A Matter of Forever Read Free Page A

functionability. I’ve survived multiple Elders attacks—been stabbed, cut, and beat up—and I always got back up on my feet. But one person, this one being who looks like Jens Belladonna but isn’t, managed to take me out so easily. What stopped him from killing me? He’d alluded to how it wasn’t my time, but ... he also didn’t shy away from nearly tearing my life out of me, either.
    Like a flood breaching a dam’s walls, all the memories of that horrible night come crashing right over me and drag me into its undertow of clarity. I’d been so happy. Despite its bittersweet origins, my happiness was incandescent. Jonah and I—that was the start of our life together. The one we chose to share together. And then in a singular moment, somebody decided to try to rip it all away from me.
    I’ll be damned if I let that happen. I didn’t fight so hard to find and accept my happiness only to lose it so easily. I redouble my efforts to voice Jonah’s name, to let him know I’m here. And when that doesn’t work, I focus instead on our connected hands. On the Connection that we share. Wake up, love, I want to say to him. I need you right now. Feel me.
    I will myself to squeeze harder until my breaths come hard in exertion, all over such a simple action an infant could accomplish it. Move, I order my body. Whatever happened to me? Whatever that bastard did? It’s gone. I’m me. I’m in control of myself.
    Somewhere deep within me, something shatters painfully alongside the windows throughout the room. My entire body convulses in nine-point-oh magnitudes and aftershocks, all dying, twitching fish desperate for water on dry, barren shores.
    Jonah jolts awake during my combined seizure and destruction of glass, lurching up in the bed to straddle me as my eyes roll deep into the back of my head. I’m choking, I can’t breathe, I’m falling apart and crashing and dying all over again, and he’s got my face in his hands, saying my name again, and this time—
    This time when he orders me to look at him, to stay with him, I’m able to.
    My body aches, like it’d been at the bottom of the ocean, anchored with heavy chains to a two thousand pound anchor. Tiny tremors rattle my teeth and my muscles and bones, threatening to split me clean apart and drag me back down, but his hold on me is strong. The blue of his eyes is sky and water and love and I refuse to let go.
    “You’re safe.” He hauls my twitching body into his arms. “I’ve got you, Chloe.”
    For the tiniest moment, I let myself sink into his warmth as the tremors fade, into his solid, steady comfort before I completely lose it. Hot tears gush out amidst eerily noiseless sobs as my arms weakly loop around him, but it’s okay. I trust him. I’m safe. I’m here with Jonah, and I’m not dying. Or, at least, not dying today.
    He tells me ridiculous things, like how he’s so sorry he wasn’t there for me when whatever happened to me happened, how he feels like he failed me, and how he’ll never let it happen again. He’s so relieved I’m awake, and he loves me, and while I dismiss all of his misplaced fear and frustration, I hold on tightly to those last words.
    The door bursts open, and Kellan’s here, wide-eyed and worried and hopeful all at the same time. He ignores the glass littering the room and instead stares at us for about three seconds before murmuring, “Thank the gods.” And then he collapses back against the wall, a shaky hand running through his hair.

 
    The room fills with my loved ones within minutes, which is wonderful and sweet yet exhausting all at once. So much of me wants to just spend time right now with Jonah. With Kellan. To prove to them I’m okay, that they haven’t lost me ... but I suppose when a Creator has been down for the count for nearly a week, her personal desires must take a backseat to everyone else’s.
    There’s chatter in the hallway, rubberneckers, too, all curious whether a bomb went off a few minutes