Brute 187

Chapter 187 

ATASHA’S POV 

“No,” I hissed under my breath. “How could he be corrupted? How?” 

I didn’t wait for Kaelith to explain. I didn’t have the strength to listen as I pressed both palms harder against Cassian’s chest and pushed everything I had into him. Every bit of warmth. Every last thread of healing. Every breath I could spare. 

My vision started to blur almost immediately. The courtyard tilted at the edges. My head felt light, too light, as if something inside me had been scooped out and thrown into the snow. My fingers trembled so badly I could barely keep them on his 

skin. 

“Stay with me,” I whispered, though even I could barely hear my own voice. “Cassian, please. Stay.” 

The dizziness grew sharper and pulled at me like a rope tied around my throat. My sight dimmed. My knees wobbled. A cold heaviness crept up my arms, slow at first and then fast enough to make my stomach twist. 

I was going to pass out. 

I could feel it. The darkness at the edge of my vision pushed closer with every heartbeat Cassian lost. 

Then suddenly, something changed. 

My ability slipped deeper into him. It was so fast I jerked forward, my breath catching as if I had fallen through a hole I didn’t know was there. It didn’t slide across the surface of the corruption this time. It cut through it. It went past it. It reached something inside him I hadn’t been able to touch before. 

My body reacted on instinct. I gasped and tried to pull back, but I couldn’t. Something in him grabbed onto me, not physically, but through that thin thread of healing I had forced into his body. 

Kaelith stepped forward sharply when he felt it. I saw his eyes widen as if someone had hit him across the face. 

“Impossible!” he snapped, voice cracking in shock. “How is this possible?” 

I didn’t get the chance to ask what he meant as the darkness pulled faster. 

My muscles gave out before I could resist, and the last thing I felt was my hand slipping from Cassian’s chest as the ground rushed up to meet me. 

There was no impact beneath me, no cold snow catching my body, no distant sound of fighting, and no air biting at my skin. 

Everything I had been holding onto, Cassian’s voice, the courtyard, the blood on the snow, disappeared all at once. I was falling, and the drop felt endless, as if gravity had forgotten to stop pulling me down. 

I had no sense of time in that place. I didn’t know if I had been falling for seconds or hours when something finally brushed against my ankle. 

It wasn’t a strike or a violent pull. It felt like fingers closing around me in a slow, deliberate grip, as if someone had reached into the dark only to check if I was really there. 

I tried to pull my foot away, but nothing in my body responded. My legs hung motionless. My arms stayed fixed at my sides. Even my voice refused to rise from my throat. I hung suspended in whatever this place was, held still by something I couldn’t see. 

Then, the hand disappeared just as quietly as it had appeared. 

Suddenly, a sound broke through the darkness. A single drop hit what sounded like a distant surface, clear enough that it cut through the silence like a blade. Another drop followed it. Then another, each one heavier than the last, as if the air around me had begun to thicken 

I tried to take a breath, needing to fill my lungs just to steady myself, but the moment I did, something cold pushed down my throat. It wasn’t air. It was thicker, heavier, and it slid deeper into my chest before I could stop it. 

I knew the feeling immediately. Water. It moved into my lungs too fast, filling them before I could force any of it back out. My chest tried to contract. My ribs strained to expand. But nothing worked. I tried again to move my arms and legs, to turn my head, to scream for help, but everything stayed locked in place while the water kept rising. 

My pulse hammered in my ears. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, to thrash, to claw out of whatever this was, but my body wouldn’t move. I choked inside the darkness. 

I tried again to move my hands, but nothing responded. The water seemed to lock every joint in my body, filling spaces where breath should have been and turning them into dead weight. My lungs strained against the pressure building inside them, and a dull ache spread across my ribs as if the water was forcing them inward. Even my heartbeat slowed beneath the heaviness flooding through me, each thump weaker than the last. 

The water kept rising. 

My vision dimmed even though I was surrounded by darkness, and the edges of everything blurred in a way that made it difficult to tell where my body ended and the suffocating cold began. Another drop echoed somewhere above me, sharp and hollow, as if mocking the last bit of air I couldn’t reach. 

I tried to scream for help, to shout Cassian’s name, but the sound never formed. My body folded under the pressure building inside me until everything in my chest and skull buzzed with static. The darkness pulled tighter around me, smothering every sense I had left. 

Then something shifted. 

A rush of air slammed back into me so suddenly that my entire chest convulsed. My throat tore open with the force of the gasp that ripped its way out, and I felt the sting of cold air hitting my face all at once. My eyes shot open before I could even think, and instead of drowning haze, I stared up at a ceiling. 

My chest heaved like I had just burst through the surface of a frozen lake. The air tasted sharp. My hands trembled against whatever surface I lay on. The darkness was gone, replaced by a harsh, too-bright blur that made my eyes water. 

I wasn’t underwater anymore. 

And as the room slowly came into focus around me, one truth hit harder than the air in my chest. 

I didn’t know where Cassian was, or if he was even still alive. 

“I’m glad that you are finally back,” a familiar voice echoed against my ears.