Page 133 of A Sweet Destruction

Elijah clicked his tongue in disagreement, never looking away from me. There was something past interest in his attention, something a little bit more intense. Something…panicked, maybe?

“Oh, yes,” Elijah said, tilting his head to the side. “But how productive were those conversations when we were only speaking half-truths?”

His use of we was not lost on me, but it seemed premature to call him out on Muli’s lies. “And what half-truths were those? Do enlighten us.” My words didn’t come out with the same sharpness I would have preferred, due in large part to the blood curdling in my mouth.

When I spit it out again, my stomach clenched painfully. I could feel my eyebrow furrowing in an expression of pain and underlying confusion.

Ford shot forward again, eyes narrowing in on my stomach with such precision that I was tempted to ask him what happened, convinced he’d know better than me.

Elijah laughed. Not quite in my face, but it felt just as antagonizing. “Oh, yeah, sorry about that. You started waking up and I dropped you onto the horn of my saddle.” His nose scrunched up. “Not fun.”

My mind went momentarily blank. You’d think he was talking about his strong dislike of vinegary food, for all the casualness in his tone.

Swiping a hand in the air dismissively, Elijah rose to stand. He jerked his chin at someone behind him. “Over here. Check his ropes. I don’t need him launching at my back.”

It was then that I realized how close Ford looked to snapping his binds. An impossible feat, but he looked close to managing it.

Elijah was one crafty motherfucker. I’d been pulling and twisting at my binds the entire time he’d been speaking, and there was something about the cool, leathery fabric wrapping around my wrists that only proved that.

They must have tied our hands with fortis rope, made from the trunks of the tallest, strongest trees in Muli. It was the same rope used to lift blocks of marble and move those same trees if they fell in the forest.

There was something so distinct about the faint woody scent that never quiet left, even if it was manipulated over and over again. This version of the rope was thinner, but that didn’t mean it was any less strong.

It would require force that no human could reasonably possess to snap it. Even a knife would have a hard time slicing through it. Even then, Ford seemed to be making a God’s honest try to do so.

Someone I didn’t recognize—not one of Elijah’s usual unit—walked up to Ford, giving him a wider berth than was probably necessary, before crouching down behind him.

“Looks goo—ow, motherfucker!” Well, maybe he could have taken a bit more space. The second he bent down behind Ford, he cracked his head back to smack into his skull.

Elijah didn’t even bat an eye, looking nothing more than slightly annoyed by the disturbance.

“Would you like to tell us what we’re doing here?” Ford said, the hoarseness in his voice ripping down the middle of my chest. He wasn’t looking so good, fraying around the edges.

It was like looking in the mirror of a version of myself from five years ago. I’m sure I looked close to the same, but it was a familiar pain for me.

“Oh, that,” Elijah said with a crazed little laugh. He pulled a knife out of his back pocket, a large hunting knife with a brutal edge that looked like it could cut through skin with the barest pressure. “Well, at my core, I am a man of science. I need to run an experiment. And needed two very unique test subjects.”

Paranimas, clearly. “Yeah, and how long have you been planning this little experiment?” I said, not even attempting to hide the disgust in my tone. I’d thought him mildly charming at one point, but now…

Now he just seemed cruel.

Elijah flipped the knife in his hand, catching the handle with practiced ease. “Oh, it seems like years. But I was particularly motivated after learning that Ford here has a unique set of skills he hadn’t shared with the rest of us.”

He turned towards Ford, extending the knife towards him in a taunting wave. I launched forward with such force, I felt something tear in my shoulder.

“You motherfucker,” Ford bit out, though I could barely hear him over the rushing of blood in my ears. Pain was radiating down my arm in red hot waves, which wasn’t helping my ability to keep the Bond in check.

“How did you do it?” Elijah asked, a little sing-songy note of joy in the question. “Snatched not one, but two arrows out of the air like they were nothing. Quite the reflexes on you, my friend.”

My vision started to clear in time to see Ford’s expression twist into a cruel smile. “You’re willing to blow up any chance of peace between our worlds over my reflexes? You aren’t as bright as I thought, then.”

Elijah’s answering laugh sent a chill down my spine. “God, you’d like that, huh? For us to just wipe away all the shit you’ve put my people through over the past two decades? Just because you asked nicely?”

Somehow, even with his face still strained, Ford’s equally humorless laugh chased that chill away. “You will cause far more pain by fighting a battle over history. We were so close and you just threw it all away for a fucking science experiment?”

While Ford spoke, I watched Elijah. There was no flinching, no tightening of the muscles in the back to hide one, nothing. He seemed entirely unconcerned with how his actions would affect things. Or maybe he was just a damn good actor.

Both options were terrifying, because the fact of the matter was that he’d already taken action, already tied us up in some underground hellhole and was waiving a knife around like he most certainly planned to use it.