Page 70 of Tears of Tungsten
But I kept fighting, even when things started to look bad. And finally, Jared’s light began to dim. The fire was being extinguished, suffocated by my fumes. Encouraged, I finally dared to assault him with tachyon manipulation. I’d avoided that method before, since the amount of energy he was channeling could have easily crippled me. Now, I had an opening and a better chance. Forcing him down, I clutched his shoulder as tightly as I could, reached for my core, and pulled.
Jared started making choking noises. Somewhere to my right, I heard one of his men let out a low cry. It sounded like a muffled curse word. I took it as a good sign, but didn’t lower my guard.
The heat between Jared and me increased as he tried to destroy me. It was a good thing my fumes weren’t flammable, because otherwise, we would have blown each other up ten times by now.
Jared headbutted me in the face, but even then, I didn’t stop. Unfortunately, the move did give him a minor advantage and he managed to shove me off. He was far weaker than he’d been before, but he pressed me down, squeezing my windpipe in a tight hold.
Spots started dancing in front of my eyes. My vision darkened, and then cleared again. My body fought him with everything it had.
At the back of my mind, I could feel Typhon’s anxiety and desire to intervene.“No, you can’t,”I told him.“This is just between me and him. If anyone else steps in, it’ll be an all-out battle. Selene will be in danger and I have no doubt that we’ll lose.”
“That’s the only reason why I haven’t already eaten that bastard,”Typhon replied.“Come on, hatchling. Get up. You can beat him.”
At this rate, it would be down to which of us could suffocate his opponent first. I was confident that it would be me, since my ability to heal was stronger than his and Typhon could, in theory, keep me functioning even when I had small amounts of oxygen in my lungs.
Jared’s hold on me started to loosen, his muscles going slack. I was considering the merits of attacking him with a tachyon blast when it happened. A familiar voice sliced through the air, reaching me through my haze of anger, pain, and determination. “Stop. Please, Brendan, stop. Jared, don’t do this.”
Still trapped in Jared’s hold, I couldn’t say anything. I wished I could have explained, told her why this was necessary. But I could not, and my failure burned me as sharply as Jared’s flame.
To make matters worse, Jared was far more coherent and able to communicate than I was. “There’s no other way, Selene,” he said, his voice husky and raw because of the fumes. “We have to end it.”
Selene let out a heavy sigh. “I agree. We do.”
The next thing I knew, a bright purple power surrounded us and pulled us apart. It was gentle, but determined, and it walled us in, keeping us from reaching each other again. I got up on my haunches and tentatively poked the shield with a miniature tachyon blast. No reaction. The purple shield didn’t even flicker.
I could have tried again, but I refrained and turned to face Selene. “Princess?”
Selene crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at me. “Would you look at that? It’s over now. And guess what? I’ve won the trial by fire, and so, the two of you will have to do what I say.”
“The challenge doesn’t really work like that,” Jared offered, his voice thick with apprehension. He obviously didn’t want to upset her, but he wasn’t willing to abandon the battle either. “One of the two fighters needs to win and decide.”
“It’s fine, Jar’yd,” the Great Mother intervened. “Yes, this approach is a little unusual, but we could make an exception, this time around. Tell us, young Selene. What do you want?”
Selene threw the apsid leader a hesitant look. “I think you already know the answer to that question, Great Mother. I want to go back home. I want to see my mother. And from them, from Jared, Brendan, Knox, August, and Pollux… I want them to love me.”
The request was so startling I abandoned all attempts to investigate the nature of my purple cage. “We do love you,” I said.
“There’s no one I treasure more,” Jared offered at the same time.
Meanwhile, Knox and the others made their way to Selene’s side. Miraculously, Knox managed to tame his anger, and when he spoke, his voice sounded gentle and calm. “You’re everything to us. How could you possibly doubt it?”
“I don’t doubt it per se. I think you care about me, in your own way. But assuming that is the case… Is that affection strong enough to make you forgive yourselves and each other? Can we reach a real agreement? Can you learn to fight side by side, with me, not against me?”
We weren’t against her, but I could understand why she thought we were. We’d really fucked this up. Our actions went against everything she wanted, against her desires to help and rescue her people.
My first instinct was to make her whatever promise she was asking for. It didn’t matter, as long as she agreed to come home. But if it wasn’t a promise I could keep, it would just tear us apart all over again, in a way that might be unsalvageable.
“We want that too, princess. And in an ideal world, it would be effortless to have a perfect relationship, one where we’d never fight. But we can’t absolutely guarantee that, at one point in the future, we won’t have to make a choice you might dislike.”
“I know that. And I understand that as a leader, sometimes you have to make difficult decisions. I’m not asking you to never fight with me. All I want is for you to consider every option carefully and to keep an open mind. Not everything has to end in blood, even if it does involve chimeras and Heliads.”
“Selene, I understand what you’re saying,” August piped up, “but this isn’t just about us. Do you really think you can trust these people? Can you forgive them for what they did to you?”
As he spoke, he stared at Selene’s still flat stomach. Like me, he must have figured out that Knox wouldn’t have gotten so mad had the pregnancy been just a threat and not a certainty. But Selene didn’t let that stand in her way.
“I admit I still don’t know what to think about all this. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of being a mother. I can always end this pregnancy if I don’t want it and the Great Mother says it’s a possibility, especially so soon after conception.”
Jared clenched his jaw, but to his credit, he didn’t try to tell her not to do that. “And will you?”
