“Elizabeth, we can’t stay here. This is not a game, someone is going to get hurt,” he pleaded, his voice laced with finality. The weight of his words settled in the room, adding another layer to the wall that we were building between us.

I knew what happened to those who defected from their duties to Nistra. Everyone knew, even those chained to the Barrio Wall. All pitied those with the fate of the Mors Maledictio curse. And I doubted Caleb would be spared just because he was the king’s son.

If anything he’d probably suffer more, dying would be the easy part. So why was Caleb willing to push his time so close just to get me to go back with him was beyond me. Was he so determined to prove he was right that he was willing to die to prove that I was wrong?Right now, I believed he was that much of a stubborn asshat that he just might.

But I was tired of this endless dance we were engaged in—friends one moment, enemies the next. If I had become the bane of his existence as he kept telling me I was, why wouldn’t he just let me go? A heavy sigh escaped my lips as I reached up and tugged at my hair pulling it out of my bun, seeking solace in the physical pain rather than the emotional turmoil that was swirling in my gut.

For fuck’s sake.

I twisted the hair tie in my hand, rolling it onto my wrists in a circular motion, trying to distract myself from my thoughts. God, I had missed the simple luxury of elastics, they were so versatile and came in handy in just about any situation.

Elastics for your hair, elastics for your pants and underwear, ah, and the ultimate luxury of all…zippers. I swore I’d never buy another shirt or dress that had to be buttoned or tied after spending the past 5 years in Ella. I was all about jeans, tee shirts, and sneakers now, if I never saw another corset or leather boot again I'd die a happy woman.

I took one step to walk away, deciding I’d be the one to end the argument, I was tired and the rest of the dishes could wait. We had said enough hurtful things to each other for one day.

“You know deep down that you don’t belong here any more than I do,” He stated bluntly, just as I was about to refute him. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out the kitchen door quicker than my feet could match his, he had to yank my arm above my head to keep me from falling on my face as we walked down the step as he proceeded to walk me like a puppet on to the back porch.

It all unfolded in a whirlwind, leaving me out of breath. His sudden burst of aggression was completely out of character and caught me off guard. Never before had I felt threatened or frightened by him, never had I ever doubted his intentions when it came to my safety. But now, since we arrived at my childhood home, a cloud of uncertainty loomed over every word he uttered and every action he took. He was like a stranger wearing my best friend’s body as a guise. His gaze was fixed on the fields, he wrapped his other arm around my waist.

It suddenly dawned on me what he intended to do, and I gasped, desperately searching for the right words to object before it was too late. Yet, before I could even find my voice to protest, all the worldly sounds were snatched away from me, drowned out by the familiar, resonating hum of power that quickened around me.

He spun me to him crushing me to his chest with both arms, lifting me off my feet. The air was stagnant and my lungs felt dry, like a fish out of water for too long as I tried to swallow what was left of my saliva to coat my throat before that too turned to ash in my mouth.

The void, oh how I despised it. And he knew damn well how much the emptiness freaked me out. Yet, here I was, being sucked into the In-between of his otherworldly gift, swallowed by the wave of nothingness that stole my voice and left me feeling helpless and hunted.

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Goddess on the hill, letting her anger burn like a flame. I vowed to never forgive him for this low blow.

Like a fool, I opened my eyes, knowing deep down that it would only lead to more terror. And terror it was, as I found myself engulfed in a whirlwind of confusion, the real world gone and me and him a small sliver of life in the realm of the dead.

My surroundings were a blur, impossible to track amidst the disorienting ride. My human eyes struggled to comprehend the betrayal of his supernatural speed. I desperately tried to focus on something, anything, but the velocity was too great for any of my human understanding to make sense of it. The screams I heard lived somewhere behind the hum of the wave he used.

When I had asked him about the disembodied voices he had no answer for me, as I was the only one that ever heard them inside the wave. Maybe it was because I was sensitive, I don’t know but whatever it was it scared the shit out of me. And I made him promise to never ask me to go inside with him again.

As we dipped in and around unseen objects my heart pounded in my ears like a ticking bomb waiting for the timer to go off in my chest. The screams echoed loudly in my ears as they chased me just outside of the protective wave he used.

The transition out of the shift was as traumatic as sliding in. My mind simply couldn’t make sense of the darkness of the in-between and then the sudden return to this reality was just as invasive after the absence of light and sound.

How gross would it be if I up-chucked all the honey-soaked toast and wet eggs, that would still be chunky and undigested at this point, all over his chest? But I clenched my teeth, determined to keep it down because I would also suffer the unpleasant consequences still in his arms.

Inside the in-between, there was oxygen, but it was hot and stale as if it had already been inhaled and exhaled by another. I took shallow breaths, despising the dry, taste of death that it left in my mouth. Though I know we were only within the wave for a brief moment, perhaps two, it felt like an eternity to me. Suffocating in the darkness, surrounded by nothing but the faint silver outlines of the real world, like a reverse shadow show box show. The blackness served as the backdrop, while the distant silver figures mimicked the world around me, a haunting and distorted reflection that was overwhelming for an empath like me.

I did not spend enough time in the wave to give him a clear answer but there was just something so frightening behind the illusion of life within. He thought I was crazy, and so did his brother who often traveled with him across the continent without any ill effects. But to me, it felt as if there was a world hidden behind the backdrop of the shift that got mixed up with the world we lived in, and my presence in there stirred a whole lot of shit up.

Maybe he was right, maybe I was crazy. No one who ever traveled with him felt like that or heard or saw the things I did. He knew what it did to me but he pulled me in anyway, without regard to my feelings that it was somehow wrong for me to be in there. Like both worlds wanted to pull me apart in some sort of horrifying war for my soul.

Finally, he pulled us out of its grasp, and we stood on the engraved rock that had been a part of my family’s farm for generations. Gasping for air, I took in a deep breath, savoring the taste of something fresh, untainted, and unused. It was a relief to be away from the bitterness of the dead.

He released me from his embrace, dropping me to my feet, and I stumbled backward, my legs weak from the ordeal. I managed to catch myself as I twisted my body around deciding it would be better to catch myself with my hands rather than break my tailbone falling backwards.

My knee hit first on the harsh, unforgiving rock but my hands took just as much of the impact a second later saving my skull from kissing the stone.

I winced in pain, knowing that a bruise would form but the skin was intact and not broken. I sucked in a breath to keep how much it hurt to myself. Besides it seemed pointless to share my discomfort with him. It was clear that he no longer cared about my well-being after that attack.

Funny, once, he had saved me from a fall from this very rock, but now I felt as though he would be content to push me off and watch me plummet to my death or drown in the river below if I got close enough to the edge.

How quickly the tides have turned.