In the games, I hadn’t dreamt much at all. I imagined the consistency of being forced into unconsciousness prevented my mind from working, but now they were back with a vengeance.
A gentle touch glided up my cheeks. “But you can’t hear me, can you?”
With great effort, I managed to unseal my eyelids, my gaze landing on obsidian.
A flash of recognition sliced into my psyche.
Julian cracked a smile, his teeth on full display. “You’re awake.”
I took stock of my body, of the aches and pains, and found that I felt not quite good, butbetterthan I had in a while. Gathering my wits, I twisted my head side-to-side. I laid in a small room on a bed, but this didn’t feel like anywhere I had been before.
“Where’s Jayce?” My question caused the smile to drop from Julian’s face, for his eyes to squeeze shut, for my memory to propel me again to a sinister place.
Jolting upwards, I nearly headbutted Julian. I attempted to get to my feet, but he held an arm over me, buckling me in place.
“She has Sparrow!” My throat broke around the words. From disuse and emotion. The realization that time had passed, that I must have fallen unconsciousagaincaused helplessness to gnash angry teeth in my gut.
“Raven, she’s alive. She’s safe. Nightingale has already made contact. She is back in Violencia with Jayce. Jayce will protect Sparrow, you know he will.” Julian attempted to comfort me, but his words had the opposite effect.
“She has Jayce too? Oh, God.” Barbed wire wrapped around my heart, constricting it tightly. I wanted more than anything to break apart, to let this be my undoing, but then the door at the foot of the bed pushed in and there Levi stood.
The sight of me awake caused him to jump forward into the room. His knees hit the wooden edge of the bed frame, causing him to fall to the ground but not before knocking his head against it too for good measure.
He let out a pained groan.
I could not help the laughter that bubbled out of me. At the ridiculousness of what I just witnessed.
“Are you okay?” I asked breathlessly.
“Darlin’, I’d be a lot better if you stopped laughing.”
But Icouldn’t. Now that I started, Icouldn’tstop. The laughter stemming from Levi transformed into more.
Laughing at the irony that Jayce and Sparrow were finally together, but they were captives, taken from me.
Laughing that I thought I was making any difference in the Retrieval Faction, that I was a victim just as much as every other person who made their way into those buildings.
Laughing at the understanding that after everything I just went through in the games, I felt impossibly worse in this bed.
Laughing at the realization that my body had failed me again.
The laughing turned to panting. The panting to wheezing and then quickly devolved to sobbing.
Another breakdown. Another weakness. Another failure.
“She can’t stop, she’s having a panic attack.” Julian pulled me into his familiar arms. “It’s okay. Everything is okay.” Julian hummed softly in my ear before resting his chin on my head as he cradled me.
My sadness poured endlessly, a hose jetting all the way through me, but then my thoughts shifted to mysister,and a hot flash of rage ignited in my gut. At what she had done. At everything she had stolen from me.
I recognized the roughness of Levi’s hands that stroked my ankles. They rubbed methodical circles on my skin, and I focused on the sensation. Allowed it to ground me. To bring me back to the present.
Sparrow and Jayce were taken. That was a fact.
But I couldn’t change anything if I fell apart. I couldn’t return to my daughter.
My daughter.
Slowly winding myself back up tightly in a spool, I controlled my emotions and forced them back down from whence they came. My sobbing turned to hiccups until eventually those too dispersed into the air. No indication of my previous breakdown.
