Convergence Ch. 02

"Soren?" she whispers, flinching when his eyes flash a sinister deep gold at the sound of his name. A dark energy rolls off him in waves. This is not the boy she and her brothers played childhood games of tag with on the bluffs of her House's grounds. This isn't the same person who gave her sister peppermint sweets during Winter Solstice the year they'd spent the holiday at House Thorne after his older cousins had stolen hers. It's not even the same young man who'd given Aidan her first kiss the last time they'd seen each other in Solaris, the capital of Dawn's Empire, during the last Summit of the Houses four years ago.

This man is a stranger, the cruelty and sick excitement in his dark gaze altogether unfamiliar.

She takes a step back, the relief and warmth from just a few moments ago giving way to cold dread. He matches her movement, following her deeper into the moonlit bedroom. Her eyes flick to the adjoining wash room, mentally calculating how fast she could reach the threshold to lock herself inside. Soren steps forward again, and before she has a chance to step back, his hand darts out to clamp around her arm in a bruising grip. He pulls her into his chest, and she struggles, gasping when his other hand dives into the loose curls of her raven-black hair, fisting it at the base of her skull to tilt her head up to his. "Soren, please," she pants, the palms of her hands anchored on his chest in an attempt to push him away. Her frantic movements are tempered by the burn at her scalp as he tightens his grip. Tears gather at the corner of her transient eyes. "What are you doing, Soren? This isn't you! Please, you're hurting me!"

A dark chuckle rumbles through the chest beneath her palms, but his grip never eases, and he doesn't say anything, just continues to watch her with that burning gaze. She doesn't even realize they've been moving until her back hits the wall by her bed. The hand not buried in her hair glides up her arm to cup her jaw, his thumb skating across her tearstained lips as his body presses up against her. She freezes, the feel of his vile intentions pushing into her belly impossible to ignore, and bile claws its way up her throat as she tries to control her panic.

"Don't," she chokes out, the feel of his fingers sliding down her throat leaving her dirty and cold. "Don't do this, Soren, please," her words a hoarse whisper, costing her precious seconds of oxygen that seems to be vanishing rapidly. Her chest heaves with the effort it takes to draw in inadequate lungsful of air.

Another time? In another place? She would welcome this. Heat and attraction have always found their place between the two of him. But not now. Not tonight, after she watched the brutal slaughter of her family by his own. Not with this new, dark, frightening Soren.

He cocks his head, his cold eyes trailing the path his own fingers take until they circle a breast, kneading the soft flesh there. The hand at the base of her skull alternates clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing, creating a pulse of pain that mimics her own rapidly beating heart. His head dips down, and he drags his nose across the length of her jaw with a lengthy inhale before nipping at the skin of her throat. She bites down on her tongue until the coppery taste of her own blood floods her mouth, struggling to control the tremor that sweeps through her tensed body. He rolls his hips, letting her feel the full length of him and the threat of his intention.

"Show me your wings, Firefly," he whispers, his warm breath fanning across her neck. There's no holding back the strangled sob that escapes her at hearing the nickname he'd given her in their youth. He'd said that the strange, transient green of her eyes became luminescent in the dark, a pulsating flash in the night, like a firefly. To hear him use it now, as he asks to see her wings, is as obscene as it is heartbreaking.

There were only three events that would cause a Valkyrie to reveal her wings. In battle, the first spike of adrenaline calls upon them to be used as a weapon. In death, they act as a tether, keeping the soul and the body linked until another Valkyrie can guide them back to their bodies. As for the third?

"Now, Firefly," he growls against her skin, thrusting his hips against her rhythmically in an imitation of what was to come. She shakes her head, trembling violently in his hold. It's impossible to get enough air. Every breath is a struggle, with him crushing her against the wall, and icy cold dread thickening the blood in her veins. "Don't do this," she whispers, her voice unsteady and weak.

"Last chance, Aidan. Show me your fucking wings," he growls, fisting her hair hard enough to make her cry out in pain. With a shuddering sob, she relents.

She gasped, wrenching herself out of his hold, and to her surprise, he released her. They stared at each other from across the gold-washed room, his warm cinnamon eyes wide with shock. Had he seen that? During the last few trials, there had been times when she'd been pulled into memories with him, watching as seemingly random moments played out within his mind. But they had always been his memories. Why had they both been pulled into her recollection of the night her family was slaughtered, and she became his prisoner?

"You were so afraid," he murmured, taking small, cautious steps toward her. Careful not to spook her. She didn't respond as she watched him move closer, waiting to be wrenched out of his Somnolence. Something had obviously gone wrong, one of the engineers had to have fucked something up. Any second now, they would yank her free and end the trial.

"He killed Shel in front of you," he said softly, stopping when he got close enough to reach out and stroke gentle fingertips through the length of her midnight hair. She remained still and silent. There was nothing to say.

"I didn't know," he whispered, holding her eyes as he dipped his hand to capture hers. She yanked herself out of his hold, and his shoulders slumped as he took a step back. He blinked, a look of confusion furrowing his brow, and she saw a bit of Kaian Storm bleed back into his eyes. "I would never..." he started, trailing off, as if he didn't know how to finish that sentence. He looked down at his bare feet, frowning at them as he wiggled his toes. "How could I have done that?" he whispered sadly, and for just a second, she felt the need to comfort him. She lifted a hand, her fingers reaching tentatively to sweep away the lines across his forehead. His shoulders slumped even more at her touch, and when he looked up, she didn't know which man she was looking at; Kaian Storm, or Soren Thorne.

As it turned out, it really didn't matter. The gossamer-and-silk fabric of her dress began to float and spin around her, cocooning her in a cyclone of opalescence. There was the sensation of falling...

And then nothing.

......................................................................

For full minutes after the girl had disappeared, he stood there, looking at the empty place where she had been. Traces of the memory he'd been sucked into still floated around in his head, like ashes from a long-dead fire. He felt his heart breaking for the small, fragile thing she'd once been. With a strange, serene acceptance, he understood the dichotomy of his existence. He straddled the line between two very different identities, shifting between them like an ocean current.

And then there was Aidan. His Firefly. The oddly familiar girl who had been haunting him for the past year. Through her eyes, he'd watched her family die. He'd watched her cradle the fragile, broken body of the youngest child in her arms, sobbing over the tiny dragonfly wings they'd torn from her back. He'd watched as she'd been torn away, screaming, fighting to stay with Shel until the last parts of her soul drifted into the ether.

Sick. It was sick, how what had happened in the bedroom she'd shared with Shel both excited and horrified him. It disgusted him, the way he fixated on where her shoulder blades pressed into the wall behind her, waiting for the wings he knew looked like feathers carved from opal, colors shifting and gliding across the smooth surface, to appear at her back. He knew what they would feel like beneath his hand; Like the curved slice of a blade, sharp and polished and somehow fluid. He ached to see them again. His fingers burned with the need to feel how her silken skin melted into the lustrous expanse of her wings.

She had found pleasure in the events that night. He knew she had; he'd made sure of it. But it was unwanted pleasure, and he finally understood, in this confounding place, the damage he had done that night.

It was worse, so much worse, then simple fascination. That small body he'd accepted with such casual ease whenever she'd appeared, a beautiful specter in a white dress, had suddenly become familiar. He remembered how her raven black hair would flash sapphire blue under the sun's rays. He recalled the pearly scars he'd left on the small of her back, marking her, branding her, as his. How those transient green eyes filled with pain as she watched and condemned him. He knew what would have followed the appearance of her wings, and how it felt to be so deep inside of her that she felt cracked open beneath him, so deep that she would never forget who she belonged to.

He glanced around the comfortable workspace he used to create objects infused with love and given to the most important people in his life. His fingers hovered over the trail she'd created when she'd dragged her own through the dusty, dark stained shelf, recalling the look of melancholic nostalgia on her face as he'd watched her. Curling his hand into a fist, he clenched his eyes shut, pushing the unwelcomed and disturbing memories from his mind. Turning, he calmly walked out of the gold-lit space, neglected thoughts remaining scattered among the projects he would never finish.

Kai had things to do today. And just like that, Soren Thorne drifted back down to the deep, dark place.

If only he would stay there.

.........................................................

"Do you miss her?"

Kai looked up from the framed photograph in his hands, a captured memory of a particularly happy day spent in the sun and sand of a far away beach. He could still taste the salt on the air, could still feel the bits of sand that clung to his tanned skin. In the photo, his arms are wrapped around Sloan's torso as he rests his chin on her shoulder. They are both wearing such vibrant and happy smiles.

It was strange... The only part of that day he couldn't remember was the joy he felt, holding his bikini-clad wife.

Distracted, he tore his gaze from the deep green of Aidan's eyes. "I'm not sure," he murmured, frowning down at the frame he cradled between the hands that no longer looked familiar. "I think I should, but... She feels like a book I read a long time ago. I remember the important parts of her, I just can't... I can't feel her." He glanced back up at the girl, warm cinnamon eyes deepening as he watched her green irises oscillate between bright viridian and dark moss. "I don't feel her like I feel you."

She remained silent, cocking her head just the slightest bit while she searched his face. Her fingertips strummed absently over the top edge of the cedarwood chair, tucked beneath the dining room table that separated them. His skin burned under the scorch of her gaze, but he wanted that burn. He needed to feel those flames lick across his skin. He never wanted her to look away.

"It wasn't real, was it?" he asked softly, caressing the beveled surface of the frame with the roughened pad of his thumb.

Slowly, almost gently, she shook her head. "No, Soren Thorne," she said quietly. "None of this is real." Fuck, he'd loved that voice once, loved that unassuming strength that came from such softly spoken words. He had trapped, broken and bridled that strength. And yet, here she stood: His tenacious, serene, stunningly beautiful betrothed. She was scarred, he had no doubts about that. Scarred, beaten, perhaps even subdued... But not broken. That strength was still there, swimming behind her ephemeral eyes. He felt a stirring below his sternum, an unpleasant, physical sensation of some dark thing awakening.

The effect was immediate. Aidan stepped back the very moment he felt Soren fully rise to the surface, his thoughts and musings taking on a sinister intonation. Letting the picture clatter onto the table between them, he straightened and rose to his feet, stalking her across the lacquered hard wood floor. "And how is it, my dear fiancé," he growled, backing her up until she was crowded against the wall, "that I find myself in such a not real place, with a dead not real wife and a different not real name?" His hands slapped against the wall on either side of her head to cage her in as he leaned down, towering over her. She flinched, and delicious fear reflected in those hypnotic green eyes before she schooled her features.

"You already know the answer to that question, Soren Thorne," she whispered. The corner of his mouth lifted into an amused smirk. He fought down his urge to laugh at the defiant way she held herself and met his challenge, when just moments before, he'd been able to smell the terror wafting off of her in aromatic waves. A thick lock of raven black hair draped across her face, and he reached down to tuck it behind her ear, the back of his knuckles dragging across her cheek with the gentle gesture. "You're right," he sighed, threading his fingers through her wild mess of silken curls. "I do know."

She held herself perfectly still, and he was not entirely confident that she hadn't stopped breathing. With one hand buried in her satiny hair, he cupped her jaw with the other to tip her head up to his. He leaned down, drinking in her uniquely toxic scent of juniper and fresh rain. His mouth hovered over the creamy caramel skin of her throat, and he knew what she would taste like.

And he wanted to taste her again. So. Fucking. Much. "Show me your wings, Firefly," he whispered against her neck.

Her already rigid body froze solid, and the air around them shifted and chilled. "I can't," she hissed, her small hands coming up to his chest to shove him away. Shocked by the unexpected burst of anger, he staggered back a step, glaring down at a face that reflected fury and heartbreak. So very familiar.

"Even if I wanted you, Soren Thorne, which I never will," she seethed adorably, "even if you forced me, I wouldn't be able to. Would you like to know why?"

Obviously, a rhetorical question.

"Because your perverted fuck of a father and your twisted, depraved brother collared them. They collared them, so that every week, they can pump me up with drugs and rape me with a metal rod until I cum while looking at your comatose body, and so your father can come into my cell when he's bored or drunk to beat me and fuck my throat, and they can call it all rehabilitation."

He stiffened, snarling. "What the fuck did you just say?" he growled, his fingers curling into her jaw as his eyes burned into hers, searching for the lie. Aidan remained silent and still in his tight grasp, refusing to repeat herself. But it was all there in her transient eyes. He read them like he'd always been able to, and what he saw was humiliation, and shame, and fear, and pain. So much fucking pain.

A Valkyrie's wings were part of their true form, a form they called upon during their most primal actions. Fighting for their lives or the lives of their young; restoring life or ushering souls into the ether, as was their true purpose; and mating. A Valkryie separated from her wings could not survive long, and when she died without her wings, it was true death. A Valkryrie whose wings were restrained could not fulfill her true purpose, could not call on her true form, could not fight, and could not die.

Cutting Aidan off from her ability to shift into her true form while forcing her into sexual submission was pure, cold-blooded torture.

He had done horrible things to the little creature glaring defiantly up at him. Unforgivable, cruel, abhorrent things, things that excited Soren to remember, even as it nauseated and distressed Kaian, the White Knight Accountant. Even at his worst, even when he was putting her through hell in the cruelest of ways, he had always told her to call on her wings first, to show him her true form.

That his father would presume to touch his betrothed was enough on its own to throw him into a rage. Her punishment should have been left to him and him alone. The decision to inflict that kind of pain on his Firefly was NOT his father's to make.

His vision bled crimson around the edges. His hearing became distorted by the pulse pounding in his ears, and his jaw was clenched so tight, he thought his teeth might crack.

"No one touches you but me," he growled, wrapping a possessive hand around the back of her neck as he pressed his forehead to hers. "Do you hear me, Firefly? No one fucking touches you."

Her body, trapped between the wall and his much larger frame, began to shake before she could manage a small nod. "You have to go back, Soren Thorne," she whispered, her ephemeral eyes glistening with the threat of tears. "It's time to go back."

He stepped back, far enough to give her a few inches of space without letting her escape. "What do I have to do?" he asked, stroking his fingers through her raven-black hair, marveling at how the sapphire undertones gleamed like how ripples on a pond catch the rays of the sun. She stood still for a moment; her brow furrowed as she thought. Her head cocked to the side, as if she was listening to something he couldn't hear.

Aidan shook her head and looked up at him. "Nothing yet. Your Convergence handler will start pulling you out as soon as you show signs of surfacing. I can get you back to your body, but I can't keep you there without my wings. Just... be ready when I come back."

"When, Aidan?"

"I don't know. Time works differently in Somnolence. They might send me right back, or they might decide to wait until the next trial."

He nodded, brushing the hair he'd been running his fingers through back behind her ear. His fingers grazed down her jaw to hook under her chin and tilt her head up. "You're mine, Firefly," he murmured, running his thumb across her trembling lower lip. As he did so, he reached behind her, and with the strange sort of magic that belonged in this place, tore apart the fabric of space that held her wings trapped. She sighed softly, like the weight of the world had been released. Rolling her shoulders out, he saw a flash of opalescent behind her, dwarfing them both.

"We'll do it different this time, yes? No more running. No more secrets." Dropping her chin, he cupped her face with both hands, wiping away the tears now running down her face with a swipe of his thumb. "Shhh, now," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her brow before he straightened and drew her into his chest in a tight embrace. "It's almost over."

Yes. It was almost over.

And then her true punishment would begin.