A Cruel Kindness

Chapter 10

Bellamy

I felt everything and nothing at once. Saw a mass of color and yet the darkest black. Felt fire and ice lick across my veins. It was like stepping off a cliff and being suspended halfway through your free fall.

I couldn’t turn my neck to see if the doors we stepped through were still there, but I doubted they were. It was just light—and then the absence of it. Looking forward, there didn’t even seem to be a path ahead.

My heart seized in my throat, feeling the horrid weight of dread press down into my shoulders. We were stuck. Somehow we fucked this up and we were suspended in space and time with no way out and—

Something squeezed my hand, pulling me out of my panic. I focused on it, taking my energy away from the impossible situation I was in—like I was stuck in a rainbow or the clouds—and on that one, constant feeling of warmth.

After a moment, I started to retreat, feeling my sanity start to creep back in. Once I did, I was forced to acknowledge that the only thing holding me to any sort of reality was Soren’s hand in mine.

It was my anchor while this space between worlds ripped me apart from the inside out.

I focused on that warm, solid force next to me with even greater attention. Put all my energy into that one, grounding moment to get some relief from the feeling of my skin being flayed from my body.

?

Soren

I’d Crossed hundreds of times. I expected the physical effects, the feeling of getting pummeled under hooves as horses ran over you. I’d always leaned into it, taking the beating for a few minutes until me and Carson popped through on the other side.

It had been pain for the sake of pain. No way out.

Now … now, there was a balm to the agony. A delicate hand wrapped in my own that pulsed heat into my arm and made at least that one single limb feel better.

?

Bellamy

I could feel my body changing, like a snake shedding its skin. I didn’t feel like myself anymore, but at the same time like I’d just stepped into the most healed version of myself.

Soren’s hand squeezed mine again.

I looked at him through the flashing lights and cruel dark. He looked like salvation. He looked like the most familiar thing in the world to me.

?

Soren

Bellamy looked shocked. I could barely make out her features while my senses were being assaulted, but it didn’t matter.

I felt her. I had her.

?

Bellamy

I never wanted to let his hand go. Doing so seemed too painful. My senses were hurting, my ears ringing, my eyes tired.

The place where we touched was warm, cared for.

I didn’t even know if I could speak, but I tried. I opened my mouth, intent on asking him something , but before I got the chance, a wind pushed us from behind, sending us tumbling forward. We stumbled out into bright daylight, the air crisp with something foreign.

We were here.

On another planet.

Muliterra at last.