Page 54 of Memories Like Fangs
After a few moments of listening to their magic, Journee said hoarsely, “The pain isn’t just in her soul anymore. It’s imprinted there. It’s like an echo chamber, looping constantly without any means to pause or stop. We have to restart her and break the echo.”
Both Journee and Isidora pressed their palms against my chest. At first, it felt like nothing really, more like they were placing their hands on my chest out of reassuranceor something. Their touch was comforting, warm, and compassionate. Then, they applied more pressure.
That was when my entire world tilted on its axis.
“Restart her? How? What does that?—?”
My screams interrupted Nat’s questioning.
My heart seized within my chest along with my breathing. My back arched further off the ground. I couldn’t scream or speak. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but lie here. I wanted to saysomething. I wanted to scream that Byrd was still in pain, that I could feel her bleeding out in some dark place, that she was dying and it was leaking into me. I wanted to cry out that the pain wasn’t mine, but it was ruining me anyway. Instead, white light burst across my vision. Pure, raw electricity jolted me, but it was neither warm nor healing. Still, it did push aside everything else for just the briefest moment.
Then, Isidora and Journee released their magic.
And, the pain all flooded back.
The air was filled with my screams.
“Don’t you dare fucking die on us now, Quinn. Don’t you dare die onher,” Journee hissed, their voice crackling with power and fury.
“Excuse me?!Die?! That’s on the table?!” Nat questioned.
“How can she die from this? From screaming to death?” Cody asked.
“More like have a heart attack from the stress and pain she thinks she’s experiencing.”
“WHAT?!” Cole, Cody, and Nat exclaimed all at once.
“Again,” Izzy gritted through her teeth.
The second pulse ripped through me even harder than the first. This time, itburned,igniting hotter and fiercer than the agony already running through me. My chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself. It clawed through my ribs and made each breath feel like it was shredding my lungs. My legs convulsed.My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might break. Worse of all, I felt Izzy’s and Journee’s power zap its way through my and Byrd’s bond. The connection shuddered. This time, not only did it help ignore the agony, but it sliced through me like a lightning bolt, offering a moment more of clarity than before. Yet, when the pain resurfaced, it was stronger than before. It was far more overwhelming and all-consuming. It gripped me tightly, but its embrace was almost sweet. There was something enticing about how soft it was now, its burn wasn’t as stabbing and its pain wasn’t as cruel. I felt like I was slipping under again, pulled back into that endless place where Byrd’s pain lived, screamed, and begged me to hold onto it.
This is your bond now.
This is all you’ll feel of her now.
It’s probably the closest you’ll come to Byrd now.
The sooner you accept it?—
“Come back to us, Huntress,” Izzy whispered as if reading my thoughts. “What you feel isn’t Byrd. It is her pain from the last moment you were with her, but not what she feels right now. There’s nothing on the other side of your bond with her. You are blocked, so you don’t feel her. Focus on that. Focus and feel that there’s nothing on the other side of your bond. Come back to us.”
Focus and feel.
I wanted to argue with her, to fight and say how wrong she was. Of course, what I was feeling was Byrd. It had to be. This pain was exactly what she was feeling in the moment before I returned to my body. Ithadto be real. Itfeltso real. How could it be otherwise? I closed my eyes, and I followed the thread of the bond as she suggested.
It was slack and cold.
It was also empty on the other side.
There was no Byrd there.
It was just like before with Lilah blocking us.
The third time Izzy and Journee did their compressions it slammed into me like a jolt straight through my heart and into my soul.
I gasped—a heart-wrenching, broken sound that felt more like a sob than anything. Air poured into my lungs. My vision exploded with stars, but it cleared to allow me to see. My body convulsed once more. Twice. Then, stilled. Every nerve ending within me was hollering. Every breath scraped like broken glass down my throat. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes without my permission, but they weren’t from emotion.
No, it was frompure overload.
