Divine Descent

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"She was."

He nods again, looking down, pausing slightly. "And you stopped her?"

I can hardly get out more than straight syllables. "Why would you think I wouldn't?"

"I would think that's fairly obvious."

I frown. The longer I don't guess, the deeper his expression hardens.

"I waited here for you, Cassandra. Right here in this spot for you three months ago."

Everything within me just collapses. All the fight vanishes.

I lose my ability to speak, just staring at him.

"This wasn't over for me. I know how we left..." he looks down, ashamed, "I was furious. I reacted without thought. I never meant to hurt you, to direct anything at you in retaliation. Cassandra, you know I would never."

I shake my head as my throat constricts. "No, I know that—"

"Then why weren't you here!?" he shouts passionately, bursting with resentment. "Why?"

I gape, wanting so desperately to tell him.

The six months he's had is triple what I've endured.

We were tricked. I allowed it to happen.

Words won't come. For the first time in a month, water builds against my eyelids.

I'm the one who can read minds, and yet, after a few moments of my inescapable silence, his eyes reluctantly begin to soften in wary realization. His hand on the ledge slips to his side abruptly.

"How long?" he breathes.

I choke on my answer. "Two."

He leans forward, stunned. "Months?"

I nod, once again struck with a heavy blow. The manipulation has been endless, a ploy from the start. I thought I'd found a way to conceal the panic. I haven't.

"Two months? You've been there two months?"

I nod, biting down on my trembling lip, trying to prevent emotion from escaping. I've gotten good at that. But as soon as Elijah's eyes close with relief, every angle of his face touched with sudden understanding, reassurance that I haven't truly abandoned him, I'm fragile again.

I can be broken.

He moves with determination as I stumble over his name weakly.

"Eli... Elijah—"

His hands, cold as ice, capture my face, his fingers stiff with tension. In a soft downpour, nothing like the whirlwind from before, snowflakes drift down from the black sky onto his hair, his face, his arms. He's pressed against me, and I'm looking up at him, lost for words.

I never thought I'd experience this again.

This sense of transference. A mutual possession of flesh, and mind, and body.

Possession of the soul.

His hands slide to the back of my throat, and I feel shivers. Chills down my spine.

With me firmly in his grasp, he bends his head and crushes his mouth to my own in unhinged desperation. His presence envelopes the space around me like a shield as he clutches me harder, sinks his soft lips into me deeper.

The horrors I've known, the remnants of them, blossom in my chest with shame.

To be in his arms, to feel the secure way his lips drift down, and his tongue slips through, so desperate to be within me, I cannot ignore the parts of me that he cannot repair with his love.