Page 27 of Serpent and Shadow

I needed someone who might know something about Resurrection.

I needed help.

Come in, I told him, after that too-long silence. I’m about to jump in the shower, but make yourself at home. I’ll be out soon.

I honestly had no idea if he would hear my actual words.

I’d never really tried talking to most people in their heads. I’d tried with hardly anyone apart from Bones, except in a few dire emergencies when Bones wasn’t letting me talk to him. I’d sent messages to Forsooth with my primal and with other spells, but that wasn’t the same thing, and anyway, it was Forsooth.

If the person outside Bones’s door heard me, they didn’t answer.

I stepped the rest of the way out of my trousers, and dumped them on the floor with all of my dirty clothes. As I did, I whispered the incantation I’d been given by Forsooth to open the chimaeras that locked anyone unauthorized out, and unsealed the door that led to Bones’s upstairs apartment.

Then I climbed into the tile shower.

I let out a gasp at the welcome heat. Even the pain of the water pressure felt good. It made me hiss and gasp as I turned my body around under the wide shower head, but something about that pain felt welcome, even necessary.

I could still feel him.

I’d been in denial of that, maybe because I couldn’t handle thinking about him in front of Forsooth without being in danger of breaking down.

I could feel him. I knew where he was.

I felt the heaviness of his body, a horrible constriction in his chest, pain in his ribs and arms, pain in his legs, pain in his head and jaw, a much hotter pain at his throat. I felt anger and exhaustion and a wanting of it all to end. I felt defeat on him, which scared me. I could feel his knowing that he couldn’t just end himself, which only made the defeated feeling worse.

He wanted me far, far, far away. He wanted it so badly his anger burned at me, even across all that distance, even with the ritual closed.

He knew it was futile.

We both knew his demand wasn’t just unrealistic, it was entirely irrational. No matter how much he or I pretended my connection to him was something we could resist, or even alter in some way, that wouldn’t make it true.

He couldn’t stop himself demanding it anyway.

But I got too close again, and felt a shock of that hotter pain run through me.

Fuck, Leda… don’t. Please. Please, darling…

Begging that time. Pleading with me.

Gods, that was so much worse.

It was so, so much worse.

I immediately threw myself backwards, out of his magic and mind.

I opened my eyes to find myself leaning against the shower wall, my head tilted up, my throat closed, tears streaming down my face. The hot water beat down on me, and the room was so full of steam I couldn’t see.

I forced my head off the tile, despite the painful throbbing behind my eyes.

Briefly, I could only stand there, but that was unbearable, too.

I forced myself to move, to blank my mind. I scrubbed all over my body with soap. I did it more than once, losing track of how many times. I washed my hair with shampoo a few times, too, barely conscious of what I was doing. I used some of Bones’s conditioner, mostly for the smell, and finally rinsed everything off, examining every cut and bruise thoroughly in the inert, non-portal glass on the shower wall.

By then, my fingers had thoroughly pruned.

Alaric was out there.

I needed to get out.