Chapter 183 What He Left In Me

Chapter 183 What He Left In Me
I am still on my hands when it settles.

Warm.

Heavy.

Him.

It drops into the center of my chest like a second heart that does not ask for permission... and for one second I cannot breathe around the shape of it.

Rhydan’s heat. Rhydan’s weight. Rhydan’s gold, shoved behind my ribs where only I have ever lived.

My arms almost give out.

Across the cracked marble, Rhydan chokes.

He folds forward on his knees, one hand slamming over his own chest like something has been torn out of him and the empty place is still screaming.

Blood runs from his nose. His back heaves. But he is not empty. I can feel the truth of it from here... half of his strength is gone from his body because it is here, burning under my sternum, looking for him through my skin.

"Vey..." His voice is wrecked. "Something... something is..."

"I have it," I gasp. "Rhydan, I have you. Stay with me."

Marguerite stares between us.

The cracked staff in her hand is still smoking. The silver orb flickers like a frightened eye.

"No," she whispers. "That was mine to take. That frequency was..."

She does not get to finish.

Sera moves.

Fast.

She hits her knees in front of Rhydan before I can get my legs under me, and she is still wearing enough of my face to make the whole hall tilt... cracked at the edges, wrong at the jaw. But the eyes are mine. The mouth is mine. The soft broken way she says his name is mine.

"Rhydan."

My voice.

My exact voice when I am scared for him.

His head jerks up.

Grey eyes, dazed and bloodshot, lock onto her mouth.

"Vey...?"

The piece of him inside my chest lurches.

I feel it... God, I feel him... his confusion slamming into my lungs, his exhausted need to believe the girl in front of him is safe, is home, is me. My hands slip on the marble. My vision whites at the edges.

"That is not me!" The scream rips raw out of my throat. "Rhydan, look at me... LOOK AT ME..."

Marguerite laughs under her breath and swings the staff.

The hit catches me across the shoulder while I am still half up. Bone screams. I go sideways hard, chin cracking against stone, blood filling my mouth all over again. The warm piece of Rhydan in my chest flares in panic like it felt the blow too.

He feels it.

I see him feel it.

His whole body jolts on his knees as if someone struck him, and Sera uses that exact second to take his face in both hands.

"It's me," she whispers against his mouth in my voice. "I have you. I am right here. She is trying to tear us apart again... please... please just look at me..."

His hands rise.

They settle on her waist.

The piece of him inside me starts thrashing so hard I almost vomit. I can feel Sera’s thumbs on his cheekbones through the link. I can feel the heat of her breath. I can feel him leaning in because he is half-dead and she smells close enough and the real me is ten feet away on the floor bleeding and he cannot sort the signals.

Their mouths are an inch apart.

And I make a sound I have never made in my life.

Not a scream...

It is a broken, animal noise of pure ownership and terror.

"Don't you fucking kiss him..."

Marguerite steps on my hand.

Her heel grinds down on my fingers until something pops and I cry out. Then the piece of Rhydan inside me answers with a snarl that is not my voice.

And on his knees, Rhydan freezes.

One inch from Sera’s mouth.

Then his grey eyes go wide and unfocused... like he just heard me from inside his own blood.

"...Vey?"

Not to Sera...

Through her.

Sera tries to close the distance anyway, desperate, and Rhydan turns his face at the last second so her lips hit his cheek. He shoves her off. Not hard... he barely has anything left... but enough. Sera sprawls back on her hands, her ruined face of me splitting further down one side, one of my eyes and one of hers staring in shock.

"You are in my chest," Rhydan rasps, staring at me like I am the only solid thing in the room. "I can feel you... Vey... I can feel you hurting..."

"I know." Tears and blood are running into my mouth. "I can feel you too."

Marguerite’s heel comes off my hand.

She is no longer smiling.

"Sera. Stop playing and kill her focus. Now."

Sera bares her teeth... half mine... and launches at me on pure hate.

I am still on the floor. My hand is screaming. She hits me like a girl who has wanted to tear my throat out for months, fingers hooked, using my own face to do it. We roll. Her forehead smashes into my mouth. My knee finds her stomach. She claws down my already cut arm and opens it wider. Blood makes everything slick.

"You do not get him!" she spits in a voice that keeps glitching between hers and mine. "It's me, or no one else! You do not get to be the one he..."

I headbutt her.

Hard.

And the rest of the glamour finally rips off her face with a wet sound of light tearing. Sera screams... only Sera... and reels back on her knees, bare-faced, nose pouring blood, staring at me with pure blackened hate.

Marguerite does not wait for her granddaughter.

She brings the cracked staff down on my back with both hands.

The world goes white.

I hear Rhydan shout my name like something is being torn out of him again. I feel his terror explode behind my ribs. I feel him trying to stand... failing... standing anyway.

When my vision clears, I am face-down and I cannot get air. The piece of him inside me is the only reason I am still conscious. It is pushing heat into my limbs like he is trying to pick me up from the inside.

Boots stop beside my head.

Marguerite.

"You poor bonded children," she murmurs. "You think sharing a pulse makes you strong? It only means I can break two of you with one stroke."

She lifts the staff over my neck.

Across the floor Rhydan is on his feet.

I do not know how.

He should not be on his feet. Blood paints his chin and throat. His body is shaking so hard I can see it from here. But he is upright, gold blazing in his eyes, and the empty place in his chest where the piece of him used to live is pulling toward me so hard he staggers a step closer like gravity itself has changed.

"Get away from her."

His voice is low. Double-noted. Wolf and dragon both. Not empty.

Furious.

Marguerite half-turns, amused.

"Or what, little Alpha? You can barely..."

Rhydan moves.

It is not graceful. It is not clean. He hits her the way a dying boy hits when the girl holding his heart is under a staff. He hits her full body, shoulder into her ribs. They crash sideways off the dais steps. The cracked staff flies from her hands and skitters across marble, silver orb sparking.

Sera screams and scrambles for it.

I shove myself up on broken-feeling arms.

Then the warm weight of Rhydan inside my chest suddenly surges... like he just threw me every drop of fight he has left... and my light answers without permission, pale and blinding. Rising under my skin in a wave that makes Sera freeze with her fingers an inch from the staff.

Rhydan has Marguerite on the floor by sheer stubborn weight. He is not stronger than her. He is simply unwilling to let go. She claws his face. He does not release her shoulder. Blood runs into his eye and he still does not release her.

"Vey!" he roars.

I crawl.

Then I run fast, on hands and knees.

But Sera gets the staff first.

She spins toward me with it, blood still on her mouth, and for one second I see she would actually do it... she would put that cracked thing through my heart and wear my life afterward like a dress.

She swings it with force and the piece of Rhydan inside me howls.

I do not dodge.

I catch the staff between both palms as she drives it forward.

The impact lifts me off my feet... but I hold... and the pale light in my hands pours straight into the cracked silver orb.

Sera’s eyes go huge.

"Let go...!"

"No."

Behind her, Marguerite throws Rhydan off with a blast of raw violet off her palms. He hits a pillar and leaves a crack in it. I feel the hit in my own spine through the bond and cry out... and he feels my cry and forces himself back up off the floor on pure hate and love tangled together.

Marguerite sees the staff in my hands.

Sees her granddaughter stuck holding the other end.

Sees the pale light eating its way up the wood toward Sera’s fingers.

"Sera, release it!"

"I can't!" Sera sobs. "She is... she is pulling..."

I am not pulling the staff.

I am pulling everything the staff has ever stolen.

The piece of Rhydan in my chest opens wider... gold flooding my sight... and for the first time since the Iron Bell, I feel us as one thing... his rage, my will, his refusal to die, my refusal to lose him...

Stacked. Locked. Rising.

Marguerite’s face goes white.

"No... no, you children do not get to..."

Rhydan hits her again from behind before she can finish.

And the light in my hands... his and mine together... finally finds the note it has been looking for since something of him walked into my bones and stayed.

The cracked staff screams.

Sera screams with it.

And every tether still left in the Great Hall turns toward us like needles finding north.