Page 69 of Captured in Love
“Aah!” I scream, even though there’s no telling whether it’s just in my mind.
I react instinctively, throwing up walls to protect myself, but the woman has a strong grasp on me, and her mind israging. All at once, I’m hit with a wall of pain so strong, I retch from the intensity. She’s hurting, tortured, unable to stop the agony from radiating through her body.
But it’s not physical pain she’s feeling.
It’s the loss of her partner, her husband, the love of her life.
Images flash through me at the speed she’s replaying them in her own mind, the boat, the sea, the passageway, the cavern, the portal—she made a magical tunnel to pass through the fire spell—and finally the volcano crater. They’d thought they had everything in hand, and then he kissed her for good luck and climbed down and never came back again. Sucked into the pool of molten rock, gone. Gone, gone, gone. Forever.
Her mind contracts over that image, and a fresh wave of pain rolls through her, through me.
Then it ends abruptly, and the cool interior of the padded room replaces the horror of her mind.
“Nora!”
Levi and Raphaël hover over me, and I realize I’m slumped on the floor beside the bed. My cheeks are wet with tears, and my throat hurts as though I’ve been screaming. Something stings my palm, and I look down to find angry little half-moon marks in my wrist. They don’t make sense.
Not until Levi says, “We had to pry her hand away from you. She wouldn’t let you go.”
The woman must have clamped down on the only living thing who could share her pain. Me.
“Are you okay?” Raphaël asks, his voice low but urgent. “What did she do to you?”
I slowly shake my head. “Nothing. I just saw into her mind.”
The men exchange a horrified look. Finally, Raphaël scoops me up and places me gently on the beanbag.
I lean my elbows on my knees and dig my fingers into my hair. “Fucking assholes.”
Levi leans on the wall next to me. “What happened?”
I tell them as much as I know, piecing together the broken images I glimpsed in the woman’s mind. “She’s grieving. Her husband is dead, and the way he went was so traumatic, her mind shut down.”
“Can you help her? Ease her pain like you did with Isak?” Raphaël asks, his hands at his hips.
I wince. “I could. But her pain’s not physical. Apart from the scratches on her arms, she’s healthy.” I chew on the inside of my cheek, then shake my head. “Taking the pain she’s feeling at the loss of her husband would mean stealing her grief. It’s something she has to work through herself.”
“Surely she’d be better off—” Raphaël starts to say.
But I jump in. “No. Grief doesn’t work like that. When Mom died, I would have given a lot to lessen the pain of losing her, but that pain also meant something. I wouldn’t want to lose someone I love andnotfeel anything.”
He opens his mouth as if to argue, then closes it again. I don’t know how to explain it better, I just know that stealing these feelings from the woman would be a gross and horrible violation of her mind. She’d just lost herhusband. Her partner for life. Of course she’s in pain.
That doesn’t mean we can’t help her.
“I’m going to—”
A phone rings. I jump, then zero in on Levi, who cringes and pulls it from his pocket. The padded walls mute the sound in a strange way, and I swallow, popping my ears.
Levi looks down at his phone and goes pale. “I need to take this.”
“Okay, but can it wait?” I motion at the woman.
He ducks his head and slips out of the room without an explanation.
I stare after him, then turn to Raphaël, my eyebrows raised. “What was that?”
He shrugs but doesn’t exactly meet my gaze.
