I breathed and I forced myself to cling to him, to let him ground me like always. To calm me down.
“Who does this for you, by the way?” I ended up asking after a little while, as if that made any difference. But it was the perfect distraction because I’d always been curious to know. He always calmed me down, but who calmed him?
“You do,” Taland said. “When you breathe.”
“No, I mean?—”
He grinned and it was a glimpse of the old Taland that stopped my heart for a second. “I know what you mean, baby. When I ask you to breathe with me, I do it formybenefit, too. When you’re okay, I’m okay.”
This guy.
I rose on my tiptoes and kissed his lips with all my being, and fuck, it felt good. It feltgreatto be wrapped up in his arms and to have him squeezing me to his chest as he deepened the kiss, to hear the soft moans that came from him, to be reminded of what mattered.
Him. Us. Forever.
And then I also remembered that there were dead and sort-of alive soldiers from the past standing in a perfect line just a few feet away from us.
I moved back, eyes on them, expecting to find them moving, watching us. They didn’t.
Taland shook his head. “They are not going to move—and if they do, they will do so toprotectyou.”
“I know, I know. It’s just so new,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment. “You’re incredibly comfortable around them, though.” He hadn’t once glanced at them at all.
“I am. You should be, too.” And I believed him. I did.
But I still turned and looked for where that soldier had gone off to, to see if he’d returned. “Where is he?”
“Still down there,” Taland said, wrapping his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder.
“Do you think he maybe needs backup?” I wondered.
“If he does, they’ll know.” He didn’t need to explain that he meant the other soldiers.
“How? We can’t see him from here—and all their eyes are closed.”
Taland thought about it for a moment, then said, “We can all sort of see through each other.”
That gave me a good pause. “I don’t…get it.”
“They see through my eyes. We all see through that soldier’s. If he needs something, we all know—theyknow. It’s like…a network,” Taland said. “I still don’t understand how it works exactly, but think about it this way: we’re all connected to the same computer, if you will. The same curse.”
I turned my head to him, and he kissed my cheek. “So, you’re all…one?”
“I think so,” Taland said. “Though I cangive ordersto them without really needing to say anything, just think it. Just…wantit. I tested this since I brought you here,” he said. “If I think about them doing pushups, they do pushups. If I think about them jumping up and down, they do. Hours ago, I thought about them standing here in a perfect half circle around the house, keeping watch, feeling the wards of this safe house, and here they are.”
“Goddess, Taland, that’s incredible.”
“It’s…heavy,” he said. “Crowded.”
My stomach sank. “Your mind?”
Taland nodded. “I’m…not alone anymore. Not for a second.”
“What are they saying?”
He didn’t tell me for a little while, and when he did, I knew he was being as vague as possible on purpose. “Just things. Images, flashes of who they used to be. What they used to see.”
“You can’t make it stop?”