“Is this real?” I asked her, my voice croaky.
“Yeah,” she replied. “And you just kicked him right in the balls.”
Not quite as feverish now, I swiped at my face with a shaking hand. “Is it over? Tell me it’s over.” But then my skin began to heat again. Not just heat, though. It tingled. Prickled. Became super-sensitive in a purely sexual way.
Worse, an ache built in my core. My nipples throbbed and tightened. My breasts started to hurt. “Oh, shit,” I rasped.
Khalida winced. “It’s horrible, I know. Just breathe, it will pass.”
Oh, I was breathing. Hard. Fast. Unevenly.
I inwardly moaned, so needy and achy and hot. Like I’d been balanced on the edge of an orgasm for hours. Like I’d die if I didn’t explode sometime soon.
I gripped the edges of my chair, unable to trust that my hands wouldn’t wander. It didn’t matter that I had an audience. I wouldn’t care; wouldn’t feel any shame. Not when the itch to come beat in my blood like a drum.
Closing my eyes, I dropped my head, letting my chin rest on my chest. I tried steadying my breathing, concentrating on the flow of air moving in and out of my lungs.
Minutes went by. Or maybe hours—I wasn’t sure. Then, abruptly, every bit of pleasure in my bodyzippedstraight to my abdomen.
And became sheer agony.
A scream got trapped in my throat as I shot forward in my seat and hung my head between my legs. It felt like someone was tearing my insides apart—severing my intestines, bursting my organs, overstretching my flesh, snapping bones, cutting through veins.
Darkness blurred the edges of my vision. I was going to pass out. Nobody could possibly stay conscious through this. Nobody.
“Fight it, Anara,” Khalida urged, a pinch of urgency in her voice. “If you sink into unconsciousness, you won’t wake up. You’ll die.”
Right then, I didn’t particularly care. I just wanted the pain to stop. It was so all-consuming, so blazingly intense.
“You’ve come this far, don’t let go now.”
But then the agony would be over. This whole thing would be over. I needed that. Couldn’t take any more of this Xalbia shit. Couldn’t—
It stopped.
I lifted my eyelids cautiously, half-expecting the pain to return. It didn’t. I very carefully sat upright, my breathing still all over the place.
“You did it,” said Khalida, a grin in her voice.
I looked up at her. “It’s done?” I asked, dreading her answer would be in the negative.
She nodded. “It’s done.”
Thank the gods for that.
Words of praise came from the people surrounding me, but I was honestly too spooked to be affected one way or the other.
I looked around, seeing many candidates still visibly in pain. Two lay unmoving on the ground while some others stood off to the side with their heads bowed.
My eyes incidentally connected with Talon’s. A glimmer of something briefly cracked his vacant gaze, but it was gone too quickly for me to read.
“I’ll bet you’re glad that you took my advice not to eat anything,” Khalida hedged.
I slid my attention back to her. “Couldn’t be gladder.”
Forty days of abject misery, Vesper had said. Still, I hadn’t quite expected this level of fuckery. Something told me that the first day wasn’t even going to be the worst. Fear slinked through me, because I wasn’t so sure if—despite my determination to not quit—I’d actually manage to keep going.
Hell.
