Talia doesn’t respond and the mind link to Taurus and my primary is quiet as a fucking tomb. It takes a bit, but I use everything I have in me to build up some shields for her, and when I get them solid, the energy inside of her feels more settled. Not healed, mind you, but at least sparking like it’s not completely gone. My wife has got to stop burning herself up over shit, and so does my primary. Both of them are amazing women, but no one in this damn hellhole is worth what they’re doing to themselves or us.
Wrinkling my nose as I curl around her prone form, I make a list of the very reasonable demands I’m going to make of them both. Since I don’t ask for lot, they’d better fucking listen and start taking care of themselves. Otherwise, I’m going to be a constant pain in their asses until they kick me out. I’m tired of finding them broken and dried out.
This bullshit with the rebels is going to end or I swear to hell, I’m torching this stupid place and insisting we fucking move.
The Bird Finds The Source
TAURUS
Iappear on a patio that’s been shredded by wind and upended by furious magic, rain driving through the shattered windows in horizontal sheets. The air is thick with ozone and the sharp, coppery tang of blood.
My wife is lying in the hurricane’s eye, naked with her crimson hair a living banner, and her eyes damn near glued shut. She is beautiful, monstrous, and elemental—a goddess amid creation and collapse. The shredded cushions from the other chairs whirl around her like the tails of a comet, and the foliage surrounding us shrieks in protest as the wind tries to tear it loose.
Aradia is in the corner with her claws out, ears flat, and tail low as it lashes from side to side. She’s hunkered down behind the remains of another lounge chair, but her eyes never leave my wife. I read the calculation in her body, the way she wants to bolt for the door but knows it’d be suicide to move. I look at my hands, expecting blood or burns or at least a missing limb, but all I see are veins freighted with pulsing under my skin. Seeing the mess, I realize that my wife’s magic has the power to break and remake the world with one careless gesture.
“Bloody hell,” I breathe. “It worked.”
The words taste like ashes, and I have to laugh because it’s either that or start screaming. My legs are leaden and refuse to do as I bid them, but I struggle anyway. When I find my balance, the safety of the stoat pricks at the edge of my consciousness. I reach for him in the mental space—because physical contact would be a disaster—and find the same shock I found in myself. His empath shields are so tight and bright I can see them—a slick, hard shell that glimmers like oil on water.
I immediately know he’s even more terrified than me at the condition of the woman in front of him, and it helps me calm a tiny bit.
Whatever happened in the blood-drenched instant before the storm hit, it changed us both. The stoat is terrified for both of our mates, and he has no idea how to fix this shit. Of course, I don’t, either, but I’m with the woman the power is coming from, even if she’s not controlling it. My job is to get her to come out of this trance and take the power back so the storm stops.
The wind is so loud now that it drowns out everything. It’s slamming the ground with hailstones now, and at the center of this shit is me and my wife. She has to stop this before Talia accidentally fries our asses. It’s time to focus on waking her up.
I try to reach her with words first. “Minx! Bloody hell, woman! Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
She’s immobile, her eyes rolled up and lips locked as if she’s seen a horrific vision. The only response I get is storm gusts condensing into a vortex that pulls every floating thing into orbit around us. The porch decorations are breaking up in slowmotion—first the rest of the tables and chairs fly, then the planters, then the towel bin—all lifting into the cyclone.
There’s very little left on the ground, but I can still see the exact spot where she first let me coax her out of a blanket. I focus on that memory and on her as I call her name again, this time mentally, and push it through the bond that connects us.
~Minx. Minx, love. Please. Come back.~
Still nothing, but then the tiger snarls and the wind momentarily stills. My wife’s head cocks to one side like a marionette whose strings have been gently plucked.
It’s enough to encourage me, so I put my hands on her face. Her skin is cold and blue-veined, as if she’s been underwater for hours. I feel the storm humming through her, electric and terrifying, but I also feel her mind underneath, locked up, screaming for a way out.
I have to help her come out of it; I just don’t know how.
Then I consider what she would do. I pour myself into her, every raw and unfiltered feeling, every memory of laughter and loss, every damn time I fell for her once again. I tell her silently that she’s not alone, and that she’s more than the storm. She can take back the reins and make certain that no one does this again. I tell her she’s the ruler of this world, and no one, not even my primary, can take that from her.
She doesn’t move, but I see her eyes flicker and gasp with happiness.
I don’t know if it’s recognition, surprise, or both, but I think she’s trying to move. Maybe I’m imagining her cold, wet limbs twitching because I want them to. But she can’t stop this messwhen she’s paralyzed and checked out mentally. So I have to believe that she’s moving so I can keep encouraging her to come back.
Her eyes move under her lids again—an arrhythmic tic that, to anyone else, would mean next to nothing, but to me is a lifeline. The movement is subtle, a shudder passed through the iris, or maybe a last-ditch resistance against whatever is using her to splinter this room into a million whirling wood and debris. I’m desperate for any sign that the woman I married is still in there beneath the ice-white mask and the howling wind, so I cling to hope.
Maybe I am inventing it, but if I stop believing, she’s already lost.
She’s being possessed, and the thought makes my skin crawl. My minx can raze a city if she wants, but she’d do it with punchlines and firecrackers, not with this wordless, raw chaos. I know the shape of her magic, the particular way she bends the world, and this isn’t it. Talia is not the right person to wield this power, and her emotions are causing my minx to burn up as she’s drained by their connection.
~No need…to…shout. I’m…not…deaf… ~
Her voice sears right through the noise—inside my head, battered but still laced with her trademark contempt for fools. She’s making a joke, dry as gin, even as something tears her apart from within. That’s my wife—bleeding sarcasm in place of tears, joking when she ought to be screaming. It must have cost her a mountain of energy to send even that much, but she did it anyway, to show me she’s still got teeth.
I don’t answer right away because the wind is now battering my bones. The air is so thick with magic it feels like my lungs are packed with live wires. Instead, I retreat into her mind, finding the place where we normally meet—her inner palace, where every memory and instinct lines the walls in curated containers—is locked down. All the doors are shut tightly, and the only thing open is the pipeline feeding out of her heart and into the maelstrom overhead. Even that’s throttled; I can see it’s a pinhole compared to what’s being drawn from her. I want to scream, but I clamp my teeth and try to keep my hands steady as I hold her face.
