Page 131 of Resolve
She can’t die. She can’t. I can’t live without her. She’s the only one who makes me feel whole. The only person I want to spend the rest of my life with. She deserves to live more than any of us. She deserves to live, dammit!
I slam my fist against the invisible barrier with my gift active, hoping it’ll have some sort of effect. I’m thrown away again. I think I heard something snap with one of the falls, but I can’t feel any pain. There is nothing but the sheer terror of watching Charles kill Raegan before our eyes.
“I’m going to squeeze the life out of you to make sure you’re dead this time,” Charles continues, his voice still businesslike as he strangles his daughter. “Do you hear them? I think your death will break them. Killing you will end this whole thing.”
Raegan doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look like she’s breathing anymore. She’s so very, very still.
Kellan dives at them from above, somehow sprouting wings and looking even more draconic than before. He’s bellowing for Raegan to answer him. To fight.
Jackson’s white as a ghost as he uses his gift to shove against the invisible barrier.
Aiden tries dropping the ceiling on him by slicing it up, but the fallen pieces are repelled from them just like us.
Alice and Sam are curled together in the corner, no longer invisible as they tremble and cling to one another and watch in terror.
Charles suddenly stiffens. He glances over his shoulder at Jack, then rips the blade out of Raegan. Blood steadily pours from her wound. He aims it like he’s going to stab her other side, and then he relaxes. He takes a slow breath. “Take my oxygen again, and I’ll fill her with holes before you can finish it.”
Jackson’s panting as if he’s running out of air himself. Or maybe from the effort of holding himself against Charles’s gift as he tries to push through.
“Rae! Rae, please! Open your eyes!” I activate my gift again, concentrating it on my hand as I approach the barrier.Please, work. Cancel it.I force my will over the single spot where my hand connects to his power.
This time, I’m not thrown backward.
I press harder, gritting my teeth as it pushes back at me.
Something cracks.
“Fight him!” Kellan snarls.
“Raegan!” Aiden and Jack’s voices join in.
Chapter forty-two
Raegan
It’scold.Anddark.
Am I still in the water tank? Was everything just a dream?
No. There’s too much pain.
It’s everywhere, seeping through my veins until I’m burning with it. I’m nothing more than a vessel for pain.
I’m saturated in it.
As if I’m floating in an ocean of pain and it’s absorbing through my skin, infusing my lungs, my gut.
My stomach.
That’s where I feel it the most.
So much pain.
Pain.
Pain.
“—gan!”
