Too fucking bad.
I didn’t care if he wanted her—she wasours.There was no question anymore. Maybe there had never been one, not since first meeting her, and my reluctance had only been a lie I’d told myself.
Whatever the truth, nothing would take her from us, including some fucking corrupted.
“If he targeted her like that,” Ingram said, his voice nothing but barely concealed rage, “he’ll do it again when The Pitt fully opens. We can’t risk bringing her.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “The fact they could find her as easily as they did tells me there’s nowhere we can send her that he won’t find her. Besides,wecan’t leave, and there’s no way I’m sending her anywhere without us. She’s safest if we’re nearby.”
“She has nightmares about him,” Shear said, as though it were information we didn’t all have. Then he continued. “She thought they might be connected, but I said it wasn’t possible, that there can’t be any communication through a portal. After what I saw today, I am…less certain about that. He was able to control thosebeasts through the portal, from inside the dungeon. There’s a chance that he truly is connected to her in some way we don’t understand. Her dreams might not just be nightmares, but actual conversations.”
That chilled me, an idea I didn’t just think wasn’t possible but wouldn’t have even given space within my mind before. To think that the man who had tormented and tortured her had a direct line to her brain?
“It also explains why the nightmares have gotten worse the closer we’ve gotten to The Pitt opening. Stable dungeons have their walls strengthened and weakened on a cycle, so it is possible that once they started to weaken as we approached the opening, he could reach through that to connect with her.”
“How do we stop that?” Kenyon asked. “Even if that wasn’t dangerous because of strategy—him potentially finding out everything about our plans—it isn’t good for her, either.”
“I can enter her mind before her next nightmare. I can’t breach it easily during a nightmare, but I think if I do it beforehand, he might not even notice. I can also bring you all with me. You aren’t mentalists, but your strength might still be of some use—and potentially show him why this isn’t a good idea.”
“Can you sever that so it doesn’t happen again?” I asked.
“Maybe. I can’t say for sure, not until I see how they are connected.”
“Is it dangerous for her?” Kenyon asked.
That one made Shear pause, telling me he didn’t know the answer and didn’t care for that. “I don’t know. Minds are both extremely fragile and yet resilient. There’s no telling how one might react to a stressor like that, especially without knowing exactly what he has done to her. There is no history of anything like this occurring, so I don’t know what sort of connection they have, how deep it may be, or what he could do to her if it snaps.”
“Maybe it’s a bad idea, then,” Kenyon said, voice low. Then again, as a healer, he was more concerned with saving people and limiting pain. Risks were not something he liked to take—it just wasn’t in his genetics.
“It’s still worth it,” Shear pressed. “She talked about what happened when she escaped last time, about how far she was willing to go to end that suffering. If she believes that she is connected to him, if she thinks that there is no other way out, I can assure you she will take the same measures again—but this time she will ensure she does not fail.”
I bared my teeth at Shear’s statement, wanting to close his mouth by force, to make him take those words back and swallow them down as though they’d never escaped in the first place.
He’d told me about how she’d escaped, about the fact that she’d thought touching the heart would mean her death. The worst part, he’d said, was how happy she’d seemed about that, as though there had been nothing she’d wanted more in those moments than to die.
The idea that she could end up in that place again, in the darkness, with no way out but death terrified me. It was a battle I was not equipped to deal with, one I couldn’t fight, a foe I had no attacks to remove.
If we didn’t fix this, if we didn’t save her, we’d lose her.
And everyone would suffer if that happened. I’d make fucking sure of it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Yun
It felt like I’d just seen Mr. Yorn, yet here we were again. It was all covered up with acheckupafter the attack. The Guild had made it seem as though they gave a damn about me, that they wanted to ensure I was fine, but I knew the truth.
They didn’t care, not beyond what they could gather from all this.
However, the lie got me alone, had me sitting in that same cursed exam room. This time it would just be a short session, since they couldn’t exactly keep this hidden from the squad again. They couldn’t get away with another sleep study lie, but an exam would be warranted, given what I’d gone through yesterday.
Just yesterday?
It was strange to think it could have been so recent. The espers all looked fine, as though nothing had happened, and the blood had shimmered away so no evidence remained.
Was it truly so simple to erase the horrors? Just a day and it was all forgotten?
Well, not forgotten, judging from the tension in the base, the shifting eyes of the espers who walked around, the nerves of the civilians, and theyalllooked my way.
