Chapter 27
Time slowed.
Vega felt like she was watching Bridger’s sleeves roll in slow motion, every flex of his hand and bulge of his forearm catching her eye.
“Do you trust me?” Bridger’s voice asked… but it wasn’t Bridger asking out loud, because he was standing five feet away looking like he was morphing back into the man she’d promised to kill.
Into the man with a secret.
Into the man with a deal.
His words caressed her brain like a feather. Like a whisper across her lips, she could feel his thoughts.
It was a feeling she’d felt a few times before but never had the whisper been so clear.
“In order for us to get home, she had to break her curse.” He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it in just the right way, a small strand falling out of place and curling across his forehead.
“Trust me,” Bridger said again, this time making eye contact with her when his words tickled her mind again.
She saw it in his eyes this time, the scrunch of his eyebrows and the way he bit the inside of his lip. But the moment was gone, his arms crossing over his chest.
Closing himself off.
So much power sizzled in her body, so much more than she’d ever felt, but she couldn't concentrate on it, couldn’t allow herself to feel the shiver of something new.
Something she’d been willing to trade her life for.
The portal had felt like a dream, and she almost told herself it was until…
A flutter of something inside her mind threatened to catch her attention, but it got lost, because Bridger took up too much space as he stepped away from Vega, settling in beside Marlena. “Vega, I promise—”
Her sister smirked, dragging her eyes up Vega’s body, unknowingly interrupting Bridger. “You can break your curse, but you can’t figure out how to break your connection to a man who’s so desperate to rid himself of you that he’d—”
“Tone down the dramatics.” Bridger sighed.
Vega stared at the side of his head, waiting for him to look at her. Gods, I’d been so stupid.
“I wasn’t going to be able to stop the curse from breaking.
She’d already set it in motion the moment she landed back on Earth with her memories.
” He picked a broken leaf off the collar of his shirt.
The nonchalance of his demeanor felt like a slow, cold knife to the back.
“But that didn’t mean the trip had to be a total waste.
I thought I could take advantage to get information we might be able to use.
” Bridger stole a glance at Marlena. “I have so many ideas.”
His gaze finally found Vega’s. Her heart was at war with her brain, which was at war with her body.
The reality of what Bridger was saying hit Vega like a freight train, and when the first laugh bubbled from her throat, it took her by surprise. The laughing didn’t slow, it only grew as she began to pity her poor self.
“No way,” Vega mused, finally able to get her fit of giggles under control. “You really got me.”
It can't be true. It can’t be. Her own voice pleaded. That was my Bridger. He was my Bridger…
Marlena snickered behind closed lips. “You should know better than to let your heart get in the way during a war you should be using your brain for.”
Vega wiggled her fingers. The vibration of the air simply existing around her was almost overwhelming. The flap of Khort’s wing beats disrupted the flow of wind enough to alert Vega of his approach.
Bridger sensed him too. She could see it in the way his head ticked to the side.
But Vega could feel the power of everything. From the hum of Tolevarre through her boots, to the clouds in the sky, back down to Marlena… who Vega felt magnetized to.
Vega closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
When she focused on Khort, she saw a long hallway, and when she followed it, she could dip inside his head and see from his point of view, pretending she was the dragon soaring through the sky.
In the middle of her mind was a door, open wide, ready for her to stick her head through and peek inside.
Vega knew Arlet was near—she could feel her too, but if she tried to dip inside her head, she saw nothing but open sky.
She could feel Bridger’s breaths, count the seconds before his thoughts turned to words. “And here comes the dragon.”
The ground rumbled with Khort’s landing. His roar shook Vega’s core, reminding her to open her eyes.
In the distance, coming out from behind crumbling cottages and overgrown yards, rebel soldiers secured the street, surrounding the entire perimeter.
The cracks of Khort’s bones shifting to his human form had Vega turning at the exact moment he crashed into her, pulling her into a hug she hadn’t expected.
“You did it. Vega, you did it!” He placed an excited kiss on her temple as he let her go, their reunion lasting seconds before Khort’s attention pinned on Bridger.
Vega had fought to save Bridger, had bargained her life for his, and look what that had gotten her—another could-have-been broken heart.
Marlena’s snarl was one Vega wished she could frame on her wall.
Inside Vega was a hallway with two opposite ends. Her connection to Khort was on one side and Arlet on the other. In the middle was the circular room with the open door.
“Look at me, please,” Bridger’s voice pleaded, echoing through the door in her mind like he knew she was on the other side.
Her name spoken in Bridger’s smooth voice and deep tone made Vega want to rub up against him like a cat in heat.
How was she supposed to forget him this time? When he was inside her fucking head! Vega slammed the door to their connection without understanding how she’d done it.
How long had he known he could do that? How long had she ignored the signs?
A sense of dread washed over Vega, and it wasn’t the hallways or the door causing it. It was the gurgling pit of hunger she felt under her feet when she stood at the crossroads of her mind’s pathways.
Khort studied Vega in a way she’d never seen him do before.
The time for standing around was over. Maybe Khort saw that because his eyes turned to slits, letting Vega know he was ready.
“Bridger’s worth more alive,” Vega said, glaring at him with a fire she knew he could feel. “And as for Marlena, well, I have something special planned for her.”
Wind picked up, jostling the fallen leaves down the road.
“Do you think I’m going to let you go?” Marlena asked with a hateful chuckle.
“You, my dear sister, are a wanted woman. One I plan to make an example of.” Her green flames sparked to life, swirling through her fingertips as they rode the gusts of Marlena’s wind.
“We no longer play by your rules, Marlena,” Vega told her as Arlet came into view.
A giant brown dragon landed behind Vega and Khort, seemingly out of nowhere.
Arlet only let herself be seen when she was ready, even before her powers. She’d always been happy to blend into the background.
“You fucking piece of shit!” Arlet screamed, sliding down the dragon’s leg—What the fuck, by the way.
The dragon huffed a puff of steam, as if to say it was in on the fight too.
Arlet bounded towards Bridger, colliding with the shield he quietly slid around himself. “Arlet.” He droned, playing his part well. Too well.
Because it’s not an act.
Arlet was alive. Khort was alive. That was all that mattered. Only they mattered. Except the voice in the back of her head begged her to remember him.
“I held out hope for you.” The way Arlet said it made Vega’s chest hurt. She wasn’t the only one Bridger’s betrayals had hurt. “Tell her.” Arlet pointed at Vega. “Look her in the eyes and tell her what you’ve done. I’ve already heard it from Marlena. Don’t bother trying to lie anymore, Dimico.”
She’d heard it from Marlena when she’d been locked up. Vega went cold with worry. The ichor in Arlet’s veins helped her start to heal, but Vega knew the memories of what she’d gone through under Marlena’s imprisonment would haunt her forever.
Arlet’s words hadn’t seemed to affect Bridger at all.
“You want to hear it twice? Fine.” He turned to Marlena, who smiled at their not-so secret.
“I asked Marlena to let me go to Earth to retrieve you.” His body language was unreadable, and the look in his eyes as he stared at Vega was one of a cold and calculated killer.
The Bridger who’d been cracking open while on Earth hid behind the shell of a man Marlena hand crafted.
“To make you fall for me again in hopes I’d get you to feed me information about your curse, your years of research…
” The lifeless expression Bridger wore made Vega’s stomach sink long before his words did. “Your theories.”
He’s going to tell her about Romulus and everything we learned.
Marlena would be preening right now if she had feathers. “And what was in it for you? What did you want in return?”
Bridger’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, the clatter of him banging against their mental door almost too loud to ignore. “That we find a way to break my bond from them. I live. They die.”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She hadn’t felt stupid when he was between her—she stopped the thought before it crossed her mind, ignoring the taste of him still on her lips from the kiss he’d so desperately needed when they’d made it back to Tolevarre.
How could that have been fake?
Arlet and Khort flanked Vega, preparing for the fight inevitably to come.
“And it seems you did a rather fantastic job.” Marlena laughed, her flames striking out again. “I hope you at least got to have a little fun with her.” She winked, and then Vega felt the world shatter.
Lightning blasted from inside, grounding her to the world she belonged in—the only world she’d ever fight for again.
Her blue lightning crawled across the ground, creeping slowly to form a circle of protection on the ground around her. That’s new. “We don’t leave without Bridger.” If he fell back into Marlena’s hands, there’s no telling what she’d do to him.