He would get in because, at base, my light didn’t want to shut him out.
“Revik,” I groaned. “Revik. Don’t do this, baby. Please. Please?”
He was using the bond.
Sex, the bond?us.
He was using us.
I couldn’t fight us. I never could.
“I love you,” I gasped.
He didn’t hear me?or if he did, this version of him didn’t care. It was just noise, more distraction, irrelevant. His light used everything that connected us to one another, every thread and memory, every resonance he’d painstakingly tended, even as Syrimne. Only now he was using it to try and kill me.
Feeling my walls sliding, losing ground, I fought harder, trying to force him out. I barely managed to slow him down.
“Revik… LILY! You’re going to kill Lily! OUR DAUGHTER!”
I slammed out at him again, hard enough to throw him backwards, into the cage.
I watched as he fell, then I shoved him away from me, sideways across the floor on his stomach. His fingers grew bloody, and his arm, but it seemed like bare seconds passed before he stopped his own momentum, gripping the cement with his fingers.
His long legs splayed where he sprawled between both sets of cages.
That time, his eyes flared nearly white, right before he cracked out with his light, hard enough to take my breath, even before it hit me.
The force ripped me off the bars, again making my feet leave the ground. The force of the hit sending me flying, weightless, too fast to construct a shield. I existed in that silence for a bare instant before slamming into a crate with my side and the small of my back.
The thing was heavy, but the force of the blow moved it, right before I crumpled at its base.
I hadn’t managed to shield the blow at all that time.
That time, all I could do was lie there for a few seconds, gasping.
Blood ran freely down my face when I raised my head.
I fought to blink through it, to focus my eyes. I focused my light, fighting to shield, but fear exploded over me when I realized I could already feel him inside myaleimi, winding through my bones and flesh.
He was going to kill me. He was going to kill me and Lily.
He was going to kill himself.
Even as I thought it, there was a dullTHUNK.
It came from somewhere behind me.
The sound was muted, but strangely loud behind my eyes, reverberating through me. I felt and heard it so deeply I flinched in reflex, ducking my head.. I was sure it was the end. I waited for something to hit me from behind, to cave in the back of my skull.
But whatever happened, it hadn’t happened to me.
Revik’s light retracted.
It happened fast. Fast enough to catch my breath, to force a moan from my lips.
That sparking, high-intensity flame evaporated from my skin andaleimilike a fire that’s been snuffed out from lack of air.
Still gasping, I slowly turned my head, looking over my own shoulder. I blinked through blood that now ran freely down my face, blinding me to most of the room.