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“It’s okay,” I said.
Two feet from the door the ground gave way beneath me, a darkness unlike any I’d known before opening up. I was swallowed into the vast, cold nothing, all light gone, and I fell, fell, fell. I fell for an eternity, the chasm was so endless. The pitch-blackness stopped being a mere cloud around me, and it transformed into emotion. I was drowning in fear and sorrow and regret, and I knew everything I was feeling was what my father was feeling.
I couldn’t recall ever having
woken screaming before, but I did that night.
Bathed in cold sweat and reeking of fear so thick I could smell it on myself, I was dragged from my nightmare by the sound of my own screams. Even when my eyes opened, my throat continued to make hoarse, rasping shrieks, like I couldn’t believe I was awake.
Surely this was some sort of mocking limbo. A temporary reprieve to make it that much worse when I was dragged back into the abyss again.
“Secret. ” Strong hands held my shoulders, shaking me.
My screams tapered off into hiccups as I struggled to catch my breath. Holden was lying over me, his arms braced on either side of my shoulders, and he looked terrified. “What the hell happened?” he asked when I caught my breath.
“I found him,” I whispered, my throat too raw to speak any louder. “I went inside his dream. ”
“Sutherland?”
“Yes. ”
“Did he know who you were?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, but he knew I was looking for him. He knew what we were trying to do. He told me to stop, told me I’d regret it. ”
“A threat?”
“I think it was a warning. ” I remembered the fear, the terrible, terrible fear. “Definitely a warning. ”
“Why wouldn’t he want you to look for him, unless he was worried you’d find something he didn’t want you to?”
I put my hands on Holden’s forearms, running my hands up and down them, feeling the hairs prickle against my palms. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so I trailed my fingers over his shoulders and down his chest, the smooth, hard muscles of his stomach begging to be traced. I needed to feel something good, and he felt like a warm Sunday morning to me.
“Hold me. ” It wasn’t a request, it was a raspy command. I needed him to put his arms around me, lest I be torn back into that dark place. “Hold me. ” My nails scraped the skin of his back, urging him closer.
For a moment he hesitated. Had I been thinking logically I’d have understood why. One second I was screaming my lungs out, the next I had my hands all over him. But he hadn’t been in this dream with me. He hadn’t been the one to go for a midnight swim in Sutherland’s terror. I had to feel loved right then, or I might not be able to feel anything warm and good ever again in my life.
“Hold me. ” I was practically crying from the need for it.
He sat back on his knees and tugged me up off the bed, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against him. He wasn’t warm, but he seemed to absorb the frantic heat of my body, taking on my temperature as his own. I clung to him like a piece of flotsam in the midst of a stormy sea, the last thing floating when everything else was going down with the ship.
Holden stroked my hair with slow, soothing motions, whispering nonsense words into my ears. “Hush, hush, baby, nothing to fear, no worries, shhh. ” He couldn’t know what there was to fear. I had everything to fear.
And the worst part was, I’d still go after Sutherland.
What I’d felt hadn’t been my own emotion, it had been my father’s, and I’d experienced it through the buffer of a dream. Whatever he was going through in real life, the volume of his pain, would be amplified a million times over.
I didn’t care about what the council was missing anymore. My sole mission was to find my father and bring him back from whatever was doing this to him.
I looped my arms around Holden’s back, trying to grab handfuls of his skin so I could bring him closer. If I could have climbed inside him like a sleeping bag, I would have. I wanted to wear his comfort like a jacket, wrapping myself in it.
The next best thing would be to have him in me.
“Holden…”
I wasn’t sure how my voice sounded to him, but to me it had never been so coarse with need before. The way I spoke his name was wanton and a little insane.
He pulled his head back to look at me, and his eyes were charcoal black, blotting out the beautiful brown. I couldn’t stare into the blackness, it was too stark. I closed my eyes and kissed him, dragging my nails roughly through his hair, anchoring his mouth to mine. He gave me no resistance, opening his lips for me, stroking my tongue with fevered, electric attention that sent sparks through my veins.
