Their conversation was muted, soft, but I could catch it.
“You’ll like it.”
“You know my rule.No touching.”
“Come on—I know you want me, too.All guides do.You’re going to try to tell me you don’t feel that?”
“Please, stop.”
Her heart hammered so loudly that I struggled to hear their conversation over it.Inside her?
Lust?Maybe, but it was muted and distant and unwanted.
Instead, fear had a full front seat, controlling her actions, sending her mind into fight or flight.I couldfeelher beg him to stay back, but the arrogant prick couldn’t see beyond the tip of his own hard cock.
He reached out and cupped the back of her neck, then pulled her in and all but slammed his lips to hers in a crushing, domineering kiss.
It lit the parts of her brain that had suffered whatever trauma had caused this, sparking them to life until that current of power rushed over her skin.
Normally it would only be enough to startle an esper, perhaps to drive them back, like a static electricity charge, but this?
It was so overpowered, so far past that that it flung the esper backward, crashing him into a table and leaving him unmoving on the floor.
Before I could gain anything else, the scene changed again.
It was the good and bad thing about this method of insight.The good was that the subject knew nothing about it, that the information gained was more natural, but often things went unanswered.I couldn’t control the direction, couldn’t stay with something for more information, so I could only glean what I could from the flashes she relived.I got only part of the story, and was left to fit together pieces and make guesses for all I didn’t see or know.
Everything went dark around me, and for a moment, I wondered if the bond had broken.
Black streaked with dark purple filled the sky above the memory, and I knew the sight instantly.
Some things burned themselves into memory.They dug so deeply that nothing could free them, nothing could pry them loose, and the sky of a dungeon was one such thing.
The lower levels had less purple, appeared more similar to the real world, but the higher-level dungeons?They looked exactly like this.
How had she seen this?
The question confused me all the more when the memory turned, and a monster leapt at her, with huge fangs inside its wide open mouth, its massive body barreling through the air at her.
She didn’t even have time to scream before the memory shut off and I found myself thrown back to my own body, back to my own mind, the connection severed.
It happened so fast that I struggled to regain my senses, to work out where I was, the memory so real and so fresh that I wanted nothing more than to feel a blade in my hand.
Except, there was nothing here to fight.
Across from me, Yun was slumped over in the chair, having passed out.From guiding?The exhaustion from guiding three of us must have proven too much, especially when faced with that memory.
It left me sitting there, staring at her, unable to avoid considering the only possible meaning, even if it made no damn sense at all.
At some point, Yun, a guide, had been the one place she should have never been…
A dungeon.
Chapter Nineteen
Carter
I let the beer sit in my mouth longer than it should have, until it was lukewarm and flat.I swallowed it down as though having just realized it still lingered there.
