It was about then that I started putting that nauseous feeling together with what I'd felt in D.C. all those months ago. Once that memory sharpened, the sick feeling in my light worsened.
Suddenly, I wished I'd stayed in bed.
But it was a little late for that now, too.
"I won't hurt him," I said, feeling my face grow hot. "...No matter what he's doing in there, I'm not going to hurt him, okay? I understand what he's dealing with...I really do. But I'm not leaving until I see him. Unless he wants to tell me himself to go away...while I'm still out here, I mean." My jaw hardened before I added, "...That shouldn't be beyond him. No matter how occupied he is. Just have 'Dori tell him to send me a flare..."
Poresh seemed to have read some of my thoughts off my light. His skin darkened further, but this time, I saw a kind of horror in his eyes.
"He's not..." Poresh trailed, glancing at Loki, that horror still audible in his voice. "...He's not doing that, Esteemed Bridge! I was not implying that..."
"But he's not alone?" I prompted.
"No," Poresh said. Relief showed in his words that I'd believed him, but he sounded reluctant once more. "He's not alone, Esteemed Bridge."
"Who is with him?"
"Wreg," Loki said, prompt.
"...and Balidor," Poresch added, a little less quickly.
"No one else?" I said, feeling my shoulders unclench.
Loki made a downward slash with his fingers, a version of the seer's no...the one I saw a lot of the older rebels use.
Nodding, I glanced down the hallway, trying to think. They still didn't want me to go inside, but I realized I wouldn't sleep now, not until I saw him. Whatever was going on in there, they were just going to have to deal with me knowing about it.
"Open the door," I said, motioning towards it with one hand. "Or I'll do it the hard way."
Loki looked about to protest again, then seemed to see the decision in my eyes.
Sighing, he nodded, once. Giving me a kind of truncated bow, he stepped back, reaching for the door handle. With only one more hard look at Poresh, he yanked it open, pushing the door inwards once it had separated from the wall.
Without trying to peer inside in advance of entering, I just walked in.
Once I had, three sets of eyes jerked in my direction. Two of those looked almost guilty. The third, which belonged to Revik, looked closer to relieved. The relief I saw there didn't reassure me, however, nor did the more predatory look I saw under it.
Instead I was staring at the rest of him, and understanding immediately why Balidor, Wreg, Poresh and Loki hadn't wanted me there.
"What is going on?" I snapped. "Why do you have a collar on him?"
The words burst out of me, so filled with fury that I actually saw Wreg flinch. His expression made it look like he was wondering the same thing, however, even as a guilty kind of defensiveness rose to his eyes.
Balidor looked equally defensive. There was a lot more obstinacy in his expression, though, when he trained his gaze my way. That expression hardened further while I watched, as if he was readying himself for a fight.
"Are you going to answer me? Why do you have my husband chained to the bed with a sight restraint collar on?" I said, my voice holding more disbelief than anger now. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Alyson..." Balidor began angrily.
"Don't 'Alyson' me...take that thing off him. Now!"
Revik still hadn't spoken, but I could tell from his eyes that they'd drugged him with something, probably for the pain. Either that, or no one had bothered to give him any light at all since he'd left me in the hotel lobby.
"Seriously...what are you doing?" I said. "Are you going to tell me?"
It was Wreg who answered me, not Balidor.
"He's refusing light," Wreg said, motioning towards the bed. "He wanted to go to you. He's not in his right mind, Allie...we were trying to sedate him. The only way we knew how..."
"What do you mean, he's refusing light?" I said.
Worry showed in my voice that time, even as I approached the bed.
Balidor stepped directly into my path, holding up a hand like he might try to stop me from going to Revik. I pushed past him though, only angered by it, and he didn't resist.
I sat next to Revik on the bed a few seconds later.
He lay halfway on his side so that the shrapnel wound didn't support any of his weight. Wearing a thin T-shirt and dark, soft-looking pants, he might have been comfortable if they hadn't cuffed his hands together and chained one of the links to the headboard of the bed. He didn't move away when I approached, but I felt another pulse of that relief on him. He clasped my fingers when I took his, laying his head in my lap. Something in the simplicity of the gesture drained the anger out of me, leaving me at a loss.
He'd avoided touching me so often in the past few weeks. I was a little thrown by the openness I could now feel in his light. He merged into me more when I shifted closer to him, sliding his arms over to rest on my thighs.
I could feel what Wreg had been trying to tell me, though. I just had no idea what it meant. He almost wasn't there, like a part of him wasn't anchored to his body at all.
"Do you have him on anything?" I asked, my voice subdued. I stroked his hair, feeling his light fighting against the collar, trying to get closer to mine.
"No," Balidor said. I heard a kind of resignation in his voice, too.
I looked up at him. "Why didn't you just call me? Right away?"
"Because he told us not to, Allie."
"What?" My hands tightened on him. "Why would he do that?"
When Balidor merely avoided my eyes, I looked at Wreg, who was glaring at Balidor, his eyes holding an open accusation. It wasn't until then that it struck me how strange this was, the two of them in here, working over Revik together.
"Why would he do that?" I asked again, this time aiming it at Wreg.
The tattooed seer shrugged, his voice more matter-of-fact. "He said if we brought you in here, he'd rape you, Esteemed Bridge. He made us promise we wouldn't...not even to feed him light. He didn't want you involved..."
My heart stopped beating briefly, stuttering over the word I'd heard somewhere in the middle of Wreg's answer. Even so, my hands only tightened on him more.
"He's just in pain," I said. "Both of us are. You should have overruled him..."
"He's not just in pain," Balidor snapped. "Alyson...have you heard nothing of what Vash and I have been telling you about this? You're only halfway bonded to him again. You need to remember what that was like...and then remember it's about ten times worse this time, as now he's full Elaerian. As are you..." he added pointedly, motioning vaguely above my head. "He was right to avoid you. He asked for the collar..."
"He asked to be collared?" I stared down at his neck, where the two ends joined in the back, digging into the flesh around the top of his spine.
Revik asking to be collared wasn't only unheard of...there was a time where you would have been risking your life to even suggest it, even with a good military reason. He hated collars more than any seer I knew, and that was saying a lot.
Wreg sighed at my disbelief, as if he shared it.
"Yes, princess," he said, his voice gentler. "He asked for the binders, too. He really was afraid he would hurt you. He could tell he was losing control over his light..." Wreg glared at Balidor at this, his voice turning openly angry. "I told Adhipan and that old fossil that we should involve you from the beginning. That we should let you decide if it was time to stop this ridiculous separation between you..."
"We have no idea what he will do," Balidor snapped, turning on him. "Even he doesn't. He was as worried about it as we were...you heard him!"
"He's worried he will be jealous," Wreg said, making a dismissive gesture with one hand. "He will be jealous. He will probably want to kill half of those bastards they sold her to..." At Balidor's angry clicking, Wreg raised his voice. "I ask you again...so what? How is prolonging this helpi
ng him any? You are only feeding his fears, making him wait until he has completely lost control of himself. And the end result will only be the same. He will be jealous. He will be angry...he will lose his temper. They will work it out, like every bonded seer pair has before them. You are so busy tip-toeing around him, you are making him unstable. He really will hurt her, if you keep them apart much longer..."
Listening to Wreg's angry words, I swallowed, realizing I agreed with them.
I'd always agreed with them really, but I'd been trying to respect Vash and Balidor's concerns, and Revik's, too. The last thing I wanted to do was push Revik into dealing with this before he was ready, given everything he'd been through in the last year.
But I couldn't help wondering how much of his hesitation had to do with Balidor and Vash actively worrying that he was going to flip out and go serial killer the instant he felt another seer or human in my light. Even on the plane from Beijing, he'd seemed like he wanted to have sex...he just hadn't wanted to do it in an open construct with a bunch of other seers watching. Neither had I, for that matter.
Then we got to New York and Balidor and Vash had that 'talk' with him.
Ever since, he'd acted like he was afraid he was going to completely lose his shit again, as soon as he hit those imprints in my light.
By imprints, I mean the ones I'd gotten working as a consort for the Lao Hu. The ones I couldn't avoid collecting when I'd been having sex with other men, thinking he and I were done being married...in the strictest sense, at least. I'd learned the hard way a few years earlier that when seers have sex, imprints are left behind of the experience. Supposedly those imprints could gradually be erased, or severely weakened if enough time was allowed to pass.
According to Dorje, there were even seers who could pull those imprints out of another seer's light...almost like a specialized skill.
Unfortunately, none of those seers worked for the Adhipan.
Nor were any of the rebels who followed Revik to New York able to do such a thing.
As far as doing it the normal way, Revik and I couldn't wait that long. We'd been waiting months as it was, and Revik had gone a lot longer without sex than I had. In fact, if he was telling the truth, he was going on a year without sex, as that was the last time we'd been together at that rebel hideout in the mountains. For a seer with a mate, that was a really, really long time to not share light. It was almost unheard of, really, if I could believe what Chandre and others had told me in the past.
I wasn't looking forward to the imprint side of things, either. I knew it would suck...for both of us really, but for him a lot more than me. Having been on the receiving end with him on more than one occasion, I wasn't minimizing that fact at all.
But I also wasn't clear on how our waiting was going to make it easier for either of us.
"You see?" Wreg said.
He motioned towards me with a dramatic seer-style gesture...and also managed to startle me, as it occurred to me that I hadn't been making any effort to shield my thoughts.
"...She agrees with me," Wreg burst out angrily. "She knows that this delay is only making things worse. Why are you still pretending you do not see this, as well? Is it so important to be right all the time, Adhipan?"
"In this?" Balidor said, folding his arms. His voice turned cold. "Yes. I'm afraid it's fairly important to be right about this, Wreg. A highly-trained, only recently reintegrated telekinetic seer who has a tendency to lose his shit and go dark where his mate is concerned? Yes, I'd say that it's pretty damned important that we get this one right..."
Wreg threw up his hands, making an angry noise. "This is only more words...it is bullshit, Adhipan. You do not know him at all, if you think he is so easily damaged..."
"You didn't see him in that tank," Balidor retorted.
"I saw him well enough when she betrayed him in those mountains..."
"He was under the control of the Dreng then!"
"You are overstepping, Adhipan," Wreg growled, his stance bordering on threatening. "This is between the two of them. You are involving yourself in something that is not your business. You are letting your fears of Syrimne d'Gaos get the better of you..."
I couldn't help but agree with that, too.
Seeing Balidor's eyes dart towards mine, his mouth hardening in a line, I only returned his gaze, unapologetic. I continued stroking Revik's hair as I finally looked away, wondering how much of this he was even hearing. Looking at the fresh organic bandage on his back, I scanned it briefly, trying to get a sense of how deep the wound really was...and how dangerous. I didn't let myself think about all the reasons I did that, either.
But apparently Balidor heard some part of those reasons himself.
"You can't be serious," he said, giving me an incredulous look. "You half-kill him, dragging him on this personal project of yours...the details of which you didn't even deign to inform the rest of us...and now you want to try and kill him again? Are you really that unbelievably selfish?"
I rolled my eyes, but bit the inside of my cheek involuntarily.
"I'm trying to think of solutions, 'Dori," I said quietly.
"You know why he is like this, don't you?" Balidor took a step closer to the bed, motioning towards Revik with one hand as he raised his voice. "It is because of that damned op, Allie. We told you it wasn't a good idea for him to be in the field yet...especially not with you. Did you think these were just idle words?" At my angry look, he only spoke louder.
"...To do that type of work, he has to exert his light, Alyson. He has to use his light in conjunction with the light of whatever seers he is working with...meaning your light, Allie. Meaning the light of a mate he is only half-bonded with at this point...who he is already having trouble controlling himself around. The separation pain, all of that would have to be worse from hours of such exertion...much, much worse. The fact that you pulled him into doing this thing with you...that you coerced him, knowing he would not refuse you..." His voice grew angrier. "...Do you not realize this is entirely your fault, Alyson? Or do you simply not care?"
I felt my jaw harden more.
Shrugging, I didn't look up at him when I answered.
"I can make it easier for him," I said, keeping my voice low and even. "I can make it so he can relax, get some sleep, take some light. It would only be short term, but –– "
"...But you can get him to agree to this now, too?" Balidor retorted. "Is that what you mean? Don't even pretend you don't have your own stake in this, Esteemed Bridge. I know damned well that you've tried to talk him into your bed before now...that you've invited him to your room, time and again. That you would use this, of all things, as an excuse to seduce him..."
I glared up at him, feeling my temper slide abruptly away from me.
"That is not what I'm doing!" I snapped. "Damn it, 'Dori! I want to help him..."
"Alyson!" Balidor said angrily. "Don't you understand? If the two of you start going down that path, you will both lose the ability to think clearly about this! You will be right back where you were the first time with him..."
"He just needs light. He'll be okay, if we can get some light into him..."
"That is not all he needs," Balidor said angrily. "Are you not listening to me? Vash and I are both relatively certain that you will completely re-bond with him...which means that neither of you will be in a position to keep him from bleeding to death once you start. Neither of you will be in your right minds...neither of you will care about the irrationality of what you are doing..."
"I'm not talking about sex, 'Dori," I said, looking up angrily. I felt my cheeks flush hot. "I'm not talking about that, all right? That's not on the table..."
"I know exactly what you are talking about, Alyson," Balidor snapped. "I can see it, plain as day, in your light. And it is sex, no matter what you tell me or anyone else. Ask yourself if he would see it that way, and then tell me you won't be screwing with his head..."
My face grew hotter. "It'll help him, won't it? It'll give
him a chance to heal..."
"What makes you think you will be able to stop?"
"Because I don't want to hurt him!" I said angrily, clutching him tighter in my lap. "Do you really think I'm incapable of walking away? That I'll conveniently forget he had a piece of metal sticking out of him earlier?"
"Yes," he said coldly. "That's exactly what I think."
Staring at him, I didn't answer at first.
I could only look at him, fighting the words that wanted to come from my lips. I forced myself to try and think about what he was saying objectively, to hear his words as concern for Revik and not just his usual overreaction to anything that might turn him back into Syrimne. I knew Balidor had been trying. I knew he'd made a real effort to help Revik, especially while I'd been with the Lao Hu. They were almost friends again, even if things were awkward with all three of us whenever it came to me and Revik's marriage.
I also happened to know that Balidor, more than any other seer or human I knew, needed to get laid...pretty much desperately at this point, at least as far as I was concerned. He probably needed it as much if not more than Revik and I did. I was almost ready to order him to take a week off, have the other infiltrators lock him in one of the hotel suites with multiple unwillings, male and female. All expenses paid.
When I glanced up, I saw Wreg smiling, hiding a chuckle behind one hand.
Balidor's face had darkened, holding a barely restrained fury that told me he'd heard my opinion on that subject, too. Heading off what I saw there, I shook my head, forcing my voice lower, more subdued.
"I was there, remember?" I said. "I won't forget he was injured, 'Dori...believe me. I'm the one who pulled it out of him..."
"You're the reason it was in him in the first place," Balidor snapped.
"I don't want to hurt him!" I repeated, raising my voice.
"You already did hurt him, Allie. Why do you think he's like this?"
I bit my lip, once again forcing myself to look away.
I didn't have a good answer for him, though. I knew he meant more than the bank job with his words, just from the cutting tone he used. He, like my brother and a few dozen other of my friends, was still more than a little pissed off at me because of the agreement I'd made with the Lao Hu. I knew most of them, including Balidor, thought I did it to get back at Revik...to hurt him deliberately for hurting me. I hadn't...not consciously anyway...but it didn't seem to matter what I said about that anymore, either.
Allie's War Season Three Page 13