Page 119 of Only Cold Depths
“Vesper! Behind you!” Kyrion yelled again.
He rushed forward, putting himself between me and a mercenary, even as I turned to deal with the threat—
Pew!
The merc fired his blaster, and Kyrion barely raised his sword in time to deflect the bolt at another merc, who screamed and fell to the ground. I ran over to help Kyrion, but a merc took a swing at me, making me scuttle back.
The fight only got worse from there.
Every time I tried to reach Kyrion, an enemy got in my way, and every time he tried to reach me, Kyrion opened himself up to more blaster fire. A merc managed to punch me in the stomach before I swiped my sword across his chest, while another one tripped me and sent me staggering into a stalagmite jutting up from the cavern floor.
Not only did the pain of my own wounds pound through my body, but the echoes of all the hard blows Kyrion was taking also rippled through the bond, and I felt as though I was getting attacked and hit from multiple sides at once. A frustrated growl tumbled from my lips, but the sound was lost in the screams, shrieks, and continued blaster fire.
It was the same problem we’d had when we fought the Hammers in the antiques emporium a few days ago. Kyrion was trying to protect me at the expense of protecting himself, and I wasn’t trusting my own skills enough to be as decisive as needed. Only this time, we were surrounded by enemies who wanted to kill us, and if we didn’t figure this out, we would both die.
Kyrion glanced at me, worry creasing his face, and the sticky cobweb of him pulsed with the same stomach-churning emotion. He could feel it too. We were once again out of sync, and I had no idea how to fix it—
Wait. Maybethatwas the problem. Maybe my trying to fix things the way I always did and Kyrion trying to protect me the way he always didwasthe problem. Maybe we were both holding on too tight when what we should be doing was just . . .letting go.
I’d once told Kyrion a truebond was about trust. I just hadn’t realized that trusting inmyselfwas part of the process.
I wasn’t the awesome fighter Kyrion was. Oh, I could hold my own against most people, but I would never cut through enemies like they were made of plastipaper the way he did. And for the first time, I realized that was okay. I wasn’t a broken brewmaker or a faulty cannon or something else that needed to be fixed. Not being on Kyrion’s level as a warrior didn’t make me a weak link, as Esmina had claimed.
It just made me, well,me.
I looked at Kyrion, opening myself up to him through the bond, letting him feel the newfound confidence I had in myself, and him too, and especially the two of us together.
Even when we were apart.
Kyrion stared at me, and an answering pulse rippled through the bond. Cool, calm acceptance flooded my body, along with a rush of softer, warmer emotions that brought tears to my eyes.
Kyrion and I stared at each other a heartbeat longer, then whirled around in opposite directions, focusing on the enemies in front of us instead of the bond at our backs.
My world narrowed to ducking blaster fire and cutting down one mercenary after another. Instead of trying to reach Kyrion, I held my ground, protecting my own little patch of space, even as I searched for more enemies to fight. A shadow moved out of the corner of my eye, and I whirled in that direction.
A merc was running toward me, a shock baton clutched in his hand, white-hot electricity crackling on the end—
Pew! Pew! Pew!
Three blaster bolts punched into the merc’s back, and he tumbled to the ground. My head snapped up, and I spotted Asterin on the second-story balcony, coolly spinning around and shooting another merc who was charging at Zane down on this level.
Pew!
Asterin dropped that merc as well. Zane gave her a showy little bow, then rushed forward to fight another enemy. Asterin rolled her eyes and did the same thing on the second level.
I kept hacking and slashing my way through one enemy after another. I didn’t see Nerezza anywhere, but Esmina and Pollux were still in the thick of the fight. I sliced my sword across the chest of another mercenary and headed in their direction.
“Now, Pollux!” Esmina yelled, sidestepping another round of blaster fire. “Now!”
With a loud, bellowing roar, Pollux leaped into the air, using his telekinesis to propel himself at least twenty feet off the ground, close enough that his blond hair brushed the bottoms of some stalactites jutting down from the ceiling.
Just as quickly, Pollux started to drop, and psion power erupted in his hammers, the lunarium heads blazing a bright neon green. The hammers whistled downward in vicious arcs toward the crater created by the cannon explosion, and I realized what he was going to do.
“Brace! Brace! Brace!” I screamed, but my warning came too late.
BOOM!
Pollux slammed his hammers into the ground. Thick, wide cracks zipped through the stone, and a concussive shock wave ripped through the cavern. The force was much, much stronger than the explosion caused by my booby-trapped cannon, and it knocked me off my feet.
