Page 68 of Adam, Mine

Victor trembled. “What are you doing?”

“These are for Elias. He needs me to give ’em to you and I shan’t disappoint,” Ayan growled.

Victor’s blood went cold.

He heard an ominous swish and then a line of fire spread across his backside. Victor gasped and the talisman Bradley had given him fell out of his mouth. Immediately, his body settled into a strange calm that overshadowed his panic and pain.

Somewhere Elias was at this moment feeling very relaxed and calm. A strange pleasure settled over Victor, like a bath after a long day or the sea after a full day of sun.

Victor went slack. He could feel Ayan behind him doing his absolute worst, but somehow in this calm it didn’t matter. His shouts were second to this, and for the first time ever Victor was thankful he and Elias were sharing emotions.

In a daze, he wondered if it went both ways. He couldn’t bear it if Elias was feeling Ayan’s rage instead of him, if he ruined whatever was making Elias feel so good. That thought cleared his head at once.

He could feel the whippings slowing behind him. He reached down and plucked the piece of gold from the ground, slipping it in between his lips.

Immediately, his own pain came roaring through, and his reality slammed back into focus. He groaned.

“Let that be a lesson to ya,” Ayan said. “Now go.”

Victor stumbled as Ayan released the leather around his neck. “You saw Elias?”

Ayan huffed. “He’s looking for ye boyo, and after the tale he told, I hope he finds ye. Now get out of my home. Ye can’t stay here.”

Moira rushed from the house. “Can’t you give him a moment to get his bearings?”

“I won’t have another murderer in the house with Isla, and that’s the last of it!” Ayan roared. He whirled on Victor. “Get! Out!”

Victor didn’t need to be told again. He scrambled the rest of the way over Ayan’s fence and ran.

He took a carriage out of town. He didn’t want to lodge too closely to Ayan and risk running into him again. His boat tickets for Ireland weren’t good for a few days anyway.

Besides that, he needed to rest. His chest was starting to make some alarming wheezing sounds when he breathed, and if he walked for too long, he felt faint.

No amount of beef and soup made him feel strong for more than the hour after he consumed them, and he was able to count his ribs.

Victor curled up on these Scottish linens and willed his back to stop hurting. Hoped again that Elias couldn’t feel the pain on his end.

Hung

This morning was more excruciating than others.

Talisman inches from his mouth, Victor felt his agonies layered anew.

His back was on fire, bruised and mottled when he looked at it in the mirror. The hollows beneath his eyes matched in purple and green. Standing made him feel as dizzy as he had that very first night. Before he knew what was happening, before he knew what he’d done.

He wanted to curl into a ball and not move. Just sink into this mattress and cease to be.

Victor left the talisman on the table and closed his eyes.

Elias, wherever he was, had settled. His fear and anger had abated into something more like sorrow or depression. There were still spikes of anxiety, but fresh pain didn’t wrack him like it had once before.

Victor closed his eyes and tried to push feelings of remorse through the bond, but he had no way of knowing if Elias received them.

He then tried to push soothing through the bond and received back a push of extreme anxiety and then pain again. Bad enough that Victor gasped and curled even tighter.

Elias was so sad right now that tears sprang to Victor’s own eyes. He let the waves of Elias’s sorrow wash over him.

Victor was rarely sad, but when he was, he felt it in his face close to his eyes and in his stomach when he knew he was at fault.