Even so, I couldn’t say I disagreed with him. Not right then.
But I couldn’t fucking go there, either. Not now.
“Then when?” he said, angry. “When, Allie? You don’t get any ‘breaks’ in this. There isn’t going to be a good goddamned time.” When I averted my gaze, gripping his arms, he lowered his head, pressing his cheek against mine, kissing me, even as he murmured in my ear. “Fuck me like I’m him. Just once, do it like you would with him, Allie.”
Pain caught my breath at his words, blinding me.
It worsened as I lay there, his words hitting me in some unguarded place in my light, some place I hadn’t admitted even existed.
It hit me then, what the pain meant.
I wanted to do that with him. With Jem.
I wanted it.
His pain turned excruciating. Everything in his light changed, growing softer, more intense, more open––more real. Softer than I could handle, than I could let myself feel.
“I want it, too,” he murmured. He kissed me, his light sliding hotly into mine, laced with that denser vulnerability, achingly soft. “I know you need this. I know you do. But I want it so fucking badly, Allie. Please do this with me. Please. I’ll be so good to you, I promise. I’ll give you anything you want… anything.”
I closed my eyes, fighting to think.
I felt myself trying to rationalize in that more distant part of my light. Revik and I talking in the tank, what he’d asked of me, what we both knew we needed to do. In all of our discussions, all our plans and talks and fights, it never once occurred to me that I would want this with someone else.
But I couldn’t think about that.
I couldn’t think about any of that.
Even so, the realization hurt.
I remembered Ditrini wanting the same thing from me in Beijing and the idea making me sick, disgusted beyond where I could even bother fighting with him about it. I guess I’d been expecting that; I’d expected some kind of duty feeling with this, like work.
In the same few seconds, I realized something else.
I hadn’t been putting this off because I didn’t want to do it. I’d been putting it off because I did.
Closing my eyes, I fought to decide what to do, whether I should stop this. Find someone else. But it was too late for that. Revik had been pushing me for weeks and I’d been dragging my feet, not telling him why, not admitting to myself why as I did everything I could to put it off, then to block him, then to put it off again.
And I wanted Jem with me when I went after Dragon.
I wasn’t sure if I could fully admit to myself why that was, either.
“Please, Allie,” he murmured. “Please.”
Pain slid through my light.
I gasped, fighting confusion, then letting that go as I made my decision.
Jem felt it, the instant I had, the instant I opened my light at all.
He sucked in a breath, stopping.
Hanging over me, his dark hair a shadowed curtain, he closed his eyes, disbelief expanding off his aleimi in a dense wave. I felt his light react in sparking flickers around mine, pulling on me before I think his brain even caught up with what I was doing.
Then I opened for real.
“Gods,” he groaned. More emotion reached his voice––then his light. “Gods, Allie. Allie…”
I clenched my jaw, closing my eyes as he stroked my face.
Heat flooded out of him, affection––more affection than I’d been prepared to deal with, a denser pulse of that harder wanting. Pain hit me in the same set of seconds. I realized I was still keeping him out, even as I opened to him. Some part of me was trying to show him my light without taking his in.
Feeling the pain coiling between us worsen, I fought to unfurl that fist, to let myself feel him.
“Allie,” he said. “Gods, Allie… I can’t hold this. I can’t. Allie…”
Feeling him lose control, I slid into his light, gripping it the way I would have done with Revik. Once I had a hold of him there, Jem’s whole body went soft, his light liquid, right before his weight grew heavy, leaning hard on mine.
He ground into me with the small amount of room I’d left him, panting against my neck.
“Jesus fucking christ…”
I felt him struggle against me––really struggle. I felt him realize there was nothing he could do, that he couldn’t get free of me.
Then he lost control over his light.
Like, really lost control.
It was the first time he’d done that since we’d been together. He was panting then, gripping my shoulder and hair so tightly it hurt as his light coiled deeper into mine. I looked up at him and his eyes met mine, holding disbelief, along with a vulnerability that caught my breath.
“Jem,” I said softly. I stroked his face, pushing his black hair back behind his shoulder, caressing his neck. “Jem, hey. Calm down. Calm down, brother… it’s okay.”
He closed his eyes, longer than a blink.
Seeing him do that, watching his jaw clench, I felt my pain abruptly worsen.
Tears came to my eyes.
“Gods, Jem. You wanted this. You wanted this…”
When I let go of his light the barest bit, he groaned, lowering his face to mine.
His body still soft, he sent liquid heat through my light, kissing the tears off of my cheeks, stroking my neck and breasts, putting so much light into his fingers and lips and tongue I could barely hold onto his. His pain spiraled out of control.
I fought to calm him down again, massaging his chest the way I would have done with Revik, too. I was still holding him there when he gasped, losing control again. Pain filled his voice as he pressed his face against my neck.
“Allie,” he groaned. “Allie… Allie… gods…”
“Calm down. Jem, calm down.”
“I can’t. I can’t…”
I could feel him now. I felt myself fighting that awareness still, but his light was sliding deeper into mine, warm and soft and so different from mine––so different from Revik’s. I felt the intensity there, the will, that compassion both Revik and Balidor had talked about with him, his unswerving loyalty to those he loved. I felt his grief around me, around Revik––his heart.
Gods, his heart. His heart was huge, like a furnace in his chest. It was so full right now. I felt that heat intensify, even as he aimed it at me, that vulnerability growing softer, almost––
“I can’t do this,” I blurted.
I was fighting him then, fighting to get him off me, to get him out of my light.
“I can’t fucking do this. Jem… stop. Stop…”
Tears came to my eyes a second time. I fought to pull them back, fighting the openness in my light, the emotions that rose when I felt Jem trying to reach me. I felt him trying to calm me down, his hands and light reassuring, warm despite what I felt there, the intensity of his reaction as I tried to pull away.
Pain writhed through him, pulling on my light, making both of us gasp––
Then I could feel him. Not Jem.
Revik.
He wasn’t there, and then––
He just was.
His presence flooded my light in a heated cloud, coiling into me, washing out everything else. Immediate, visceral. So undeniably, unmistakably him.
So much of him it stopped my heart.
I hadn’t felt anything like it since he’d left.
I cried out in shock, realizing I’d lost the shield entirely in those moments where I’d let Jem into my light. I felt shock on Revik too, a slow-dawning understanding––
Then pain. Gods––more pain than I could stand.
It blacked out my vision, clenching my hands. It clenched harder in my chest as his presence intensified. Emotions rose inside that wash of light. His grief, washing over me. Loss I couldn’t block out, even as I felt him wanting to talk to me, wanting desperately to talk to me, maybe wanting to do more than talk.
Those harder feelings
grew more intense––
Allie. Gods, wife. Who is that? His voice rose, loud in my mind. It was like he stood in front of me now. Who’s with you, Allie? Who is that?
I let out a pained gasp, fighting back the fury that expanded off his light.
Alyson, I’m not goddamned playing. Who is that? Who’s with you? Tell me, wife…
I fought to answer him, to speak.
Goddamn it, Alyson. Tell me. Tell me who the FUCK that is…
I didn’t feel any whisper of let’s pretend in that voice.
He’d warned me about that, too.
He’d said he wouldn’t have to fake his reaction to this.
He’d warned me he would react, that he would react for real, that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, even if he wanted to. I fought with the memory of that conversation now, of the two of us lying naked on blankets on the floor of the tank.
But I couldn’t think about that now. Not now.
Not even with the anger coiling off his light, the hurt I felt there, that denser hurt.
I let out a low gasp, closing my eyes, fighting against my own mind.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t win that fight, either.
I shut down instead. I slammed him out, closing down my light. I clenched it tighter––tighter, cutting my own breath, making the world flat, two-dimensional. In what felt like a long stretch of me closing and shutting down and pushing him out, I waited until I couldn’t feel anything at all.
Everything got strangely quiet.
I don’t know how long I lay there like that.
Time stopped somewhere between those two moments. I don’t remember moving. I don’t remember feeling anything. When my vision cleared I was panting, sweating, lying on my side, in more pain that I knew what to do with. I felt broken.
I remembered that feeling, too.
I remembered it from back when Revik and I were first together.
Tears blurred my eyes. I was shocked when fingers brushed those gently away, stroking my face, my hair, my neck. He coiled his arm around me from behind and I realized it was his heart I could feel against my back, beating steadily but too fast, his breath catching in his chest. He wasn’t inside me anymore, but both of us were naked, lying together on the cat-smelling couch.
“That was him, wasn’t it?” he murmured.
Feeling myself tense, I fought to control my light.
When the pause stretched, I nodded, realizing Jem was waiting. “Yes.”
Caressing my hair back from my neck, he kissed my throat. His light grew harder, more heated in the few seconds before he spoke.
“I don’t care what his reasons are anymore, Allie.”
“Jem––” I began, frustrated.
“No, I really don’t.” Sliding his arm around me, he caressed my side, looking down at my face. He was still looking down when he shook his head, clicking softly as he kissed my shoulder. “I’m done, Allie. I mean it. I’m done giving a fuck about him in this. I know what you said. I know who you say you belong to. But in my mind, none of that matters anymore. Do you understand? I don’t give a fuck.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to understand.
But I knew if I shook my head, he’d probably say it, and I couldn’t handle hearing it right then, either.
Not now. Maybe not ever.
Leaning my face into his tattooed bicep, I fought to relax, to blank out my mind. I couldn’t think about what I could feel Jem telling me.
I couldn’t think about him like this.
I felt his heart open as he looked at me, and clenched my jaw.
He wouldn’t let me misunderstand him, though.
“I’ll go anywhere with you, Allie,” he said, softer. “Even after that fucking Dragon. Even to take you back to your husband, if that’s what you want of me. But you’re lying to yourself if you think this is about him anymore. I’m not sure it ever was, truthfully… for me, at least. Although I’ve been telling myself that, too.”
Feeling me tense, he pulled me against his chest, sending me more of his heat.
Tendrils of his light pooled softly in my heart. I felt the emotion there, so much that it clenched my jaw. I fought not to understand that too, but he wouldn’t let me. He held me tighter, speaking softly against my ear as he spread his light deeper and more intimately into mine.
I felt the possessiveness there.
I couldn’t mistake it now.
“I’ll go anywhere,” he murmured, kissing my face. “Wherever you want me to go, Allie. Maybe you and I will even have a real conversation about this… about exactly what this thing is, Alyson. For both of us. I’m ready to have that talk, Allie. I’m ready, whenever you are.”
Closing my eyes, I fought back another blinding stab of pain.
I didn’t answer him though.
I didn’t say another word, not for what felt like a very long time.
41
RUMORS
REVIK FELT THE other seer enter the room, although he hadn’t heard them.
He’d been staring out the round, wood-framed window set with intricate carvings of blossoms and birds, looking out at real cherry blossoms swaying lightly in the breeze where small birds flitted to and fro among the eaves. Multi-tiered silk kites swayed from the gnarled branches. Revik saw the edge of a waterfall in an elaborate rock garden that had been cleaned up and activated in just the past few weeks.
The window stood in the far south-east corner of the high-ceilinged room he’d been using as an office since he’d arrived here, meaning in the Forbidden City.
He had no idea how long he’d been staring out there.
He had no memory of genuinely watching the birds.
A very old tea set sat on his office desk, the tea inside it likely stone cold by now. Someone had poured him a cup at one point, probably a servant when they first brought it in, but that cup sat on its saucer on a wooden tray, utterly untouched.
Revik had no memory of even seeing a servant in there that day.
But the group of seers who’d just entered pulled at his light––and therefore his attention.
Their entry also brought his infiltrator’s cloak back with an abrupt click he could almost feel, blanking his expression.
Turning, he fought to keep his expression neutral once he saw who exactly made up the small group. In particular, he had to work to hide his scowl when he saw Raven saunter in, sandwiched between Ute and Hilo, her red-lipsticked mouth already stretching in a smile as she looked pointedly down his body.
Her strides altered in the same set of beats, her hips swaying deliberately over the four-inch black heels she wore. She arched her back slightly to push out her chest. The wrap dress she wore had a v-neckline that opened down to her sternum. It might as well have been her navel––or have been absent altogether––given how little the water-thin fabric actually covered. It was a bastardization of a hanfu dress, a bright, turquoise blue that matched her eyes, tied by a black Lao Hu sash around her narrow waist.
Slits cut up each of her thighs all the way to Raven’s waist, a detail Revik was relatively certain hadn’t made it into any of the traditional designs.
She looked like a high-priced unwilling.
Come to think of it, she’d probably borrowed the clothes from the consort staging area, given that the fabric pulled at his light, even from fifteen feet away.
He was so not in the mood for this shit today.
“Well?” he said, voice hard.
He directed the question at Ute, ignoring Raven completely, both with his eyes and light.
“Well, what, Illustrious Sword?” Ute said, her voice bored.
The female infiltrator’s tone was also clearly calculated to set his teeth on edge.
“Where are they?” he said, not lowering his gaze. “Rigor. Tan. The second half of my fucking military force they took with them. Am I to be apprised of their location?”
Ute clicked at him in mock distress, glancing at Hilo. The male seer retai
ned an infiltrator-smooth face, but his dark gray eyes sharpened perceptibly.
Ute faced Revik.
“No,” she said, blunt.
She executed a deep bow––so deep, it could not possibly have been meant in sincerity––inclining her head in a half-assed seer’s apology.
“I am very, very sorry, my most powerful brother,” she said, her voice exaggeratedly polite. “I inquired for you, as you asked, to determine the answer to this mystery of your lieutenants’ disappearance. I was told Rigor and Tan’s current assignment falls under strict ‘need to know’ parameters. As this assignment is deemed non-essential information for you to possess at this time, O Illustrious Sword, my request to share it with you was denied.”
A faint smile appeared on her lips as she bowed again, once more making an exaggerated version of the respectful sign of the Sword.
“Can we bring you anything to compensate for this injustice, brother?” Ute said, her voice still mockingly polite. “…A drink, perhaps? Perhaps a female to pleasure you? There must be one or two left in the consort arena who haven’t yet had that honor?”
Looking between the three of them, Revik felt a denser heat build in his chest.
He didn’t have the fucking calm to deal with this today.
He knew he didn’t. For the same reason, he needed to end this interview––or whatever the hell this was––as quickly as possible.
Even so, his brain didn’t shut off altogether. He could feel Menlim behind this, and not only in the flat denial of basic intel he needed to do his damned job. Despite the heavy-handedness there, he could feel the psychological component as well, the attempt to wear him down by throwing his powerlessness in his face.
Worse, he could feel it working.
They were wearing him down.
It felt slow some days, a gradual chipping away at who he was, in small enough increments he could feel it only when he looked back in time. Even the inconsistency of approach felt calculated to him––the fluctuations between flattery and helpfulness, deference and subtle attempts to knock him off balance.
Not to mention the unending supply of alcohol and sex, which the construct could clearly feel breaking him down in deeper, more insidious ways.
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