Page 15 of Hunted By the Wraiths
I pulled away. Had to. Couldn’t breathe past the pain. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t function. Fell back against the cot, gasping, vision white, tasting copper and failure.
The roar that tore out of me was involuntary. Animal. Pain given voice.
No. Not happening. Not failing this. Not again.
Forced myself still. Forced the roar to stop. Forced breathing back under control. In. Out. In. Out. Oxygen. Required for consciousness. Focus on that.
The pain didn’t recede. Just stabilized at unbearable.
Maris was still there, kneeling beside the cot, hands hovering like she wanted to touch but knew better.
“I’m okay.” Lie. Obvious lie. “Just need—” Stopped. What did I need? To not be broken? Couldn’t have that. “Minute. Need a minute.”
“Thoryn…”
“My fault. Not yours.” Important she understood that. “Tried to push through. Body disagreed. Violently. Should have…” Stopped. Should have what? Not kissed her? Unacceptable option. “Known better. Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing for being tortured.”
“Not apologizing for that. Apologizing for—” Gesture at myself. At the locked scales, the visible tremors, the complete disaster. “This. Being broken. Failing.”
“You didn’t fail.”
“Can’t even kiss you properly without my body trying to tear itself apart. That’s failure.”
I pulled her closer. Stupid. Proximity would make it worse. But I did it anyway. And she reached out. Took my hand. The one that wasn’t locked around my own ribcage trying to hold myself together.
The contact spiked the pain again. But her hand was warm and real and anchoring.
“Listen to me.” Her voice was firm. The commander voice. The queen giving orders. “This isn’t failure. This is you fighting through eight years of torture and still trying. Still choosing this. Choosing me. Despite the consequences. That’s not weakness. That’s—” She stopped. Breath shook. “That’s the strongest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I didn’t feel strong. Felt broken and useless and like a liability. But her hand was in mine and she hadn’t run and that mattered.
“We’ll find a way,” she said. Promise. Determination. “The Consortium broke something. We’ll figure out how to fix it. Or work around it. Or—” She tightened her grip on my hand. “Something. We’ll figure it out.”
The word hit me. We’ll. Not ‘you’ or ‘I’. We. All those years apart.
Most of them I’d spent broken and alone. She’d spent them growing powerful, but still alone.
Now we were... not alone. Still broken. Still in this mess. But not alone.
Could work around that. Could function. Could fight.
“We’ll figure it out,” I repeated. Voice raw. “Okay.”
She didn’t let go of her hand. Just sat there on the floor beside the cot, holding on while the pain slowly, incrementally, backed down from catastrophic to merely terrible.
The depot was quiet except for our breathing and the drip of condensation. Outside, the Consortium was hunting us. Inside, we were damaged and desperate and barely holding together.
But her hand was in mine. Real. Warm. Anchoring.
Good enough.
MARIS
I’d spent almost a decade building walls to keep everyone out, and he’d just walked through them, all while admitting it was agony. I didn’t know how to process that. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was too big. Too dangerous.
I shoved it down. I forced the feeling into a box, locked it, and put it on a shelf. Later. I could deal with that later.
