Page 57 of Legendary

I gave her a look of confusion. “Spoken? I do have to speak to her to get shit done Natalia, of course I’ve spoken to her.”

Natalia tucked one of her tendrils of hair behind her ear, the earrings she had on had various colored gemstones in them. “You and I both know that’s not what I mean.”

I let out a breath, a little annoyed that she seemed more intuitive about whatever this was between me and Dani than I did. “No, not really. I mean there’s been a lot going on and I just don’t want to say something wrong that’s going to make it worse. I don’t want to have the same conversation with her if I can just get the right thing out the first time.”

“Hmm…well if you want my advice, I think it’s okay to be nervous. When you do say what it is you want to say, do it with confidence so there won’t be a need to repeat yourself. There will be no skepticism.” She nodded as if that was an order. “Also, maybe, if you really want insight, you should speak with the one person who knows her better than all of you.”

I let my eyes close at the idea of having to express my thoughts and whatever feelings I had to the person she was talking about. I felt Natalia grab my face and my eyes popped open. “Are you keeping your wits down there?”

“Trying.” And Iwastrying. Honestly, I was. It was hard when there was nothing but deep, haunted energy. The kind of energy that fed off of whatever I kept feeling, all the things I didn’t want to talk about. Purgatory just made the attacks I’d been having more suffocating than when I had them at home. The visuals were vibrant and the way I couldn’t breathe was even thicker and heavier against my chest.

She looked into my eyes, moving from one to the other. Back and forth as if she would be able to see everything I’d felt. “That’s all we can do, I presume. Make sure she’s doing the same. Having Lilith’s voice in my head wouldn’t do me any favors if I was her. Try to be a better voice for her to hear.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” I knew I would do anything I could for her.

Natalia wrinkled her nose up and smiled. Before I could say anything else, a deafening cry rang out, practically vibrating the scene around me. It was so loud and shrill it felt like my ears were bleeding. I pressed my hands to the sides of my head and started to back away from the High Priestess. Her voice was faint when she cried out for me.

“Nicholas, are you alright? Nicholas.”

I couldn’t answer her. This felt just like all those other times before. My chest started to get heavy, my palms were sweaty. The shrill sound came again and nearly brought me to my knees, but I caught myself when I placed my hands on my thighs. This felt like before but different, like something was trying to dig inside my brain, scratching and pulling. It burned with how much it wanted inside my head. It pulled up Jonah’s face and flashes of my sword moving left and right, slicing through the bodies of all those people I knew. I wanted to scream from the harrowing pain that I was enduring but Ibit down on my tongue, willing it to stop, justpleasestop.

I was usually asleep when this started to happen, but now I was fully awake. Well, I was awake in a way. I wasn’t trying to numb the pain with sleep or push away any thoughts right now. I came here for a reason, and I was focused on just that. I didn’t know where this was coming from, why I felt this overwhelming darkness flood into my veins as if it liked what I was seeing in my darkest moments. I finally fell to the ground and clenched my teeth together as the dark feeling compressed on my chest.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw Natalia kneel down. She grabbed my face in her hand and jerked my head to look at her. “Nicholas, look at me.” I didn’t realize I had my eyes closed, until I went to do the very thing she was asking. “Look at me.”

“Fuck, make it stop.” I pressed one of my hands to my head, pulling at my hair.

“I don’t know what’s doing this, but you need to leave. You need to wake up.”

“Ugh, fuck, I don’t know how,” I grunted out through clenched teeth.

Natalia squeezed my face, giving me a stern look. She wasn’t afraid to be near me, yet I could see she was a little out of her realm. “Think about where you need to go back to. Focus or whatever it is will tear you apart.”

I gave her a helpless nod as I closed my eyes again. I dragged a shaky hand up my chest and wrapped my fingers around my portal key. I thought about where I needed to be, who I needed to bewith. And that was all it took. One tiny thought of her face, one burning need to be back with her and get through this assault on my very being and everything was quieted. I felt a small whoosh, as if I was being transported somewhere, but my head and chest felt lighter. I felt someone shaking me and my prior headache started to creep back.

“Nick! Nick!” I blinked up to a very nervous, very frantic Reese above me. His blonde hair fell around his face as he looked down at me. He gripped my shoulders so tight, I felt like his fingertips would leave an imprint.

“What! I’m back,” I assured him, reaching up and prying his hands off me. I looked around for a second to make sure my words rang true. Elise was perched on the end of the bed and Dani had her legs bent underneath her as she sat next to me on my right. She had her bottom lip pulled into her mouth in a nervous way, as if she was concerned.

“The fuck happened?” I asked, rubbing my forehead.

“Well, you were fine and then you weren’t,” Elise explained, vaguely.

Reese rolled his eyes. “You were good and then you just started flinching a bit, then that became some type of convulsing. We couldn’t wake you up.”

It seemed like they got a lesser version of what I got in my dream-like state with Natalia. “Yeah, I don’t know what happened.”

“Your hands started glowing,” Dani said, almost in a whisper.

I instantly brought my hands up to my face, but they looked like they also had.

“It stopped when you woke up. I thought you were about to light up this whole place for a minute. That's probably the most aggressive I’ve seen your angelic light man,” Reese described, sitting at the edge of the bed next to my legs.

“Yeah, sorry,” I apologized, still staring at my hands. Everything felt so real and so close during my time with Natalia. That attack felt so personal, as if it only wanted me, was feeding off of me.

“What happened to you in there?” Reese questioned, the concern for me laced in his tone.

I opened my mouth but closed it. I didn’t know how to explain it to any of them. Maybe Purgatory didn’t like me using its space as a means for communication, or maybe it was something else entirely. I gave the only honest answer I had.

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