Allie's War Season Four (4 page)

So yeah, Cass was grateful. She felt love for the two of them...and a sharper, denser kind of compassion at all that they had lost, together and separately.

But no one would take Kani from her. No one.

She would die before she let anyone take her baby girl away.

2

PLAY WITH FIRE

I REMEMBER US on that field, in blooming wild grasses in the valley among mountains of the Himalayas. I remember what he says to me, when he thinks I can’t hear him.

I can’t hear him, not then.

I remember you,
he tells me.
Gods, I remember you... I remember you, Allie... please remember me. Remember me...

He wills the words at me.

He feels them more than thinks them, not understanding them himself.

He feels like a teenager, watching me, trying to read me without touching my mind. He wants to fuck, wants to wrap his arms around me, to tell me romantic things, to lie on me and with me in the grass, to stroke my hair, whisper in my ear, against my mouth, to confide in me, to coax me into confiding in him. He can only watch me, though, unsure of himself, his confidence shaken from our conversation of the night before.

But I haven’t left. I haven’t left yet.

I’m still here, with him. I’m watching him, too. He can feel it. He feels glimmers of my pain, glimmers of my eyes on his body, his chest, his face. Glimmers of shyness, of my wishing I could feel more of him. Glimmers of wanting to move closer, to be in his light.

There is love in those glances. He feels that, too. Lust, too, yes, but even that feels more like love... maybe love that doesn’t know how to express in any other way.

I feel his light.

It is distant then, still broken somewhere over his head.

But I can feel that part of him now. I know it now, better than I know myself. I can see the parts of us, whispering in that dark. I can see him saying romantic things, blushing in his light, even as he pours his heart out to me. I can feel the high, clear white light where he lives.

I feel truth there. Truth, and so much beauty. He is innocent there.

Innocent, and so open. Beauty in fragility. Yet so much strength lives in that light. More than I’ve ever seen in him, even in his most warlike moments on the ground.

We are children. The older we get, the more obvious that is.

Up here, we are forever children.

HE HOLDS HER hand, gripping her tightly, maybe too tightly.

He can’t help but stare at her face...at her eyes, more than the rest.

Disbelief floods him as she blinks a second time, bringing a shock of heat to his whole body. His mind fights to comprehend that she’s awake.

Gods. She’s awake.

She’s finally awake.

Seeing her focus on him, looking directly at his face with those luminous, green irises, the heat worsens, turns primal, mixed with a love he can’t control, a longing that resides somewhere past him. Pain arcs through his chest, nearly debilitating, a joy he can’t hold with all of his light. He grips her fingers harder, fighting to stay with this moment as long as he can, unable to think as he hears the others react to her around him.

They walk up to touch her, to touch her face––Jon, Balidor, Jorag, Tenzi, Chandre, Illeg, Wreg, even Torek and Oli, who’ve known her less long than the rest. He hears them joke with her, tease her. He feels their relief, their love. He sees a denser thread in Torek’s eyes as the other seer leans down to kiss his wife’s cheek. Jealousy arcs through him irrationally, so intense that he has to fight not to bark at all of them, to drive them possessively from the room.

He wants her to look at him. He wants her to look only at him.

When he finally tears his eyes off her face, off her animated face and those intense green eyes, he sees Jon. He stares at the tears in the other man’s eyes.

“Revik,” Jon says to him gently. “We gotta move, man. We’re running out of time.”

Revik shakes his head. He pushes away the other man’s light.

He brings his wife’s hand to his chest, cradling it against him, over his heart, wishing he could pull her inside him, body and light. When he looks at her again, she’s shaking her head at him, her perfect, full lips sliding up in a smile, a smile he knows so well, that gives him an erection so painful he nearly cries out. It’s not even sex, it’s her. She’s there. She’s really there. She hasn’t left him.

She must have felt some part of that, too. He sees that glimmer in her eyes shift, containing a denser wash of feeling, right before the fingers of her free hand run over his jaw.

I missed you,
she tells him, a bare breath.
So much, baby. So much...

He leans into her touch, closing his eyes. He fights for words, to untangle even some small part of his emotions.
I thought I lost you,
he manages, barely able to tell her even that much.
Gods, Allie. I thought I lost you...

Her light pulls at him, grows softer.
I’m here. You can let go. You can let go now...

“No,” he says. He shakes his head, pulling her against him.
Allie... tell me. Promise me you’ll never fucking leave me again. Never...

He tries to make sense of his own words.

She didn’t do this. Of course she didn’t.

So why does some part of him feel like she did?

Is he really angry at her?

No separations...
he murmurs.

He watches her luminous eyes as she glances around at the others, and he wonders how much she remembers, if she remembers anything at all.

He wants her to look at him, to look
only
at him, maybe for the next month... maybe for the next decade... and she seems to feel that too, because her eyes shift back to his face. Worry softly creases her brow, and she touches his face, then his neck down to the hollow of his throat. He watches her as she touches him, not listening to the others anymore. He wants to run his fingers and mouth over each line and angle in every one of her complicated expressions.

“Revik,” she says softly. “It’s all right.”

“No.” He shakes his head again. “It’s not all right, Allie.”

“You don’t need her...” she begins.

“What?”

“...You don’t need me,” she clarifies.

He just stares at her, feeling nothing but pain, a sharp desire for the others to go, to get the fuck out of there, leave him alone with his wife. He’s still angry at her, he realizes, but he can’t make sense of that, either. He won’t even try. Even so, he can’t keep all of it back.

“Promise me, Allie,” he says. “Promise me you won’t leave me again.”

His wife laughs, and as she does, the pain in his abdomen and his light worsens.

She caresses his fingers, and it grows unbearable.

He loses whatever resolve he had left. Leaning over her, he ignores the others and kisses her mouth, not hard at first, brushing his lips against hers, caressing her face. Even he feels the possessiveness there, a near warning, maybe fear, maybe doubt. Warning her... what? To never get hurt again? To never hurt him?

To never leave him.

To never lose that light in her eyes... at least, not where he can see it.

She softens her mouth against his when he kisses her a second time, almost as if she hears him. He kisses her harder, unable to stop when she returns the kiss, parting her lips. He feels her hands in his hair and on his shoulders, her fingers digging into muscles and skin. He tries to be gentle at first, restrained, conscious that she’s weak, that she hasn’t eaten, that she’s been lying there too long, but he forgets all of that, too, when she deepens the kiss, her tongue hot in his mouth, melting her body against his, pulling on him.

He groans, losing his mind when her hand slides deliberately down his body. She is massaging him now with her fingers, pulling on him, tugging at his light...

He’s half-lying on her on the narrow bed before he knows he’s moved, pinning her wrists to the soft mattress, pressing his hips against hers, fighting not to bite her as he kisses her throat. Their mouths meet again, longer that time.

Again, he struggles not to hurt her, stopping himself from ripping the shirt off her with his bare hands. She writhes free of his grip on her wrists and he feels her hands on him again, exploring him openly this time, her tongue following her fingers, and he groans, lower, gripping her too tightly.

He’d not going to stop... he won’t be able to. He won’t try to stop this...

He can’t even pretend he wants to.

“Our child, Allie,” he tells her, panting. “We have to find her... we have to.”

“I know,” she says, reassuring him. “I know, Revik... it’s okay...”

“Jon’s not wrong... we’re running out of time...”

“I know. It’s okay, baby... it’s okay. I know where she is...”

The others fade into the background, out of his light, and he barely notices.

He forgets about them even before they’ve gone. He doesn’t bother to look, or to listen for the click of the door’s latch when it closes.

He is alone with her, and it’s all that matters.

He finishes a kiss after the rest of them have left, half out of his mind.

He wants to ask her for sex. He wants to ask her if she wants him, if she loves him... what he can do to her with his body. He wants to know how much she missed him... he wants to pry it out of her, get her to tell him while he fucks her, tell him exactly
how much
she missed him and in what ways. He wants promises. He wants a fucking apology. He wants her hands on every last centimeter of his body. He wants her to understand what she’s done to him, leaving him again, without warning, without any way to prepare himself for it. He wants to ask if she’ll open her light more, put her mouth on him, if he can tie her to the bed, use the telekinesis.

He wants to apologize. He wants to know if she forgives him.

He wants to know if he can lock her in here, keep her to himself for a few weeks, feed her, fuck her whenever he wants, tease her... if she’ll let him order her around, like they talked about before all of this happened. He wants to know if she wants it rough or if he can go slow, use his light and his body until she begs...

The questions he has are many, too many.

He remembers the child, and guilt grips him.

Gods. What is he doing? They have to find the child.