Hereditary (32 page)

I had successfully avoided looking at him properly until now, but I knew that I couldn’t avoid it forever. He was pale, frighteningly so, and sweat had begun to bead above his top lip, mixing with the blood already smudged beneath his nose. There was a deep gash along his forehead, cutting through his left eyebrow, and another across the bridge of his nose, deep enough that I could see the cartilage beneath.

He will never look the same again
, I thought to myself as I reached for his hand, the stiffness of his fingers spurring me to action.

“Alright,” I stepped gingerly over the crumpled form of Fenrel. “Tell me what to do, and quickly, before the King wakes up.”

“Drop your glamor, open the Force connection.”

“Done.”

“Now don’t fight me.”

He flooded my mind with a strength that still managed to alarm me, despite everything that had already transpired that night. He took a hold of my connection, the same way one might confiscate a horse’s reigns from another rider. I could feel it creeping closer to Hazen’s life-force, tentatively crawling across his skin, surrounding him in some kind of cocoon, until its progress was met with a weak resistance. It was the tiniest tendril of power, but it was connected to Hazen, and I could feel the pull of energy that it drew from him, even as Nareon suddenly pounced and severed it. I expected him to pull back then, but he took a firmer hold of both my mind and the tendril of power that he had broken. I tried to nudge him out of my mind, but the attempt was either too weak for him to notice, or else he was simply ignoring it.

He began to concentrate on that tendril that we grasped, and I could feel him drawing on more of my power, though it was considerably more substantial than anything I had ever channeled before. The darkness suddenly flooded me, blinking behind my screwed-shut eyelids and tightening in my clenched fists, teetering on the very edge of my mind, seconds away from tumbling down that tendril of power.

“Nareon…” I hissed, unable to say much more, as it was taking all of my concentration to stop that darkness from tumbling loose. “Get out.”

The effect was instant. Not only did the darkness vanish, but so did Nareon. I let out a shaky breath and fell back into Fenrel’s abandoned chair, before remembering my somewhat precarious situation, and shooting back to my feet.

“This can’t be hell.” Hazen’s voice was low and husky, half drugged and pain-filled. The sound of it had my mouth falling open and my eyes flying to his face.

His dark eyes were open and fixed unflinchingly on my face, though he still looked upon the verge of death.

“Oh my god, it worked,” I breathed, grasping for his hand again. “And of course you’re not in hell. I’m not letting you die anytime soon.”

His fingers twitched in my grasp, but the movement was weak.

“I know what I felt, Bea. Nareon was controlling you, and then you banished him. I thought, I’ve died and gone to hell, there is no other explanation.”

“You haven’t,” I repeated, deliberately choosing not to dwell on the reality of what he had said, but rather on instilling my words with a shaky, forced confidence. “You’re not. I promise.”

“I don’t believe you…” He paused, as if he needed to catch his breath, and his fingers tightened around mine for the briefest of moments. “Prove it, Beatrice Harrow.”

I blinked at him, shaking my head. There was a glimmer in his eye, as if he were actually teasing me, but I almost couldn’t believe it. I tipped forward, resting my elbows on the side of the bed and leveling him with a glare.

“I care for you Hazen…” I screwed my eyes shut, trying to force out my remembered panic. “I almost lost you. I can’t believe I almost lost you… If you do this to me again, I will save you only to follow you around for the rest of your life with the express intention of causing you as much pain and misery as humanly possible.”

One of his hands drew away from my grip, and I felt his touch upon my face, his finger trailing a tear that had begun a crooked, unbidden trail down my cheek. He traced the wetness to the corner of my mouth, and my eyes finally opened.

“Not hell,” he decided aloud, his bloodied face breaking into a smile.

To be continued…

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