In an instant, I feel the bond between us shudder, as if she’s pulling herself away, shuttering her windows and walling up her heart. The emotions linking us tremble, and my vision of her blurs.
I lean forward desperately, as if my hand can now brush hers. Even though I can’t truly touch her, I feel a gate break open in her chest as the ghost of my hand sweeps across the ghost of hers, and her face crumples. It is only now that I realize I have never seen Talin cry. She is not weeping just for our connection in this moment—it is the bursting of a dam that she has carefully built over the months of her captivity. She is crying for the loss of her home, another nation gone, the deaths of those she knows, and the new life she has been forced into.
Her sorrow rushes through me in a wave, strengthening our bond again, and I can feel tears wet on my own cheeks.
Is this how these dreams are happening between us? When she’s unconscious enough to let down her defenses, when, in her sleep, the tide of her emotions overwhelms her… does she open the gates between us? Our bond, run cold after so many months, surges forward now in a desperate hunger. I can feel it tingling between us, yearning to connect us as much as that first moment had bonded us on the old Mara warfront.
No. This is dangerous. This could be how Constantine sensed that something had happened between us, how he knew about our plan at the train station. What if he senses us this time?
I pull away from her, trying to find a way out of this place, to break out of this dream. But I can’t—I don’t know how.
Neither of us does; Talin is still here, too, the tears drying on her wounded face. We stand apart and feel the hum of the bond between us, unable to break it.
We can’t meet like this, she says, her voice trembling.He might know.
How can we not?I answer.How can we break it?
She is silent at that. Because how can you keep yourself from falling asleep? How can you control what you do in your dreams?
Can…,I start to ask, hesitate, then push through.Can Constantine sense everything you think? Can he control you?
She shakes her head.Not yet. Constantine only controls me because he has my mother.
I catch the unspoken warning in her answer. Not yet. The anger in me bubbles at the realization that Constantine is using her mother against us all.Where is he keeping her?I ask.
I never know, Talin replies.He just moved her last week—something he does every other week. The information is kept a close secret. He chooses the location himself the day before he orders her moved, and tells no one else.She pauses, her expression darkening.He can sense a shift of my emotions. He’d known that you were in my dreams the last time we met like this. And through my emotions, he can assume you were up to something.
Relief and sadness and fear flood through me at the same time. So, Constantine has not invaded all of Talin’s mind yet. She can still think for herself, make her own decisions, keep things from him if she must.
You haven’t lost her. Not yet.
But he is still tied to her. His mind is linked to hers as surely as mine is, able to sense her changing emotions. No wonder she’s locked her heart behind walls. No wonder she’s terrified.
Worse, he has her mother. Forcing her hand so that she must protect her loved ones. I think back to the way her mother could fight alongside her, the ferocity of her love a beacon to us all. The way she had managed to lay out a feast for us when she had so little.
We have to find her. We have to save her. Without her, we cannot help Talin.
Talin looks up at me and sees the fury in my expression. She gives me a sad smile. Her emotions are a wave of grief, of pained love.
She tilts her eyes down.I’m so sorry for what they did to you.
Even in the depth of her loss, she’s thinking of what had happened to me when I’d first endured my Skyhunter transformation. She’s thinking of my family. Thinking of others.
I notice something new through our bond, beyond the sadness and hope and fear, even beyond whatever affection may still exist between us, if that can be called love. She is holding back again, pulling aggressively away. I remember the tension from when we had first bonded, whenever she did not want me to know the thoughts in her mind. Now she is keeping some other secret, and I cannot begin to guess what it is.
What if they have hurt her in ways you never endured?
I desperately want her to tell me more, but she stays quiet, as if gauging how much she can even say.
I don’t know why I thought it would’ve been how it once was, being able to talk again with Talin. Our early days bonded to each other ended the instant the Premier invaded her mind. Now we’re separated by a different kind of distance. In despair, I sense the barrier go up between us.
Talin is no longer Talin, but an extension of the Premier. She will kill you without hesitation if Constantine commanded it. And you would do the same if she threatened Jeran.
What if my blood ends up on her hands? What if hers ends up on mine?
We are, once again, enemies, each of us standing on the opposite side of when we first met.
I know Talin can feel the loss in me at these thoughts. I stare at her as she stands mere inches from me, as if we are in the same room together. I want to lean toward her, feel the warmth of her breath against my skin, the silk of her hair through my fingers. If I touched her handright now, could I really feel it? The reality conjured by the strength of our bonded minds is so clear, it’s hard to tell what’s a dream and what might be real.
