Chapter 21 #2
The only noise she’d made was the tsk of her tongue, followed by a disappointed shake of her head.
Then she left, leaving him in silence for another sixty days.
He was allowed to shower once every three days, but when he was escorted out by a guard—who he no longer fought, because what was the point?—not even they spoke to him. Even when it was someone who knew Bridger, who had trained beside him.
It was easy to see how manipulated they’d become, how afraid they were to step out of line.
They had no one to protect them from Marlena.
With his father gone, Tolevarre’s army was in limbo. The people of their world had never been in this kind of danger before.
And instead of helping, instead of protecting the people he was bound to by duty and bloodline, Bridger was locked away for one year, one month, three weeks, and six days with no end in sight.
No one is coming for you.
It got clearer every day.
Bridger had already eaten for the day, so no one else would be coming by. It would be like all the rest of the days.
Sometimes he found the energy to work out—not a real workout, but as close as he could get with the energy he had. He had to keep moving.
Other days he solved math problems in his head to keep his brain working.
A couple times, in his darkest moments, he even prayed for Death to take him.
Today? Well, today… he didn’t feel like doing anything.
The silence was heavy.
Scratch.
Another mark was added on the wall.
Scratch.
And then another.
Scratch.
Four more.
Scratch.
Seven more.
The sound of footsteps echoed down the hall on day 435. The click of heels announced her arrival before she appeared.
Marlena looked as beautifully lethal as she always did with her bright lips painted in a smile. “Hello, Bridger.”
The sound of her voice broke a violent need inside him. Words.
Do you know how fucking hard it is to go over a year without hearing a single voice outside your own?
Marlena laughed softly, stepping through the bars with her ability to travel, joining him inside the cell.
She must have registered the look on Bridger’s face, because he was now the mouse in whatever fucked-up game she wanted to play.
“Been kind of quiet in here, hasn’t it?” She knelt down to where he sat, matching his eye level.
The black halo she’d started wearing after her summoning glinted in the light filtering through the cell bars.
Bridger wanted to feel his power reach inside and obliterate her to pieces… but he couldn’t. His power was blocked by the mark on his forearm, leaving him hollow, and he couldn’t find it in himself to stand.
“I don’t have to show you how strong I am to hurt you.
You know. I know you know the power I have.
” Marlena reached out and ran her hand over his cheek.
“All I have to do is be the reminder you need.” She cupped his face.
“Vega will never be the girl you loved again. She’s too broken now, and it’s only going to get worse. ”
Bridger slapped her hand away, but Marlena didn’t budge, only brought it to her side. Even squatted down in six-inch heels, her presence still felt too big for the meager cell.
The look behind Marlena’s eyes was cold, but the fake veneer she molded to perfection could have passed for sad if Bridger didn’t know any better. “I don’t have to lay a hand on you. No.” She shook her head slowly, her ponytail swaying. “I’ve shown you what I can do to you. To everyone.”
“Shut up.” He hadn’t heard his own voice in weeks. Bridger hadn’t tried to talk in weeks. The sound was foreign to his ears.
Marlena inhaled. “Ah, he does remember how to speak.” Reaching out again, she brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “You’re losing yourself in here. You’re becoming a sad, pathetic waste of life. A waste of power. You’re exactly what your father said you’d be… a disappointment.”
Bridger reacted exactly like Marlena had wanted him to, pushing her out of his face before hopping to his feet. The quick change made his head rush, throwing him off balance.
He was wasting away in here. What good could he do from behind the bars of a prison cell?
Marlena staggered back and gained her composure in an instant.
“You’re holding on to a life that no longer exists for a girl who is destined to die.
Vega is already dead, and she has been since the day I cursed her.
” She sighed. “When are you going to see I’ll never let her live, Bridger?
I’ll let the curse kill her slowly. It will take her from you eventually.
In fact, you should be thanking me. At least you got more time than you would have if I’d killed her right away like our parents.
” The long off stare Marlena had gotten almost made Bridger take a step back.
“It’s torture for the rest of you too. It’s why I haven’t killed anyone off yet, because this is sweeter.
Watching you fight valiantly over the years to save Vega, knowing it’ll be for nothing.
” A single shrug of her shoulder showed how little she cared.
“You’re only making this harder on yourself, but I can help you.
I’m willing to help you.” She made it sound like she was about to offer him the deal of a lifetime.
“But if you don’t want my help, then I guess I can go ahead and kill Arlet and Khort.
I was only keeping them around for the fun of it. ”
His voice had always been deep, but now with the gravel of unspoken words lodged in his throat, it felt like a rumble from below. “You’ll never break me.”
“Oh yes, I will, but I also want you to have all the success and power you deserve. The army you deserve. Imagine what you could do, imagine who you could be, if it were all yours.”
“I don’t want your fucking power! I want to watch you burn!” Bridger’s rage made him see red, the room blurring at the edges.
Marlena materialized her way outside of his cell milliseconds before he charged. The bars shook under his grip—even with his powers cut off, this type of anger did something to him… made him someone else.
“You can want both, and one day you’ll see it the way I do. Power and wrath can be combined to make something so, so sweet.” She straightened the skirt of her long dress. “You can save them, Bridger.”
He trembled watching her retreat into the hall's shadows. “And all you have to do is get over a dead girl.” Marlena looked over her shoulder just before she couldn’t be seen anymore.
“She’s back, and I’ve met this new version of her.
” A chuckle echoed off the walls. “She’s so weak and pathetic she’s almost unrecognizable…
and she’ll continue to fall further and further away from who she once was the longer this draws out. ”
Bridger rattled the bars, screaming at Marlena.
Her question reached him after she was already gone. “How will she ever be able to love you when she finds out you’re the reason her very best friends are dead?”
Air. I need air.
The gasp rattled his entire chest, his eyes ripping open the moment he was released from the dream’s confinement and allowed to regain control of his body.
It took him longer than he’d like to remember exactly where he was, fighting against a type of fear he’d never experienced before.
The car slowed, and Vega’s eyes fixed on him in the mirror. They were wild with worry, the red brake lights illuminating a glow inside the backseat as the sun set behind the mountains in the distance.
Vega. I’m with Vega on Earth.
“Pull over,” he wheezed, unable to calm his breaths no matter how hard he tried.
“Bridger…” she started to protest.
He crawled to the side door. “Vega, pull the fuck over before I jump out.”
Marlena’s words, the feeling of her mental hold, the memories flooding his mind—it was all too much.
He started to struggle to take a breath, and the walls of the vehicle grew closer and closer.
By some stroke of luck, they were passing a sign that read Rest Area, and Vega pulled them into a discreet corner of a large parking lot.
Bridger didn’t let the car come to a complete stop before he stumbled out into the crisp air. The snow had stopped for now, but there was a fresh dusting coating the grass crunching under his boots.
The cold air filled his lungs but hadn’t begun to help calm his racing thoughts.
“Bridger.” Vega’s voice came from close behind him, startling him to spin around on the ready. She scanned him from the ground up as the internal warfare of Marlena’s torture overthrew his senses. “What did you dream of?” She asked the question gently, her tone bordering on nervous.
“I can’t…”
Vega’s softness turned to something Bridger couldn’t place right away, her body tensing. “Of course not. You expect me to open up about the fucked-up shit I’ve been through, but I don’t get the same in return.”
The car stayed running behind them, the lights reflecting off the snow-covered trees in the distance.
Bridger’s fists clenched at his side. “It’s not the same.”
Vega’s jaw dropped, and the look on her face was one Bridger had seen hundreds of times before—the one she got before a fight broke out and she was about to explode. If they were back in Tolevarre, sparks of her lightning would light up her fingertips.
“Oh, really?” Her head cocked to the side.
“Yes, really,” Bridger deadpanned, focusing on doing whatever he could to keep his mind from returning to the memory he’d been forced to relive.
“I’m trying to see how it’s fair that I’m expected to spill the darkest parts of myself on command when it’s what you need, but you, the one who betrayed me, gets to clam up whenever he wants? No.” Vega shook her head. “No. That’s not how this is going to go.”
His emotions took a one-eighty, melting from the fear of being trapped alone again inside a memory he could no longer escape, to white-hot anger. “When are you going to stop fucking reminding me of my wrongdoings, Vega?” He stalked towards her, but she didn’t back down—not this version of her.
It lit something in the pit of his stomach. Rage, he told himself as it warmed the rest of his body.
But it wasn’t that at all. It was need.
The ache to touch Vega was stronger than ever, his control slipping faster than he could rope it back in.
“Because I know what I’ve done wrong. I know the choices I’ve made.
When I close my fucking eyes, they’re there to haunt me.
The good, the bad, and the ugly. So excuse me for not wanting to relive them more than I already have to.
” He looked down, towering over her with only inches of space between their bodies.
Scoffing, Vega craned her neck, a sneer pulling her upper lip. “Welcome to the last fifty-five years of my life. If I don’t get to cherry-pick my memories, then neither do you.” She laughed, and it wasn’t the melody he’d heard earlier.
He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t find his way out of the sea of anger begging him to succumb to its fury.
He wasn’t but seconds from snapping.
“If you won’t tell me about your dreams, then tell me how you got Marlena to agree to making a new portal. What’s in it for her, Bridger? I know my sister well enough. She didn’t allow you to come here without something in return.”
His promise to Marlena rang in his mind, echoing beside the threats of his latest dream. Bridger closed his eyes, trying to shut everything out without the power of his shields. “Stop,” he pleaded, fighting to hold onto his last sliver of control.
“What did you tell her you’d do to me?” Vega continued to push.
“Vega, please.” He muttered, resorting to begging. Bridger’s forearms quivered from the tightly balled fists he had yet to loosen, his muscles straining.
“We’re allies, Bridger. Allies. That’s what you want right? You want to work together, to come back to where you were meant to be?” Well, this is how we do it. You learn to tell me the things I need to fucking hear. The things I need to trust you!”
Bridger’s eyes snapped open, and the anger he felt at himself, at Marlena, at Vega, all of it, exploded.
Stalking forward, Bridger locked his focus on Vega like prey, and she must have recognised the look, because for every step Bridger took forward, she took one backwards.
“You want to know what’s going on in my fucked-up head?
Huh? You want to know why I don’t want to tell you what I’m seeing? The promises I’ve made?”
A breath of air escaped Vega’s lips when her back collided with the car.
Bridger boxed her between his outstretched arms and instantly recognized the heavy lidded look she wore.
It was worse than the fear he’d finally expected to show.
Vega liked it.
Fuck. They were both so fucked.
The energy shifted between them, blending their anger with something neither of them could have prepared for.
Lust.
“Yes,” she said on a breath, the back of her head resting against the car’s window. The single word was filled with a desire Bridger felt too—no matter how much he told himself he shouldn’t, it sank deeper and deeper into his skin, lighting him on fire.
“It’s because you don’t want to know the things I’ve told Marlena I’ll do to you if I get my hands on you. The things I’ve done to keep the people we love alive, safe… I’ve done enough! I’ve hurt you enough!” He slammed both balled fists against the Escalade’s roof hard enough to leave a dent.
Vega didn’t flinch. She stood still as ice, not showing a single crack. Her lips parted like she was going to say something, but her tongue flicked out, wetting them instead.
Bridger fought to drag his gaze away from her mouth.
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” His voice was calmer when he spoke this time.
“I don’t want you to see me break over the fucking dreams that all seem to revolve around you.
Around us.” Bridger used his hands on the car as leverage, pushing off to put much needed space between them, but before he could run, Vega groaned a frustrated growl.
He felt the vibration in his chest before she spoke. “Fuck it.”
There was no stopping what happened next.