His need was her need.
His determination was her determination.
He wanted to unlock their memories, undo Nythos’s tampering, and free them both from this cruel spell. To find a way to stop them from doing it again. To work together to escape their cruelty.
They raped our minds and tampered with destiny,he seethed.
Another slap to her cheek almost drew her out of the connection, but Balthazar yanked her right back into his psyche, their souls melding as they fought an invisible enemy inside their minds.
Blocks.
Curves.
Roads that led to endless spirals and false walls.
Leela was dizzy as she tried to find her way out, to understand the path forward, to decipher truth from fiction.
Her throat worked.
Her heart beat.
Her lungs screamed.
No,shescreamed.
It hurt. But it was so freeing, so liberating tofeel.
The net around her burned. She could feel it trapping her in her corporeal form, refusing to allow any ethereal energy to slip from her being.
Wingless.
Emotionless.
Captured.
Darkness crept over her, a cold, hard bed at her back, the soundless, windowless,soullessexistence surrounding her.
A pod.
Clinical.
Reformation.
Every part of her revolted, begging someone to free her.
But she was trapped, drowning in this cold metal container, her soul forever bound… forever lost…
Except a warmth tugged at her psyche, a familiar masculine presence that yanked her back to an existing state of being, forcing her to feel, to breathe, toremember.
This was a memory.
A wicked, dark, nightmarish reality that she’d once endured.
But she wasn’t there now.
No, she was still in Buenos Aires, trapped beneath an intrusive net of someone else’s energy.
She wanted to claw at the strands. To shout at the Seraphim around them to free her. To demand a real trial.
