Page 52 of The Fallen
“Something’s wrong,” Asenath breaths out, and I lift my head in confusion. He’s staring at Ben, crimson eyes narrowing as he tilts his head. There’s a tug on the binding, power reaching out toward the nearly naked man before us, but there’s no answering thrum of magic.
Ben blinks at us, eyes wide with a mix of terror and confusion. “Where am I?”
“Ben?” I reach out to my best friend, my lover, but he steps away from me, shaking his head. There’s a void in my chest where Ben’s connection once was, a yawning silence that shouldn’t be there. Ben is standing right here. Why can’t I feel him?
Ben shakes his head again, stumbling away from me, panic evident in his brown eyes. Does he have amnesia? Is he panicking and shutting down?
Asenath lets out a distressed sound. “That’s not Ben,” he says brokenly.
Oh God, if the person staring at me out of Ben’s eyes isn’t Ben, then where is he?
Not Ben turns and bolts, running back into the nave of the church and I take off after him. I only get a few steps into the nave when Asenath’s strong arms wrap around me and pull me to a stop. I fight against him, reaching out to Ben’s retreating form as he skirts past the woman’s corpse. Dodging the black miasma of magic lashing out of the now closing tear, he disappears through a doorway.
I don’t even realize I’m screaming until the tear closes and we are left in the echoing silence of the church. My cheeks are wet with tears and I don’t even know when I started crying.
“We’ll get him back, Issac. I give you my word that we will get Ben back,” Asenath whispers, holding me to his chest as I scream for Ben.
“What do you mean? How was that not Ben?”
“You felt the emptiness. The body is Ben’s but what resides inside is not. I don’t know how, but we will figure out what has happened to our Ben. He is not dead. Of that I am sure, but we will find him.”
I collapse to the floor, my legs no longer able to carry my weight as I throw my power out into that void again and again, but I feel nothing in return.
Ben is gone. And with him, so is part of my heart.
