25. Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

A thousand different thoughts rioted across Remmus' mind, but he couldn't seem to focus on any of them. Agony suffused every cell of his body. The volatile red haze that filtered across his vision blinded him to all but a modicum of sight.

While every instinct he possessed demanded he shadow Ava into the wild, his last remaining thread of sanity spun a far different tale.

He needed help.

Remmus' weakening psychic energy coiled together for one last hail Mary in the form of a telepathic call to his best friend: Kaien.

The answer was immediate, but garbled. Remmus?

While he'd intended to say, ‘need help,' it came out a distorted string of vowels and consonants. Something about his indistinct reply must have tipped off the other Raeth because the healer instantly appeared before him in his quarters.

By the look Kaien gave him, Remmus was in worse shape than he'd originally believed. He felt Kaien's hands steady his shoulders only a second later, a sharp intake of breath from his best friend.

"Kai—I need—my mind."

Splaying a hand out beside him, Remmus shook his head, desperately trying to clear the debilitating fog that'd taken hold. His fingers were licked by a pool of liquid—blood?—but he couldn't concentrate on that when—

"My mate, Kaien! Avelina—she's here, she's alive. I can't—" he groaned, both hands fisting against his temples. "She hates me, Kai!"

It was at this point that he finally looked Kaien in the eye, but what he found there stunned him. Through the murky ambiguity of whatever obscured his train of thought, Kaien's expression eclipsed all else.

Fear.

"We have to get you to Nina."

Kaien's hand gripped his nape, sparing no glance around him and no pleasantries before the abrupt teleport dizzied through him. Seconds later, the healer's arm came around his shoulder in support, his friend's voice sounding in a belligerent bellow.

"Zeke! Nina!"

Flinching away from the noise, Remmus' eyes shuttered. Every beat of his heart seemed to roll through his mind like a freight train, vibrating through his skull. It reverberated down his spine and into his flesh, and he became distantly aware that his limbs were trembling.

A groan startled him back to the present, before he realized it was his own.

When he groggily blinked his eyes open, it was to find an icy blue staring back. The second Nina's fingertips touched his temples, pain blistered through him. An anguished howl left his throat.

For the first time in his life, he scrambled away from his sovereign, throwing up an arm over his face to shield himself from her touch.

"He's been psychically poisoned!"

But Remmus could no longer comprehend what she was saying. Hands gripped his shoulders; in support or restraint he didn't know. Suddenly his only clear thought was for Avelina, for getting to his mate and apologize for … something.

"I have to go to Avelina," came his mumbled words, weakly batting at whoever's hands were locked around him. "I have to go to my mate!"

Vision blurred, he attempted to stand, but it felt as though a thousand cobwebs were coiled around his legs. They tangled over him, dragging him back into the earth. Everything around him sounded so distant yet altogether too loud.

"Avelina is gone, Remmus."

Remmus wailed, "No, she's not! I have to find her—she hates me!"

Instantly, another set of hands gripped around his arms, and anger flared, hot and black like the tar encasing his mind. His only clear thought was of getting back to his mate, of explaining—of explaining …

"Let go of me!"

His strength was failing, and the small amount of psychic energy that remained within was squashed when he attempted to teleport. The full weight of Zeke's Blunting power rammed into him, and it had the same effect as taking the wind out of a ship's sails.

He collapsed.

Remotely, he heard Nina's voice shout. "It needs psychic fire; it's too deep for you to heal, Kaien. Zeke, you'll have to burn it!"

When Remmus' back hit the floor, his eyes flashed open—when had he shut them?—as his body recognized the threat before his mind did. Primal instincts arose with his panic, his base nature lashing out as Kaien and Hemin caged his arms against the ground. Terrified, he bucked against their immovable grip.

Remmus had never known truer fear than when Zeke's jade eyes caught his own, his sovereign hovering above him as his tether in the psychic network began to illuminate.

Zeke's pointer and middle fingers pressed into his temples. The connection between them flared open for one shining moment, one single second of recognition when Zeke was all he knew and all he saw.

And then the psychic fire crashed into his mind.

Nothing compared to the instant, consuming agony that engulfed his mind in a devouring flame. Devastating heat burned within him, searing away conscious thought and any remaining energy from Remmus' body.

A scream tore from his throat. His eyes frosted white beneath the unrelenting pressure that continued to build and char the psychic cradle that contained his power, his personality, and his soul.

Zeke's fire incinerated every ounce of alien poison that'd infiltrated him, but its tarry black tendrils had dug deep, and it'd begun to stain his soul.

And below the proverbial smoke, beneath the fire, Remmus' light was snuffed out.