Page 73 of Taming Chaos

Boom!

The muffled sound of an explosion ripped through their quarters, the shockwave sending them careening across the room. The floor shook. Torin covered her with as much of his body as possible, deflecting debris and shielding her against the impact as his back crashed into the wall.

Something had hit the room from below, sending an intense blast of pressure up through the floor and into the walls, shaking the whole fucking room.

Seph curled into a ball and went very, very still as the aftermath of the explosion swirled around them. Cushions, sheets, artifacts, tapestries… Torin batted them away as Seph swore vehemently in English. Torin’s knowledge of the language wasn’t good enough to understand the precise meaning of her words, but he got the gist. He held her tightly and kicked away from the wall, going as high as possible.

They touched the ceiling.

“What the fuck is happening?” Seph whispered, still curled against him.

“I think we’re under attack. We need to get out of here.”

Doomm. Doomm. Doomm. Something pounded the floor from below. It sounded like smaller explosions, or plasma fire, or something else… he couldn’t quite tell.

Someone wanted to break through from below.

It was a mighty coincidence that the explosions had happened just below their quarters. Torin didn’t believe in coincidences, so he vowed to get his charge out of here as quickly as possible.

“We have to go,” he growled, gently grasping her wrists. “I don’t think the gravity’s coming back any time soon, and I’m not going to wait around to find out what’s coming from down there. You need to hold on as tightly as possible and let me do all the maneuvering. We’re going to get out of here, Seph.”

Without hesitation she wrapped her arms around his torso. Fear radiated through the tension in her arms; it came through in her silence.

“Tighter,” he insisted, partly for safety reasons, and partly because she felt good. “Once I get going, we’ll move fast. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” she said, her voice full of quiet determination.

So composed. So different to how she’d sounded just moments ago. He couldn’t fathom what sort of battles she was waging with herself right now.

That was the human paradox. They could be so afraid, yet so defiant. For a near-invincible being like Torin, it had been a difficult concept to understand, until now.

Now her fear and her vulnerability became his own. He viewed her soul as an extension of his, and therefore anything that hurt her, hurt him.

Now he understood why his brothers became so enraged at the mere thought of any harm coming to their mates. This was it; the divine madness, the exquisite pain. How in Kaiin’s Hells did the General do what he did—commanding armies, destroying empires—when this insanity was always there?

Because he had to.

Keep moving.

Torin angled his body so his feet connected with the ceiling. Then he kicked, hard.

They shot across the room, through the doorway, and into the next chamber. Torin found another launching point; a table that was anchored to the floor. Again, he kicked.

Kick, tug. Kick, tug. They gained speed as he grabbed and kicked off any hard surface he touched. Torin propelled them through the vast network of rooms, thankful they weren’t impeded by closed doors, and all the while, Seph held him tightly, her grip never relenting.

As they returned to the outer chambers, Torin noticed there were gaps in the floor where the metal had been blasted right through.

They passed the storage chamber. Relahek had gone quiet. Torin decided to leave the chamber locked for the time being. Although he very much wanted to deliver the idiot to Tarak as a kind-of apology for deviating from his mission, his first and only priority was Seph, and he couldn’t afford to be fucking around with unimportant nobles.

They found Parrus and Kvorae frantically trying to remove Torin’s furniture barrier from the entrance corridor. They’d managed to open the inner door, and now they tugged at the heavy pieces with great difficulty, tails, arms, and legs straining. In zero-G, it was hard to generate any decent amount of force.

Kvorae cursed his name in guttural Veronian as Torin came up behind her.

“I can burn these things to a crisp with plasma,” he said quietly, and Kvorae spun, her markings turning orange, betraying her unease.

Perhaps she didn’t know that he understood Veronian; that he knew she’d just called him a crazy devil-eyed monster. Any other Kordolian would have punished her severely, but Torin didn’t care for such things.

Fear flickered across her face as she clutched Parrus. “P-please open the way.”

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