“A noble light?” I repeated the words back to him because I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. Was I asleep? Was this some sort of fever dream from all the sedatives in the food?
His pale face turned a light shade of green. “They’re sedating you still?”
I tipped my head to the side and frowned. There was something under his arm that was . . . moving, wiggling. “Do you think that any of us would be trusted? Even with you in our heads? We are monsters to you, I know that. Do you trust me?”
He blinked and smiled up at me as if that would make what he said next okay. “Oh, not just me. There are many of us that helped to ease you through this transition. You, Peter, and Easter are special. Strong.”
I blinked, not sure I’d heard him right. He’d said Easter, not Esther. Something akin to hope flared in my chest. Would he help me? I’d called him to me, but I hadn’t been sure it would work.
The touch of his fingers in my mind was light, and he was only picking up what I wanted him to. This was better than I could have hoped.
“I would help you with anything. You are a good person.” He smiled. “I would know. There is no darkness in you.”
The thing under his arm squirmed and he put a hand on it, the black butt of it as familiar to me as my own skin. But I asked anyway. Shocked that he would bring it here, down to where the patients were. “What is that?”
“This? It’s a token. It belongs to Easter. It helped us connect with her. To help her the way we helped you. I am taking over helping her. Susan has been far too cruel to her.” He frowned and shook his head
I had never met anyone like him and his powers of mind control were beyond even that of a Magelore, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t beat him at his own game.
He touched something around his neck and I caught a flash of silver.
The wings that Bear gave you.
The thought was there and gone so fast I tried to block him from it, but my guard had dropped and he was quick. Far too quick.
“Who is Bear?” he asked softly, and those fingers in my mind tugged at the memories that wanted to surface. Not hard like the other one. There was no cruelty in him, and for that alone, I would let him . . . help.
I had no doubt he knew who Bear was, but he wanted me to talk. He wanted me to show him that I trusted him.
“Can we talk in my room? I feel exposed here,” I said. It was a risk to trust him, but I had to do it. I needed a friend.
He smiled. “I am your friend. You can trust me. I turned the cameras off in your hallway and room, so we would have privacy.”
He walked at my side, all the way to my room. I sat on my bed and he sat beside me and my thoughts were perfectly schooled. “I would like to meditate with you,” I said softly.
“Of course, that is an excellent idea!” He beamed at me as if I’d told him I was about to blow him.
He closed his eyes. I kept mine open and spoke softly. “What is your name?”
“The name they gave me is Ernest, but that is not my real name.” He gasped and pursed his lips as if he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.
“You can trust me,” I parroted his words back at him and he relaxed, as did the fingers inside my skull.
“My real name is Eligor.”
The thing under his arm squirmed again. Matte black steel.
“Eligor,” I whispered his name and he shivered, his eyes fluttering open. “I know that name.”
Damn it. I clamped down on my thoughts, keeping them to myself as a chill whispered down my spine. If his name was on point, then I knew what he was, but I would not say the word. Not out loud and not even in my mind. I’d faced his kind before, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to do it again. Still, he was young. Maybe that meant he was malleable too. Maybe it meant I could use him.
I let a slow breath slide out. “I am very well read, you see, on certain subjects. I believe I know who you are. More importantly, I know what you are.”
Slowly his eyes opened. I had leaned in close enough to kiss him, had I any desire to do so. Dark lines drew my eyes to his neck. I lifted a hand slowly and touched his left cheek, turning his face away from mine, baring his neck fully to me. The tail end of a tattoo peeked above the edge of his collar and then swept away, likely straight down his spine. The tip of it looked like feathers.
A tattoo matching my own.
“I have a mark like that,” I said, my heart rate spiking to where even I couldn’t control it. “Have you seen it?” Mine was a tattoo; I doubted his was, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t use the similarities to my benefit.
Eligor shook his head slowly, his eyes widening. “No. That can’t be.”
“Have you not seen me naked when I meditate?” Shocking if he hadn’t looked. His cheeks flushed.
“I’m not like that. I don’t look at you like that.”
I breathed in, and with that breath, I tasted fear in the air. A smile slid over my face. “Eligor, I like you. I want to trust you. I realize that you could have destroyed my mind, like what happened to Easter.” I waited for him to correct me on her name and when he didn’t I went on. “By all accounts, I should hate you for holding me here. For watching my every move. For caging me. But I don’t. I should, but I don’t. Because you kept me from losing myself.”
The waves inside of me crashed against the shore, demanding action, demanding that this was the time and the moment. I’d waited long enough and every instinct in me was rising to the surface.
“I can see your soul,” he whispered.
That was interesting. “I don’t think I have a soul, Eligor. Not with my past.”
“Everyone has a soul.” He frowned as if I’d said something to upset him. “Even abnormals.”
I raised my eyebrows, his admission as shocking as anything else. “You don’t want me to think my past is not my past any longer? You are saying that I am an abnormal?”
His jaw opened and he stuttered. “I didn’t mean—”
“I won’t tell.” I smiled, the closest I’d come to a real smile in this place. “After all, who would believe me? I’m not supposed to believe I am anything but a crazy human who lost her mind to drugs and found herself locked up here for her own good, right?”
We sat there and he stared into my face as if he were trying to read a book in which all of the words were jumbled. Even though it didn’t make any sense to him, he was trying. He was trying so hard to make me a better person than I was.
“And what do you see when you look at my soul?” I lifted my hand and cupped his face between my fingers and thumb.
“I see fire,” he whispered. “You burn bright, your soul is like nothing I’ve ever touched before. Destruction and creation in one. It is . . . mesmerizing.”
Tears filled those strange blue eyes and his whispered confession was all it took to break the last of the barrier. Words tumbled from him. “I don’t like it here. I’m always afraid. They hurt the others. Like Easter. She was hurt so much, and I didn’t know. I would have tried to stop them!” A cry slid out of him and I circled an arm around his shoulders.
The tide turned, and the power between us shifted. His thoughts no longer felt like fingers gripping my mind but like the wings of a bird. Frantic. Afraid. Alone. Bits and pieces of why he was afraid filtered through our connection, and it made me understand why he’d come to me now, of all times. I saw the boss he feared, who was more powerful than any of his kind I’d encountered before. And that was saying something.