Page 137 of A Sweet Destruction

“I let you have your little moment,” Elijah said with a sneer, as if the entire concept of affection was beneath him. “Now, it’s about what I want. And I want to see what will happen when I kill one of you.”

I laughed. The kind of insane, denial-filled laughter than could only come from complete and utter shock.

That simply wasn’t happening. Ford wasn’t going to die. I told Elijah as much, my voice filled with far too much levity.

“Oh, no, you won’t be seeing that. I’ve already seen—or really heard—what you can do. Put on quite the show, didn’t you?” Elijah flipped his knife, the same one that had been embedded in my thigh some odd number of minutes ago, catching the point between his fingers then sending it back up into the air to grab the hilt. Once his fingers closed around it, he lifted the blade towards Ford. “I’m more interested in what he will do.”

If I thought I’d known fear before, that was nothing compared to the sheer terror that flooded my chest at his words. I could handle pain. I could handle torture.

I couldn’t handle knowing Ford would break under the weight of the Bond.

“Please,” I rasped, looking Elijah dead in the eye. It felt wrong to move my gaze off Ford for even a second, but I needed Elijah to see my desperation. “Please don’t.” My words starting falling out in a panicked ramble. “You want to know so that you can take out Soren and Bellamy, right?”

“Esme.”

I couldn’t stop to look to Ford, my words falling out too fast. “See how long it takes the other to go in case you can’t get them both in one sweep? Then it doesn’t matter who you—”

“Esme.”

“—kill first. It can be me you watch. You don’t have to—you don’t need to…”

Whatever else I was going to say was lost in the indifferent expression on Elijah’s face.

I looked to Ford, seeking out answers. My brain felt like it was breaking under the weight of its own lack of understanding.

Ford looked broken. Shattered. Eyes wild and streaked with blood and something sub-human. Like I’d already died right in front of him. Like he would follow in a matter of seconds.

An image of him lying lifeless on the ground slapped me across the face, lighting a fire of pure survival instinct under my ass.

Protect. Protect. Protect. That, from the Bond.

He has a family. That, from me.

He had a family. One that relied on him. One he loved and that loved him back. One that would never come back from this.

I was pretty sure he loved me back. If he felt anything close to what I felt for him, he would happily welcome death if I was gone.

But he would die hating himself. Feeling like he failed at the one thing he’d set out to do every day of his life—to take care of his family.

I needed to give him a reason to stay. In one final, probably insane and misguided, act of kindness, I needed to make him stay.

I straightened slowly, keeping the shift subtle. From the type of panic that came from losing the love of your life to a more animalistic version—something base, something impersonal.

"You’re really going to do this?” I asked Elijah.

It was then, with a clearer mind than I’d had in hours, that I saw it. The tiniest little hesitation. The corner of his mouth tilting down in a frown before the muscle in his cheek pulled it up to a smile with all the manipulation of a puppeteer.

“Yes. I am.” He said it like yes, I have to.

I looked to Ford, at his head hanging between his shoulders, exhausted from fighting, both his restraints and this reality.

“Then me first,” I said, voice too clear and too bright. “If you would.”

Ford’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing like he no longer recognized me. I couldn’t meet his eye, snapping my attention back to Elijah—who just looked lightly amused again.

“I was planning on that, serpenia,” he said, using that cursed nickname. “But your sudden acceptance of the matter is making me curious.”

I laughed, shaking my head. My mouth tasted like ash. “You said it yourself. I went crazy once. Don’t really want to do that again. Especially without—” I paused, letting my eyes lighten with a thought then tilting my head to the side.