Chapter 422: Dear Despair
FIA
TRIGGER WARNING
This Chapter contains graphic depictions of violence, including physical assault of a pregnant woman, head trauma, and threats to an unborn child. Reader discretion is advised.
I launched myself at her with everything left in my body.
Three strides. That was all it took to close the gap.
Her hand ca up again, that sa lazy gesture, and I felt it. The air around
thickened, pressing in from all sides like an invisible wall trying to stop
mid-stride.
However... It didn’t work.
Whatever force she’d thrown at Morrigan slid off
like water off glass. I saw the surprise flicker across her face, just for a second, before my fist connected with her jaw.
The impact sent her stumbling sideways into the doorfra. Her head cracked against the wood with a sharp sound that would have made
wince under different circumstances.
She touched her split lip, looking at the blood on her fingers like she couldn’t quite believe it was there.
"Oh." Her voice stayed soft, almost curious. "I forgot you have a resistance to miracles."
I didn’t give her ti to say anything else.
I ca at her again, hands up, ready to fight in a way that had nothing to do with power and everything to do with pure desperation. She blocked my first swing, her movents faster than they should have been for soone her size, and countered with a strike aid at my ribs.
I twisted away as I felt the air move past
where her fist had been.
The doorway. I needed to get past the doorway.
She wanted to take . Those were her exact words. Soone had sent her, and there was only one person who would send anyone to collect
like I was so kind of package to be delivered.
Valentine.
The thought made my stomach turn, made sothing cold and sharp settle in my chest.
I feinted left, then drove my shoulder into her when she moved to block. The force of it pushed her back a step, closer to the wall, and I took the opening. I lunged toward the door, toward the hallway beyond it, toward any chance of getting out of this room.
Her hand caught my arm, yanked
back hard enough to make my shoulder scream in protest.
We crashed into each other, both of us fighting for position now. Her nails raked across my forearm, drawing blood, and I drove my knee up toward her stomach. She shifted at the last second, taking the hit on her hip instead, and shoved
backward.
I hit the table. What was left of it, anyway.
The broken wood dug into my back, and I used it to push off, launching myself at her again before she could press the advantage.
My fist caught her in the temple this ti.
Her head snapped to the side, and I saw the opening I needed.
Behind us, I heard movent. The wet sound of breathing through a broken nose, the shuffle of soone trying to get their bearings back.
Aldric.
If he recovered enough to join this fight, if the two of them ca at
together, I was done. There would be no getting out of that.
I grabbed the girl by her hair and with everything I had in , drove her head into the doorfra.
Once.
Twice.
The third ti I did it, I felt her body go slack in my grip.
I didn’t wait to see if she would recover.
I ran.
Out of the dining room, into the hallway, my feet pounding against the floor hard enough to jar my already aching hip. The house stretched out in front of , long and shadowed, and I didn’t know exactly where I was to go. I just knew I had to move.
Behind , I heard her.
The sound of soone getting to their feet.
Fuck! Fuck!
I pushed harder, my lungs burning with every breath as my legs also threatened to give out.
The rug appeared in front of
without warning.
One second the floor was bare. The next, thick fabric materialized under my feet, twisting and bunching in a way that defied physics.
My foot caught and I went down hard.
The impact drove all the air from my lungs, and my head cracked against the floor with enough force to make the world tilt sideways. Pain exploded behind my eyes, bright and imdiate, and everything went fuzzy at the edges.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t respond properly. They felt distant, disconnected, like they belonged to soone else.
Footsteps approached. Slow and unhurried.
She knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
Through the haze, I saw her stop beside . Blood still dripped from her split lip, and there was a dark bruise already forming along her jaw where I’d hit her, but her expression remained calm. Almost sympathetic.
"I did expect this to be harder," she said, tilting her head slightly. "Considering how you were able to use your gifts the last ti despite knocking on death’s door. I guess this ans you do not have much control over your own gifts."
The words ca to
slowly, fighting their way through the fog in my head.
"You’re one of his experints, aren’t you?"
It made sense. The way she moved, the way she used what she called ’miracles’ like it was second nature, the empty quality in her eyes that reminded
of sothing broken that had been put back together wrong.
She knelt beside , her movents careful and precise.
Then her head turned, looking toward sothing I couldn’t see from where I lay sprawled on the floor.
"They’re coming," she murmured.
When she looked back down at , sothing shifted in her expression. Not quite regret, but close.
"Know that this brings
no pleasure. I am not like you. I am not stable. I need to do this to survive." She reached for the edge of the rug, pulling it toward her. "He promised you will be fine. He just wants to..."
"Please."
The word ca out broken, barely more than a whisper.
My hand moved to my stomach without thinking, protective even though there was nothing I could do to stop what was about to happen.
"I’m with child. He’s a monster. You have to know what will happen to ."
Her hands paused for just a second.
Then she lifted the rug and covered my face with it.
The first impact ca before I could process what was happening.
Pain exploded across my cheekbone, sharp and blinding, and I tried to move, tried to get my hands up to protect myself, but my body still wasn’t responding the way it should.
The second hit landed on my temple.
The world tilted further, darkness creeping in at the edges of my vision.
The third caught my nose.
I felt sothing give, felt hot blood spill across my face, soaking into the fabric pressed against my skin.
She hit
again.
And again.
Each impact sent fresh waves of pain through my skull, each one driving
deeper into that darkness that had been waiting at the edges. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe properly through the blood and the fabric and the weight of her hand pressing down.
I tried to speak, tried to beg her to stop, but nothing ca out except a choked sound that didn’t even sound like .
The hits still kept coming though.
The pain started to fade after that. Not because it had lessened, but because everything was fading.
The sound of the impacts grew distant, muffled, like I was hearing them from underwater.
My thoughts scattered, refusing to form into anything coherent.
I felt myself slipping away. I felt consciousness leaving
piece by piece with each blow that landed.
The baby.
The thought flickered through the darkness, desperate and terrified.
My baby.
Gabriel.
Morrigan.
I couldn’t help any of them if I wasn’t here.
But I was already gone.
The darkness swallowed
whole, and the last thing I felt was the weight of the rug against my face and the sound of my own heart beating slower and slower until I couldn’t hear it anymore.
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