Page 249 of Seer Prophet

As I did, I released the stranglehold I’d maintained over me and Revik’s light.

Chapter45

Ripped Apart

Ifelt the difference as soon as I lowered the wall around ouraleimi.

I hadn’t fully realized just how much I’d been blocking that intensity of light between us.

Or trying to manage it, I guess.

My attempts to control it had increased as the pull worsened.

Within seconds of my letting go, pain swam liquidly through my light. It hit into me with an intensity that made me gasp, made my stomach clench. I gripped Revik’s fingers where they wrapped around mine, and he gripped me back.

Neither thing lessened the pain in my chest.

I felt him fighting not to block it, too.

As both of us strugglednotto control it,notto hide it, I felt it bleed through our lights like liquid fire. Both of us clenched and unclenched those blocks as it did, never holding any one of them for long, or consistently––or at the same time.

The inconsistency alone was enough to open the floodgates.

All of that happened before I’d thought to actively focus on any of it.

The pain keened higher.

In seconds, it was bad enough that I found it difficult to think.

I fought to breathe, to remain silent, but I couldn’t regain control over my light. Once I tried to open to that pain instead of control it, emotions started to hit into me, too.

Those emotions went towards Revik first.

Protection. Fear. A numbing possessiveness, wound into a desire that tried to take over my mind, even as it amplified the rest of it.

My thoughts kept returning perversely to how he’d looked in London, right after he’d escaped from Terian. I remembered how thin he’d been, how quiet. I remembered the cuts, the burns, the bruises and scars he tried to hide under the long-sleeved shirt and collar.

He’d been afraid of me that day.

I hadn’t known that at the time.

I’d been too swallowed by my own fears and grief and separation to see his clearly, but I could see it now. He’d been so quiet––quiet even for him, although he’d managed to hide the thousand-yard stare better than Jon or Cass.

Jon and Cass, who’d escaped that hell with him.

I felt Revik’s light react next to me.

I felt glimmers of San Francisco in him, around finding me half-dead from the wires, just before he let out a strained breath. The breath bordered on a gasp, even as his grip tightened painfully in mine.

He released my hand seconds later, only to wrap his fingers and palm around my thigh. He yanked me closer to him, and I felt panic in his light. That panic resonated with mine, but instead of reassuring me, it made that danger feel all the more real.

He never felt safe to me, not since London.

I would never feel safe to him after what Cass had done.

Not after Terian stole me out of that cabin.

I never felt safe to him.

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