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Caelan’s yelling for me. I can barely hear him over the ringing in my ears.
He kneels in front of me, gripping my face between his hands and forcing me to look at him.
“Shit. Shit, shit,shit,” he’s swearing. I’ve never seen him look so upset. “Shan, please talk to me.”
“ ’m okay,” I say. My tongue feels too heavy in my mouth.
Caelan’s hand drops to where Elias hit me. He undoes the buttons of my shirt, pulling it open to see better, and his fingers gingerly brush over the tender injury.
“See,” I mumble. “Jus’ a bruise.”
Caelan’s lips curl up into something feral. “I’m gonnamurderhim,” he says, quiet but vicious, deadly serious.
“It’s okay—”
“It’s not fuckin’ okay!” Caelan yells, the violent crackle of lightning echoing around him. “Dammit. You can’tseelike we do. That isn’t just some insignificant physical injury!” He grits his teeth. He can see me wincing and lowers his voice. “He pierced right through your soul.”
“Oh.”
I don’t know what that means. I’m too numb to really care.
Caelan’s hand clenches into a fist. “And he left. He justleft!How the fuck can he—” Caelan cuts himself off, standing abruptly. He slams his fist against the wall,intothe wall in sheer rage. He screams in frustration as he drags his claws through the plaster, tearing a huge gash.
“C-Caelan?”
For a moment he stands there, glitching and panting until the flare of anger burns itself out. Then with a disgusted grunt, Caelan slams the wall one last time and buries his face in his hands. “I can’t fix this,” he says. “I don’t know how to fix this.”
He sounds… afraid. Lashing out in fear.
He returns to my side and wraps his arms around me, pulling me against him. I sigh and lean into the contact. Caelan is warm. It feels nice to rest my cheek against him. I’m so cold and clammy.
His hand covers the wound again. “You can’t see it,” he repeats, voice cracking and breaking. “It’s like… watching you bleed out. Just. Energy instead of blood.”
“Bad?”
He laughs bitterly. “Yeah, it’s fuckin’ bad.”
For the first time, something like fear manages to pierce through my numb haze, settling like ice in my gut. I grab hold of Caelan, fingers clutching at him.
“I can’t fix it,” he mutters. He doesn’t protest about my clinginess, only holding me tighter himself. “Elias is the one who knows all the energy bullshit. I can’t!”
“It’s okay,” I try to reassure him, but my voice is shaking too.
“No. No, screw that. I’m not just giving up!” He trails off, fingers tightening into a fist. “Elias manipulates and drains energy. I don’t mess with other people like that, but I got a bunch of electric shit. That’s just like bursts of super high energy, really.”
My mind is too cloudy, ears ringing, and I can hardly focus on what Caelan is saying.
“I can give you a jumpstart. Yeah? Or like how people cauterize wounds. They use electricity for that nowadays. Maybe it’s the same kinda theory, but on an energetic level.” Since he’s rambling, he cuts himself off and takes a breath. There isn’t any choice.
Caelan lays his hand over the vivid black bruise at my diaphragm, still sticky with black ichor. “I’m sorry, Shannon. This is probably gonna hurt like a bitch.”
For a moment, everything is still. Silent. Waiting with bated breath. I feel his power against the wound,and the first touch of it feels like nothing more than a faint static shock. Then he directs his energy into me properly, and I scream.
It’s like getting electrocuted. Worse, maybe. Caelan clings to me as my body jerks and convulses against him, his teeth gritting in concentration.
It hurts. The pain is unbearable, and he won’tstop, and I almost wish he’d just let me just die instead.
It’s burning out every nerve in my body. Flooding me with so much energy it feels like it’s going to break me, overloading my entire existence.
