“Make me.”
I’m trying—not very successfully. “Back off, Soren. I mean it.”
His mocking laugh reverberates inside my skull. “Well, if you mean it…”
“I am finished with this…this…whatever this is. Or…was.” I swallow hard. My heart is pounding too fast inside my chest, and my body—my maegic—is intensely awake, as though it might explode out of my skin at any moment. “I’m going back to Caeldera. Now. This very moment. Take me to the portal.”
“Is that really what you want?”
Yes.
No.
I am no longer sure.
My chin jerks. “You expect me to stay here and allow you to invade my head without permission anytime you see fit?”
“Do you think our enemies will ask nicely before tearing through your mental guards? Do you think Efnysien will tread carefully on your precious need for privacy?”
The blood drains from my face.
His eyes never shift from mine, boring into me as his voice batters at my resolve. “You believe you do not need lessons. You believe you can face this coming war with sheer bluster, because that’s worked for you in the past. It will not work in the future.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, but I do.”
The challenge in his voice—in his eyes—is unmistakable.
His maegic sings even more strongly through me as he drops his guards, releasing his steely grip on the bond that is stretched taut between us.
The slack rushes in, swirling through me, uprooting my control.
I try to push it back, but it’s impossible.
Like trying to scoop water from a flooding boat with your hands alone.
I am sinking.
“You want me out? Prove it. Push back.”
“GET OUT!” I shriek down the bond, finding my inner voice for the first time.
It is surreal, but somehow deeply significant, to speak thus.
Like a hushed conversation that happens under covers in the middle of the night.
Something halfway between dreaming and daylight.
Even screaming cannot dispel the intimacy of it. “GET. OUT. OF. MY. HEAD.”
“But I’m not just in your head, skylark,” Soren whispers back, a taunting rumble that shakes me from the inside out. “I’m under your skin. Admit it.”
Operating on pure fury, I throw up a fresh mental air shield, the strongest I’ve ever conjured, and shove with all my might. I am determined to drive him out of my thoughts, to sever the connection he’s forced. To prove him wrong at any cost.
Pain vaults through me, battering my temples, but I keep pushing, pushing, pushing, just as he did with the tsunami, until I feel the water recede. Until I am alone again in my head.
For a moment, I actually think it’s worked.
I think I’ve succeeded. I pant, spent by the immense effort, but proud of myself nonetheless.
Until I see the look on Soren’s face as he leans deeper into the wall, fully dwarfing me with his frame.
A familiar predatory glint creeps into his eyes.
There is a flash of silver in the blue, like the whitecap of a wave.
Then I feel it.
Feel him.
His mind, pressing against the perimeter of mine. Soft at first—a caress, testing my newfound fortifications. The faintest brush. And then, with a swiftness that makes my whole body spasm, he tears through my mental barricade like it is made of paper.
The mark on my chest burns, a cold flame, as he invades, engulfing me where I stand.
The calm waters of my mind’s eye, where my power is centralized, flood with him instead of me, his maegic instead of mine.
Physically, I am still breathing, yet I feel like I’m drowning, like the oxygen inside my lungs has been swapped out for ocean.
He swamps me with a laughable lack of effort.
Not that I am laughing. A scream builds in my throat as all that is Soren sweeps around my head, overturning memories, unearthing secrets.
It is not like the first time we channeled.
This is not a bolstering gift of strength, a buttress to my inherent limitations.
This is an invasion. A hijacking. A full-scale assault of the mind, the maegic, the soul.
There is no possibility of resistance. No chance of fighting back.
I stand there, flayed open to him, the depths of my mind painfully accessible.
For some reason, he does not dive deep. He stays on the surface, floating high above the recesses that house the darkest parts of me.
I wait for the humiliation, for the violation that will surely come.
It does not come.
Staring into my eyes, he lets me drown in him for three endless seconds.
A tiny eternity in which I do not draw breath, in which my very heart ceases to beat.
Long enough to let me know, if he wanted to, he could take everything from me without batting an eyelash.
And then, just as quickly as he pushed in, he extracts himself.
His water recedes and my mind is my own once more. My maegic is my own.
Yet in the shuddering, knee-shaking aftermath, I know nothing is my own. Not really. In the space of a heartbeat, he has effectively proved that everything I hold dear, every private memory and close-guarded confidence, is his whenever he chooses to reach out and snatch it away.
Pushing off the wall, I plant my hands against his bare chest and shove him back with all my might. He barely budges. But his hands drop to his sides, so he is no longer touching me.
“If you ever do that again,” I hiss, voice breaking with rage, “I will kill you.”
A humorless smile twists his mouth. “You are welcome to try. Many have before. None have yet succeeded. Not even me.”
Some of my anger slips a notch at that admission. I refocus, intensifying my glare. “Are you determined to make me hate you?”
His eyes go carefully blank. “You may hate me. But the truth is, you need me. That may piss you off, but it doesn’t change the facts.
A war is coming. It has been brewing a long time, and when it finally reaches us, you must be ready.
Body, mind, maegic.” He pauses to expel a breath.
“I am not Pendefyre. I’m not going to coddle you or keep you behind glass like some dainty fucking butterfly.
You are a Remnant. It’s time someone reminded you of that.
And since I’m the only one capable of it—or because the gods have a twisted sense of humor—that unfortunate task appears to be mine. ”
I say nothing. I cannot. My words are caught in my throat, as conflicted as my emotions.
With another harsh exhale, Soren turns and walks away.
I watch him go, my spine still pressed tight to the wall, each breath in my lungs sharp as shattered glass.
When he reaches the archway that leads out onto the dark terrace, he pauses with his back to me.
A towering silhouette, half painted in candlelight.
His voice is barely a whisper, but I flinch as though he’s shouted.
“The next time you ask me to take you back to Caeldera, be certain you truly want to go. Because I will comply.” There is a brief pause.
Even from this distance, I can see the tension rippling through his shoulders, the tight furl of his fists at his sides.
“I cannot be the only one fighting for you to embrace your potential. Not anymore.”
My mouth opens to tell him to take me back now, this instant. But no words come out. Not even as he steps over the threshold. His voice carries to me one last time as he vanishes from sight, a low purr in the night air.
“Our choices are all we have in this life, Rhya. No one else can make them for us. So ask yourself what you want. Not Pendefyre, not me, not another living soul in Anwyvn. You.”