There’s nothing that can be heard around me but the thudding of my feet against the ground and the harsh sounds of my breathing as the sobs rip out of my chest.
There are bodies littering the ground of the camp everywhere, all of them killed for the boost it gave me and mine. My bond keeps searching for more, anything that it can take to give more power to our Bonded as we run towards the danger that they’re in.
They’re still in pain, still facing that unknown person who just murdered Nox.
He can’t be dead.
There are dozens of faces in the piles of bodies that I recognize from my time here, so many people who had been a part of the horror that I’d experienced, but I don’t get to feel the vindication of wiping them from the planet.
No.
All I feel is my heart pounding in my chest and the cold sweat breaking out over my skin that has nothing to do with how fast my legs are moving.
He can’t be gone.
He can’t be, not when I’d done everything I could to protect all of my Bonded. Not when I’d finally accepted them all into my heart and decided to use my horrifying Gifts to keep them all safe, to make peace with the vicious god inside my mind if it meant they’d all survive the Resistance. Not when I have the ability to give them unlimited power. Not when I’ve done everything I can to find a bridge between Nox and I, and fine, I definitely haven’t done that yet, but I feel like I’d finally gotten a foundation put in place.
Something for us to build on.
I can feel Gryphon’s pain coming through the Bond still. The physical is still there, of course, but now all I can feel is the anguish in him, having just watched his best friend die, sacrificing himself to ensure his brother’s safety. Whoever is there causing them this pain… I’m going to deal with them myself. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if I have to stand in front of Silas Davies myself. I’m going to tear the other person to shreds with my bare fucking hands, if that’s what it takes.
The closer to the tents I get, the more that I feel my bond reaching out. The net gets wider as it looks for more souls to consume to do what we need to do, stretching and stretching and stretching. It desperately wants to sacrifice the TacTeam personnel, to take their souls and as much power as they have to win the fight, but I cannot let us become that monster either.
As I get closer to the tents, I finally see the first of North’s shadow creatures, the perimeter that he had set around them to keep them safe from anyone approaching. The creatures all ignore me entirely, not even glancing my way as I move around them towards my Bonded. I start to feel the pain then myself, the pain no longer being through that connection to my Bonded but something that is in my own head, my muscles contracting and coming alive as though I’m being hit with thousands of volts of electricity, my brain wanting to shut down but my bond pushing me forward.
No matter how I cast out my ability, I can’t feel who is in that room. I push and I push, but I can’t feel anything about the person. Nothing.
My eyes drop down onto the body of my Bonded, soulless and empty and dead.
I want to lie down next to him and die as well.
The pain stops. I feel it at the same time as I feel the Transporter pop back out of existence. Silas Davies, his Bonded, Lydia, and the person responsible for all of this leaving with him. There’s a wave of nausea that runs through my head, a moment of discomfort at suddenly no longer feeling the intense pain that had been radiating through me.
From the corner of my eye, I see North go down to his knees, catching himself on the dirt with both of his hands as he looks over at his brother’s body, tears streaming down his face. It takes four footsteps to reach them both, and then I find myself on my knees as well, staring down into Nox’s sightless eyes as he stares unknowingly back at his brother, the last sight he’d had before his soul was torn from him.
We need to move quickly, girl. We need to move quickly, or we’re going to lose him.
I choke on my sobs. My hands come out to hover over his chest where I desperately want to throw myself down, but he never wanted me to touch him and it feels like a violation to do it now, even in his passing.
You’re not listening to me. You need to listen. We need to move now.
My eyes screw shut tightly against my bond’s useless chatting in my head. Of course I’m not listening! My Bonded is dead!
Gryphon pulls himself over to Nox, kneeling at his other side and not hesitating as he pushes his hair back away from his face and neck, checking his pulse as though there is some form of hope that we’re not both staring at a corpse right now. I don’t feel the same way.
I can feel just how empty he is right now, the gaping void in his chest where his soul should be and the quiet in myself where his violent and vicious energy should be.
The vessel is broken, the bond is not.
I fall back onto my ass in the dirt, mud splashing up all over myself as the sobs cleave out of my body. He was more than a vessel! Don’t you dare call him that, he was more than just—
My bond cuts me off, I’m not calling the man a vessel. I’m calling his body that. Our Bonded— both of them— are right here. Fix the vessel, girl.
I press the heels of my palms over my eyes as I follow my bond down into the depths of my stomach, down into the deepest parts of myself, where it hides in the small secret places within me, where it sleeps, where it eats strong bonds, where it throws a tantrum and hides away when I do not follow its every little whim. It’s there that I find, as faint as butterfly wings against the wind, Nox’s soul.
I’ve never held a soul inside myself before that wasn’t there purely to be consumed by my bond, so, naturally, I panic.
Full-blown, sweating and shaking and heart-pounding panic.
How long can he stay inside us like this? How did you get him… here? Does he know that he’s here? What the hell is going on? I ramble, absolutely freaking the hell out, but my bond is nothing but sure and calm.
I can keep him in here for as long as we need, but you need to fix the vessel so it has somewhere to go.
That’s fine, I can totally fix the vessel. That’s kind of my jam, right?! I have fixed my Bonded a million and one times—this is a cakewalk.
Except the moment I attempt to fix him, it becomes clear that while my bond is sure that none of this damage is irreparable, my Gift is definitely not, and no matter how hard I push, I can’t get it to heal Nox.
I can feel my bond’s anger at me, and I snap, I know I need to do this. I am trying, but it’s not as easy as you seem to think it is!
It snaps back, You don’t really believe that we can bring him back, it’s stopping you from doing what’s required.
Well, of course I don’t think we can raise somebody from the dead!
Even the voice in my head is shrill. I can tell that my bond is frustrated at me, but it’s holding on so tightly to the soul inside me that it doesn’t have much choice but to let me panic about what is going on, to flounder and panic my way through this nightmare situation.
We need the Healer. Send the Transporter to get the Healer.
Okay but, again, easier said than done. For one, they’re gonna look at me like I’m fucking insane for wanting a Healer to heal a dead body. And for two, if I can’t heal Nox in the state that he’s in, what’s to say that Felix will be able to?
Would you stop with your useless human panicking and do as I say? Girl, I have been around this earth for more than a million years, you think I don’t know what to do when something like this happens?
It still feels as though it’s feeding me hope in a situation that cannot be anything but tragic, but finally I open my eyes and face Gryphon. “We need to take him back to Felix.”
The shocked and blank look on his face cracks a little at the sound of my voice, and I think I’m about to see two of my Bonded start crying. I can’t focus on anything except what is going on inside my body right now. I can’t lean into him to try to comfort either of us.
If Nox has a chance here, even the smallest of chances, I’m going to do whatever I have to do.
“Bonded, it’s too late for Felix.” The softness of Gryphon’s voice, the way he’s trying to be gentle with me, even now, hurts me.
I nod my head, because there is no arguing with that, not really. My voice cracks as I say, “I know it is; I’m not stupid. But we need to go to Felix now. Please just… listen to me.”
Gryphon looks up at North, but I can’t turn to look at him right now. It’s not that I’m angry that they didn’t listen to me when I’d begged them to turn back, even though they absolutely should have. They all tell me to trust my bond, and yet at such a crucial moment, none of them had trusted it. But it’s not about that.
No, if I look at North grieving his brother right now, the last of his family members left on this earth, there is no way that I’ll be able to keep myself together enough to give restoring Nox a proper go, so I keep my eyes away from him and focus on Gryphon, who is doing a little bit better at keeping himself together.
He looks at me very carefully and then glances around the area, so it has just occurred to him that we are still technically on enemy land, potentially surrounded by the enemy.
There’s footsteps behind me as Gabe and Atlas finally catch up with us, both of them asking a million questions over each other and themselves all at once.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Why weren’t you listening when Oli spoke? We’re supposed to listen to her!”
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Holy fuck, what the hell happened?”
North doesn’t react to them or say a word. He doesn’t move from where he is stuck still, and I turn the other way, making sure I don’t catch a glimpse of him as I meet Gabe’s eyes. “I need Kieran. I need you to get him and bring him here right now. I need him.”
Gabe’s eyes drift down to Nox and then back up to mine, pausing a little on the tears still streaming down my cheeks. “I’ll get him, Bonded. Give me one second.”
Then he’s off, moving through the inky blackness of North’s shadow creatures who are all just standing still, as though in a trance.
Atlas steps over to me, careful not to touch me or Nox as he kneels at my side. His eyes take everything in, none of his snark coming out about Nox, for once.
“What the fuck was that?”
Gryphon glances up at him with a glare. “You really think now’s the time for this?”
Atlas nods, not biting back at the vicious tone directed at him. “If it could come back and kill us all at any second? Yes, I do think it’s the time for it. It just wiped out a fucking Draven. It might’ve killed all three of you if Oli hadn’t been here feeding you power.”
The sound that tears out of my chest is inhuman, a wrenching and terrible thing, and the tears are still coming down my cheeks without me taking much notice of them. I try to focus on the soul inside myself and coax him into staying put until I can heal him.
I don’t know if he can hear me, but I try anyway.
Just a few minutes longer, and I’ll get you back. We can figure this all out. Just stay with me. I know you didn’t want to, but just stay with me, and we’ll figure this out.
He doesn’t answer me, of course. I don’t know if he can. I don’t even know if he can hear me or if I’m just talking to myself right now, but I try.
I try because I don’t want him to wait until next time to figure out how we can love each other. I want to figure it out in this lifetime. I want to know everything. I want to see everything and accept whatever it is that I need to accept. I want to learn how someone like Nox Draven can be loved and accepted, and then I want to spend the rest of my life doing it.
I want to learn whatever I need to, and I want to figure it out together. He might be the most arrogant, infuriating, manipulative, vicious man I have ever met, but I also know without a doubt that he’s mine. Whatever battle it is that he’s fighting within himself, my place is at his side to fight it with him. Someday, we will get to a place where he’ll accept that and he’ll accept me.
Maybe I’ll even get an apology out of him for the things that he did while dealing with everything he was going through.
“Holy fuck,” I hear Kieran hiss as he and Gabe approach us, and I glance up to see him staring at Nox’s empty eyes, still staring at his brother sightlessly.
All of North’s shadow creatures are still standing around us as if they’re waiting for my Bonded to come back from the ledge he’s currently on, the grief overwhelming him entirely. Every inch of my being aches to go to him.
But I can’t.
Gryphon stands up and walks over to North. I can hear him muttering to him, trying to break him out of the trance that he’s found himself in, but North doesn’t answer him.
I stay on my knees with Nox. I couldn’t move away from him even if I tried.
“I need you to take me to Felix,” I say to Kieran, and he glances down at me, shellshocked.
He’s covered in mud and blood from where he has been moving through the camps and transporting people out. There’s a weariness in him, a kind of defeated nature that comes with fighting a losing battle.
“Fallows… I don’t think there’s anything that Felix can do for him now,” he says in the most gentle tone, one that makes my chin wobble all over again even though the tears still haven’t stopped streaming down my face.
“Do it for me. Please,” I say, my voice cracking. He swallows roughly, heartbreak in his eyes for me as he nods.
He grabs Gabe as he walks over to me, holding an arm out for Gryphon and North to grab as he plants a hand on Nox’s chest.
I grab his wrist, the closest I’ve gotten to actually touching Nox at this point, and I stare down into his sightless eyes as we pop back out of existence.
I hold onto Nox’s soul with an unbreakable death grip.
