Page 318 of Seer Prophet

I moved so fast, it sucked the breath from my lungs, hurting my back and neck from the displacement of the air even before I hit. Then the shield was around me, and I crashed into the first solid thing between Revik and where I’d started, which happened to be a crate a good fifteen feet off the ground.

Slamming into it, right into my back and neck, I let out a stunned gasp of air.

Even with the shield, it knocked the wind out of me completely.

Worse, I lost hold of the shield from the impact, and dropped like a stone. I landed, hard, on the cement floor, and cried out in pain.

Revik didn’t wait.

He threw his light at me again before I could recover?then he was trying to get at my bones, specifically my spine, my neck.

Realizing he was trying to snap one or both, I shoved out at him with my light, crying out in terror. That time, I hit at him harder, before I could wrap my mind around hurting him, or how much to hurt him, or whether I could even risk trying to knock him out, given how easy it would be to kill him that way, too.

I was holding back too much. I could feel it, but I didn’t know what to do.

I was going to get me and him and Lily killed.

At the thought, a scream built at my lips.

I slammed him into the bars for real, hard enough that I saw his eyes roll back in his head, right before he sank to his knees, falling to the floor.

“STOP!”

I shouted it at him, filling my words with light, dragging myself to my feet.

“STOP, REVIK! NOW!”

The light in my words buffeted his structure, hitting at him like liquid wind.

“REVIK! STOP THIS! IT’S YOUR WIFE! YOU NEED TO STOP!”

I held up a hand, my heart slamming in my chest from the effort of hitting him with so much, using my voice to channel the light I threw at him. I tried to reach him past the illusion I felt there, trying to penetrate the fog around the structures of hisaleimi, strangling his mind, erecting that wall between my light and his.

“REVIK!” I hit at the fogged wall harder. “REVIK! Snap out of it! Now! You’re going to kill both of us! You’re going to kill Lily!”

Still on his hands and knees, he slammed out at me again.

I fought to meet him in the space.

I blocked part of the hit, lessening the force, but he managed to slide around my light before I could push him back for real. Once free of our locked lights, he threw me back against the bars of the opposite wall, hard enough that I let out a groan, falling to my knees, just like he’d done.

I kept my head on straight enough that I didn’t let go of my light, though?and when he met me in the space, I threw up another arc of current, fighting to keep him from getting close enough to kill me.

Blood flowed from my head, making me blink, dripping down my neck.

The distraction of it getting in my eyes bothered me the most.

I couldn’t afford to be distracted for even a millisecond.

Even so, I fought with a wave of dizziness by the time he finally backed off. He didn’t give me long to recover. I’d barely regained my hold on those structures in myaleimibefore we were struggling in the space again, each trying to knock the other unconscious.

The difference was, I knew he’d kill me once he’d done it.

Worse, I could already feel which way this was going.

I felt it even after I hit out at him again, knocking him back into the steel bars.

He was gaining on me.

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