Chapter 12 #3
Her hand covered in rain-diluted blood, Presh reaches for the knife.
“No,” Bellamy snaps. “Zaya has to pull it.”
“I’m holding his threads,” I murmur. I’m not quite back in the moment, as if I’m hovering half in the aether alongside Reck.
“With your other hand, then, Conduit,” Bellamy snarls.
Right. A thick cuff of gold-and-brown topaz is now ringed around the hand and broken wrist that I don’t have pressed to Reck’s chest, like a brace. Muta.
With my wrist supported by a death god, I yank the knife that’s killing Reck free from his chest. The irony will seem more poignant when I’m back in my right mind, I’m sure. I keep my other hand, the one holding Reck’s and the cu-sith’s last threads of life force, pressed around the wound.
Rath takes the blade from me, careful not to touch it as he wraps it in some sort of cloth. Ripped clothing, maybe, from Reck’s transformation?
Bellamy quickly pours a third brew over the open wound in Reck’s chest. Infused with essence, some of it splashes over my fingers and both of Presh’s hands.
We wait.
That wound starts to knit together. Then Reck’s body arches off the ground.
A scream is trapped in his throat as he takes an obviously agonizing breath.
Energy flickers through the threads in my hold. I pour more of me, more of my core self into them, tightening that hold until I’m worried I might accidentally snip those threads instead.
“Presh …” I whisper.
“I see!” she cries, hands splayed across Reck’s chest, carefully aligned around the half-healed wound. “I can see now. The thread … just like with Bellamy …”
She slips into a focused, almost fugue-like state so suddenly that Bellamy lurches forward and grabs for her shoulder. “Not too much, remember. Not too much of yourself, Precious.”
A sweet smile ghosts over Presh’s face.
Energy shifts and twines over my hand. The thread of the cu-sith thickens. Reck opens his eyes, but it’s the red-hued gaze of the beast that seeks me out.
“I’ve got you.” I lean over him so he can see, see all of me. “I won’t let you go … I’ll never let you go. You’re mine. You’re mine, and I mean to keep you … whether you fucking want me to or not.”
The cu-sith laughs, the sound utterly malevolent even through human vocal cords.
“Zaya,” Presh gasps. “Oh … no … Zaya …”
The second thread is thinning in my hand.
“What’s happening? Zaya? I can’t … I can’t feel him … I can’t feel Reck …”
The vicious smile fades from Reck’s face as that red-hued gaze sweeps hungrily over me. I pump more and more of my energy into the thinning thread. The thread that connects to the soul of the man.
“I’m not letting you go,” I say again. But I can feel my own energy start to thin. It’s the power of the Conduit that I’m using to hold him in the now. My connection to the intersection point might sustain me, but I can’t seem to channel any more of it into Reck. “Stay with me.”
“Mate,” the cu-sith rasps through Reck’s mouth. More of that deadly energy threads through the word, the claim. He reaches up and cups my face.
I smile at him, shaking. The threads thin further, both of them as fine as cobweb now. That wound in my chest feels as if it’s bleeding out, bleeding out all over him.
“Please,” I beg. “Please. Stay with me.”
“My mate,” the cu-sith says again. “Always.”
Then his hand falls onto my lap. He closes his eyes, takes one last breath, and goes still.
“No!” Presh screams. Her energy churns unhelpfully under her hands.
Then the wisp of threads in my hand shift as the thicker of the two somehow twists around the thinner.
The cu-sith’s life force is twining around Reck’s?
I stare down dumbly, not at all certain what’s happening. I’m not manipulating —
“I’ve got him!” Presh cries beside me.
The last of the cu-sith’s essence sinks into the thread of energy connected to Reck’s soul, thickening it, stretching it. Now combined into one strand, it suddenly accepts all the energy Presh and I are trying to pour into it, sucking it down.
The universe stutters to a halt around me, stymied for the third time. Or the third time I’ve noticed, at least. As if waiting for something to shift … just as it had the moment before I first laid eyes on the cu-sith.
I feel the moment the cu-sith willingly gives up his immortal life for the man.
The universe shifts back into its perpetual motion.
Pure pain, utter grief racks through me, sobs tearing through from the very center of my soul. Rought lays a hand on my shoulder, and Rath presses a gentle hand to the back of my head. Both of my mates hold me in the now, even as a splintered part of me wants to follow the cu-sith into the After.
My soul-bound mate is dead. Truly gone.
“It’s okay,” Presh murmurs, trying to soothe me. “It’s okay, Zaya. You’re holding him. You’ve got Reck. I can see it, feel it.” She can’t sense the difference between man and beast.
Only a fucking grim reaper could stymie the universe for just long enough to fool death … only not for himself.
Branches sprout from the single thread in my hand. First two, then three, then too many to count.
Reck takes an easy, full breath. His eyes open, instantly latching to me. He frowns. “What the fuck have you done now, Zaya?”
I laugh at him. I laugh right in his face, as he had done as he lay dying. “Fuck you, Reck. You’re mine. Nothing and no one can take you from me. So fuck you for trying to run away like some fucking coward.”
He opens his mouth to blast vitriol back at me, but his eyes roll up in their sockets, and he passes out.
Utterly spent, and once again hollowed out by grief, I slump over his chest and fall into oblivion a moment later.