Excerpts

He catches sight of Olivia Dupuis while he stands at the balcony. The girl had been grabbed by Soren Tayvren, and Caden watches, a carefully formed expression of curiosity drawn onto his face, as she looks up to see him. He offers a small nod in greeting before moving away. Let her intrigue bring her to him. It always seems to work better when his target feels like they are in control.

She follows him into the library, a room he’d taken note of earlier. “Luca Bianchi, right?” she asked, and Caden nods, the identity of an Italian heir firmly in place.

“And you’re Olivia Dupuis,” he returns. “What brings you here?” He steps back, gesturing to the books on the walls.

Olivia takes a moment to think, and Caden can feel the insecurity boiling in her throat. “Were you following me?” he teases and laughs gently when she sputters. A sad thought flickers through his head that he probably could have been friends with the girl in some other life. He locks it away before he can ponder on it for too long. “Sit with me,” he offers instead, grabbing a book off the shelf and settling himself on the sofa.

He makes an excuse about not liking the crowds, and as she relaxes, he continues to ply. How dreadful these banquets are, he agrees, an excuse that sends Olivia into an unexpected rant about posturing and peacocks and honestly, Caden’s fairly sure that he actually genuinely likes this girl.

It was a shame he would have to ruin it.

The moment comes when Olivia hesitates; when she opens up about how lonely she is at home. Caden sets the book down, drawing closer in false interest. He offers his own loneliness and something in him screams that it isn’t a lie, it isn’t fake, it’s true, he’s so lonely-

He presses his lips to hers, and as she breathes he pushes more. He wraps his hands around her waist and god it’s been far too long since he’s actually wanted to do this.

...

They part an hour later, and Caden steps away to let her have some room to breathe, to process what had just passed. He grabs his discarded clothes from the ground, offering Olivia a shoe that had somehow made its way under the table. It’s a gesture of apology, even if she doesn’t know it, and a knife hollows out the air in his chest as he thinks about what the fallout will be.

A knock sounds at the door just as they resettle back onto the couch, and they share a grin when a head pokes in to check on them. Olivia’s grin is sincere, secretive and giddy, but his is empty, and he wonders if he lets it show. Concern seeps into her expression, but when she asks, Caden simply shakes his head and smiles. 

They return to the party a few minutes later, and while Olivia goes to find her friends, Caden catches sight of Moira. A look between them and Caden nods, moving towards the door. He can hear the whispers beginning as he passes through the crowds.

                                                             don’t you know that villains deserve

Eyes moved back and forth, tracking the movements of the emerald soul as they paced across the room. The coil in his chest was gripping tighter, and a second coil in his stomach that wasn’t his threatened to crawl out of his sides. He gripped the bed sheet when he felt the flicker of pressure against the mark of his dot, the network of souls a familiar and formerly comforting presence.

Formerly.

Now they pricked at the back of his mind, and all he wanted to do was push back, just to see the other lose control. His gaze paused, brown eyes meeting hazel, and a silent warning passed between them. Don’t you dare try, the warning said, and he returned a challenge: Stop me, then.

He pushed, and the dots scattered for half a second, and he was falling.

His back hit the bed and there were teeth on his collarbone as his hands gripped hair, tugging and thrashing and his bones screamed as they grabbed the back of his neck. Push, and then it was his teeth on their neck and their hands on his throat and their bones digging into his side. Pull and his head is thrown back as he is dragged up the bed and his legs tangle with theirs and then they are nothing and everything as once as their bodies become meaningless and then it’s just their souls scrambling to gain control of the other.

It doesn’t last long, it never does, he never has the will to push further, and they know it too. Wrists pinned above his head and their lips demanding entrance to his tongue and then they are bodies again, dots scattered and coils snapping.

...

There is no screaming electricity running through his body, no maze of dots that make his breath catch every time he runs a hand down his face, no crackle of energy that makes his eyes scatter for half a second. There is no flash of emerald or sapphire as arms and legs become nothing more than hollow shells and it’s their souls that are fighting and merging and entwining as they switch between bodies. No frantic breath and shuddering ribs.

Nothing like that at all. Instead it is the warm thrum and steady beating of blood. Arms wrapped around his torso moving to his wrists and a weight on his entire body that keeps him safe. All stillness and quiet and a sure lip pressed against his own as his lungs try to escape his chest. It is whispers and choked off names and the overwhelming feeling of just drowning and drowning into the depths of emotion and yet he can breathe. 

They stop, their own powers picking up on the flare of her own, and their power hungry gazes turn to her. The smile doesn’t leave her face as she offers her arms, pulsing glitches sparking around her wrists.

Parasites, the both of them. If she were being honest then she probably would fit herself in that category. Feeding on others. Curiosity unsatisfied until all has been made known.

“What do you mean?” she has to ask. She wants to brush away the frown on his lips, the confusion and the fear embedded in his eyes because that is not a question that he would ask unless there was a reason.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, and she knows that he wants the conversation to be over. But she can’t let it go, not when she realizes that he truly does want an answer.

A kiss to his lips opens his eyes again, and she smiles against the cold skin, knowing that despite the frost, her fingers are warm compared to the temperature of a living corpse. “I love you because you are far too kind for your own good,” she whispers back, fingers dancing down to his heart. “Because you are too selfless for everything that has happened to you.”

He presses his own hand against hers, taking it and lacing his fingers between. “And what if I weren’t kind,” he murmurs, his gaze fixed on their hands. “If everything I did was for selfish reasons of my own?” He pauses, and finally his eyes meet hers.

It’s easy for her to lean down and kiss them close. “I would love you the same,” is her answer.

“Why?” he asks again.

She returns her head to the pillow, a final kiss to quiet him. “Because I’ve tried not loving you, and I’ve found that it doesn’t work.”

A full blown grin, desperate and hysterical, pulls at Red River’s lips as his hands are pushed into cuffs. The metal snaps around his wrists as the golden haired officer looks him in the eye.

“Shit, I never thought you were a killer Aiden-”

He is spread across the crowd in beautiful colors of sadness and choking fear and breath in his lungs from a smoke that gets him dizzy with smells from the lemon next door, and he closes his eyes because it’s all too much. It’s too much for him to handle.

He takes a slow breath in and takes a step, but even the slightest movement sends shocks of electricity through his body, and he freezes, his eyes fixed on the horizon because he’s all different heights at once and it’s making him dizzy he’s going to fall-

A hand wraps around his wrist, and he focuses on that, the warmth encircling write above his palms and he’s being pulled closer, electricity running through him with every step until the hand disappears and is replaced by arms around his body.

Contained. Confined. Trapped. Encircled.

Safe.

His face is shoved into a disgusting smelling shirt and one hand is wrapped around the back of his neck and someone is whispering absolute bullshit into his ear, and suddenly Caden can breathe again.

He can't feel anything, at least, nothing of his own.

The air is heavy with fear. Every breath that he takes feels like lifting a hundred pounds on his chest, exhaling in stuttering intervals. His skin crawls, invisible bugs creeping underneath the layers that he wraps tighter around him as he tries to shut it out.

He can't stop the shaking, the feeling of cracked bones and shooting spikes of pain that keep running through his arms and legs, sending the tremors down his spine and keeping him curled on the ground. His throat is stripped raw, from his own screaming and the screaming that he knew was being ignored in all the rooms around him.

Fingers dig into his palms to keep him grounded, but the sting of his nails in his own skin is eclipsed by someone dislocating their arm to get out of the phantom chains that are wrapped around his arms are shaking because a needle is being pushed into his wrist is chafed from metal cuffs around his leg that was definitely broken it had gone numb long ago with his back and they weren't his they weren't his it wasn't his it wasn't his pain it wasn't his pain it wasn't-

He lets out a choked off sob, biting his arm to keep it from echoing too loudly in the otherwise silent space.

He’s vaguely aware of the camera whirring in the corner of the room, watching his every move, observing everything. He can't bring himself to care.

Caden opens his eyes, realizing that he'd screwed them shut somewhere between hour three and hour four, the time span only clear in his head because that was when the pain had began again.

The collar injects him with some sort of neutralizer, and for a few blessed minutes, everything is quiet.

But as the drug runs its course through his blood, he realizes just how dead he is. Panic made his blood run faster, and within the next hour, the fear and anger of everyone in the other cells starts to seep into his lungs, the terror replacing air and the desperation placing its hand around his throat.

Why can't he just sleep? He wants to. He’s trying to. Why was he awake?

He opens his eyes when he hears footsteps

Hazel eyes focus on shoes that were much too fancy to be one of the orderlies, nor is it one of the 'doctors' that had been in to see him during hour two. His gaze travels upward until it reaches the pointed features of an unfamiliar face.

"Interesting," the mysterious man murmurs, taking a step forward before wincing when he reaches the edge of the projection radius. He steps back, just outside.

Caden curls in tighter.

The man speaks again to someone outside, his voice curious, but not unkind. "Knock it out, or put it out of its misery. It clearly can't control the symptoms," the man says. Resignation of his fate, an end to his life or eternal imprisonment in isolation. Caden closes his eyes again. Maybe now he could sleep.

"You'll have to knock it out for transfer anyways. There may be a use for its symptoms."

Use? What did that mean? Did it mean he could sleep now, without the dry throat and the chafed skin and the broken ribs?

"With the right motivation, it could be a valuable asset to the cause. Keep the others in line?"

Caden's eyes snap open, his chest suddenly feeling very hollow as he tries to think of what the hell that meant.

"Then knock it out."

His eyes aren't open very long.

. . .

The next time he opens his eyes, it feels like his body is on fire.

He hears screaming before something clamps down over his mouth and nose, and as he breaths in, a blanket of darkness falls over his sight.

. . .

When he wakes, it still feels like his body was on fire, burning and stinging and crackling from the inside out.

A ringing sound echos in his ears. Something is missing. Multiple somethings. A piece of him missing.

It's quiet. Too quiet.

. . .

He is silent as the doctor explains the procedure to him.

Fractures in his bones, so they would be easier to break when he needed to make someone feel pain. A tracker in his skin to ensure he wouldn't run away. An implant connected to his brain to help him control his powers.

Scratches on the inside of his veins, a pain that would eventually become natural to him.

In a few days it would be just like breathing, they say. To help block out everyone else's pain.

He looks down to the linoleum floor, fixating on a drop of blood that had escaped their cleanup.

It takes them three days to figure out that it isn't a temporary arrangement. All three of them realize it at the same time, and all three of them feel both relief and a new sense of fear when they do.

Relief because they are no longer alone.

Rod: Would you stop feeding the pigeons?

Caden: They're lonely. I can tell.

Rod: Caden your powers don't work on animals