Chapter Thirty-Four
Yun
I was off the bed the moment I woke, stumbling and hitting the doorframe when I couldn’t see yet. It was like waking mid-fight, like coming to swinging.
My brain just told me over and over again that I needed to help my men, that I had to lay eyes on them. I tripped when I threw open the door, catching myself with one hand in the soil before I righted myself and looked around, searching.
There.
A little off from the cabin, I spotted Ingram. My legs nearly gave out again. His features were pinched in furious lines, but fuck it, he was alive. My eyes burned, but I forced myself forward, needing to speak to him, to see if the others had made it as well.
Through the trees, I was able to see each of them. They had no obvious injuries, all of them upright and alive.
“Stop.” Carter’s voice struck me like a physical blow, my feet skidding in the dirt as though I was powerless to disobey him. His order also made the others look my way, my relief mirrored in each of their expressions. “There’s a barrier,” Carter explained, tone gentle.
His words meant nothing for a long moment, since I couldn’t get past the fact they were alive. Anything else didn’t matter that much, didn’t factor into how I felt right now. Everything else could be dealt with later, since they were still breathing.
“I think she’s gonna cry,” Kenyon said, panic in his voice. “We can’t even hug her!”
That woke my brain, reminded me where we were, that I needed to be far smarter.
It also reminded me that they’d shown up for no good reason and risked themselves after all I’d done. Suddenly relief transformed into anger.
“You assholes!”
“And, she’s back,” Ingram said, smirking. “Our little spark there is mad.”
“What were you thinking? You could have died.”
“Oh, I don’t think you get to say that,” Carter responded, crossing his arms, some of that humor disappearing from his face.
It always made my chest tighten when I glimpsed his real feelings, when he didn’t hide.
“You didn’t just run out while we were sleeping—you knocked us out, first. Do you know how many people have managed to get one over on us?
” He paused, then let out a soft laugh. “Well, Corsa just did, but still, it’s a pretty small list of people.
You could have died.” His voice dropped lower, a pain I hated him feeling in that one word.
“I’m stuck here—you aren’t,” I pressed. “There wasn’t any good reason to have us both in danger like this.”
“And you really thought we were just going to walk away?” Ingram asked. “You figured we’d wake up and go, fuck it, guess we’ll head on home?”
“I was hoping that, yeah. I mean, like you said, I attacked you. You all haven’t been the type to let things like slide.
I thought you’d wake up and realize that it was the best option.
” I sighed, never having expected to have to explain myself.
“This was the right choice. This all started because of me, so it was stupid for us all to suffer because of it, for you to suffer for it.”
No one answered for a moment. It didn’t shock me that Carter was the one to bridge that gap, to speak up. “You know, sometimes you give Kenyon a run for his money when it comes to stupidity.”
“Hey, that’s too mean to her,” Kenyon said, then frowned as though he’d just realized that he’d insulted himself as well. “It’s mean to me, too, but I’m used to that.”
Carter didn’t seem to notice Kenyon’s objection. “This isn’t your fault, any more than Corsa is our fault. Even if it was your fault, who fucking cares? We’re here for you, Blizzard, and we’ve got your back no matter what.”
“For all the fucking good it did us,” Ingram muttered.
Carter cut him a sharp look, then glanced back my way. “We knew what we were getting into from the start, and there isn’t a fucking place you could run to where we wouldn’t follow.” He paused, then shrugged. “No matter how stalkerish that might come across.”
“I attacked you,” I repeated.
“That, Spark, was just a love bite. You should trust us a little fucking more than you do, because that was nothing. Oh, I’m willing to suffer way more than that.”
“I hope so, because your dumb ass came right to a place where way worse could happen. You knew how dangerous Corsa was and you still showed up here?”
Ingram walked forward, pausing just before where the barrier must have been. “Worth it. You can bitch and moan all you want, but we were gonna chase you no matter what, and if you didn’t know that, well, that’s on you.”
I wanted to argue with him, but what was the point? They were here, now, for better or worse.
And I was pretty sure it was all worse, given our current status.
“Where’s Corsa?” I asked, instead of going on with the scolding since they didn’t seem to give a damn about it anyway.
“He walked off a while ago,” Carter said. “He claimed he was going to hand us over to some enemy.”
I nodded, pushing my hair back from my face. “He said there was some other world.” I paused, then asked softly, “Is there any truth to that?”
“None I know of,” Shear said. “I’ve heard similar things before, but it’s always just a theory that usually is laughed out of any scholarly spaces.”
“He just seemed so sure. We didn’t know that a corrupted could be guided, we didn’t know that a guide could interact with a heart before. Who’s to say there isn’t more we don’t know?”
Carter reached forward, then flinched when he touched the barrier I still couldn’t see, yanking backward with a rough sound that came across like a growl.
He glared at the crystal nearest to us like he could explode the thing with that look alone, then paid attention to me again.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s mad, and he’s spent almost a decade here alone.
Who knows what that would do to a normal person, let alone someone who’s corrupted.
Do you have access to our packs? Because when we woke up in here, we were missing all our weapons. ”
“I can look around, but I didn’t see them in the cabin.”
“He probably got rid of it all.” He peered at the crystal, crouching to look at it more closely. “Shear, any idea about this?”
“I can feel energy from it, but it isn’t corrupted energy. It’s similar, but not quite the same.”
“There’s a bigger one in the cabin,” I said. “Corsa said it was for heat and cooking.”
“How big is it?” Carter asked.
I held my hand up, judging from memory where it reached, about mid-waist. “He said not touch it because it could burn.”
“I have another question,” Ingram piped up. “How to fuck did a mentalist manage to stop me mid-air like he did? That isn’t a power he should have. Have you ever seen anything like that from him?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t see him use any other powers before.”
“There was a pull from somewhere else,” Shear said, his voice distant, the way it always got when he considered something, when he tried to work something out.
“I felt it a moment before he knocked us all out, when he stopped Ingram. It was like he used a different power, one separate from his innate mentalist powers.”
“Could it have to do with these things?” Carter gestured at one of the crystals with his toe but ensured he stayed far enough away not to risk the shield.
“It’s similar,” Shear acknowledged. “I don’t know where these things came from—I’ve never seen them before, but the frequency of the power is related.
If I could properly examine the crystal, I might have a better idea, but for now all I can say for sure is that it’s power he isn’t supposed to wield. ”
Which again made me wonder if Corsa had been telling the truth about what happened, about the truth behind the dungeons. What else could explain all this? Things we’d never seen before, never heard of? The more I learned, the less I understood.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words thick and nearly choking me. “I’m sorry you’re here. You were supposed to just go live a good life. You were supposed to go and move on. You deserved that.”
Carter met my gaze, his expression surprisingly soft and sweet.
It was a side of him I rarely saw, one I valued each time he bared it to me.
“Don’t you get it, Yun? Ever since you walked into our office, since you lectured me and stood there in the middle of our space, there hasn’t been a life without you.
There’s nothing worth a damn to go back to, not unless you’re there.
So don’t be sorry, don’t you dare tell me that.
Instead? Let’s figure out how to win this thing so we can get back to that good life you’re talking about—together. ”
I didn’t know if I believed him, if I thought it possible, but I had to admit that I liked his hope, because that was exactly what I wanted, too.