Page 45 of Inextricably Tied

“It’s like blacking out. Wasted with no memory of it, until something reminds you of what you did. Memories come back. At least, pieces of them. Like déjà vu: a memory your mind can’t place, but your body remembers. When it happens again, you know you’ve been there before, but you can’t conjure it up on your own.”

“So this…” She gestures toward the tops of the trees when a bird calls, distant and garbled. “Appeared. You made it because it’s in you somewhere, but it’s not something you consciously create.”

He flicks a bug off his leg. “This is a facade. That’s why we end up back here, in the same spot. Looks great, as long as you don’t look too closely. I can only go so deep in the dream when I’m stuck in that physical form. What I don’t understand is why I’ve only accessed this with you. When I try to find it myself, there’s nothing.”

Fading light shifts through the tops of the trees between clouds moving overhead. “Maybe you need a conduit” she murmurs. “A connection with someone that dreams, so you can project.”

His shadows never stay in one place, surging and blending into the darkness around them. Her brow hikes. “Is this how you really look?”

Agony’s smile grows inhumanly wider until her stomach twists. “Maybe. You like it?”

Thoughts run away with her. Trees glitch with static, shimmering into an image of shadows against her naked body before she jerks the forest back into place.

Agony doesn’t miss it. “You couldn’t handle the real me, baby.” The word drips hot, a mockery of the way Flint calls her. “I’d fuck with your mind.”

“Like you’ve been doing for the past two weeks?” Her foot itches to step closer to the line he’s drawn. To press right up against it and drive this dream to its limits. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Darkness rushes past her. Agony’s face jerks close enough to heat her breath with his horrifying mouth. Hundreds of tendrils brush over her bare arms, a threat outlined against her skin.

“You should be.”

Shadows slip over her shoulders, dusting her collarbone, fluttering in the hollow of her throat. A reminder of the handcuffs there before. “No wonder Flint has a fit when you leave his sight.” Tendrils curl around her neck. “You’d dive right into death if it gave you half a chance.”

This isn’t real…but it’s Agony’s world. What could a creature like that do in her dreams? In this world that belongs to him? Could he hurt her?

Could he kill her?

His shadows tighten around her throat. Enough for her to gasp, to bring that smirk across Agony’s face once more, until her expression hardens. Until she speaks.

“I’m not afraid of you because you want to be bad. It’s your very nature.” Her voice is little more than a whisper when she leans into his grip. His gaze flicks down to watch the press of her skin against danger. “But that’s just it. You want it. Because that’s not what you are, is it?”

He’s impossible to read. Impossible to understand, shirking any logic of the real world. Impossible to trust, because he doesn’t care, doesn’t cling to any human emotion. Agony does what he wants when he wants to, no loyalty to anyone or anything else.

She doesn’t know why that makes her chest ache.

His teeth grit. “All I want to do is hurt things. Stoke the terror. See the fear…” Tendrils outline her lips. “Make you scream.” Fury burns the depths of his eyes, but she catches that uncertain flicker. His mouth lowers until it nearly molds to hers. “I’ve killed people for less.”

Her throat aches when she swallows. His grip bobs around it. “What the OID did to you wasn’t less than this.”

A line knits between his brows. And then it disappears, as if it hadn’t been there at all.

“Careful, little death…” A strand of her hair curls around his finger, like a vine crawling toward the sun. “It sounds like you’re making excuses for me, and Flint can’t protect you from that.” Shadows brush her jaw, sharpened to the point of a knife. “I could do anything I want to you in here.”

“Then do it.”

Warmth radiates from the gashes in his face. “I wonder about you, Harbinger. Because you say things like an invitation. Like you want me to show you what I’m capable of. Like you want to push me far enough to break you.”

She squirms in his grip, but he doesn’t mistake it for fear, his eyes flaring brighter when her thighs press together.

“Is that what you want?” He searches her face for an answer. She tries not to give him one. “What are the words? The colors?”

She barely breathes. “The stoplight?”

“Red, yellow, green.” His eyes are ravenous. “And green means you like exactly what I’m giving you.”

Every thud of her heart is a reminder of what she promised Flint. How she swore to be careful. To stay away from Agony. Instead, he bores straight into her soul.

“And what color are you, little death? Do you want me to tell you about yourself?”