Sometimes he slipped onto the astral plane and found other immortals shining across the vast distances like beacons, like drawing like.
But sometimes, like that one time, and all the times that had come after it, when he was able to return to that place, he thought his mother’s gods must have been smiling on him after all to allow him such a gift. Something precious and secret that was his and his alone.
He wanted to go there now. To her.
Valerian moved into the corner of his cell, pressed his back against the stone walls, let his head fall back and closed his eyes. Calm, he had to be calm for this. He’d just fed, and though it was weak, the pig’s blood gave him enough strength to send himself down into that dark, thoughtless place where his magic lived. He had to go down, first, then the magic would draw him up, pull his consciousness from his body in a dazzling helix, send him to the dark, uninhabited plane where time and distance meant nothing.
He saw something, a bright orange flicker, but he tucked his head and kept going, going, all the way to the place that he’d earmarked with a little white dot.
His projection coalesced in the wood-paneled office of a barn in Colorado. Sunlight fell through curtained windows, glinting off the glass of all the framed photos and award shadow boxes that were hung on every inch of wall space. Ribbons in all the colors of the rainbow fluttered in the breeze of a window AC unit. An orange cat sat on a tack trunk and licked itself.
And at the desk, the person he’d come to see wore pale green breeches, and a white shirt, her black schooling boots with the spurs strapped to the ankles. Her dark-gold hair, pulled back in an efficient bun, looked a little stuck to her head: helmet hair, she called it. She sat with her elbows braced on her knees, her head in her hands, her breath catching and hiccupping. Crying.
Fear flashed through him, so fierce and sudden he felt sick, even though it wasn’t possible for his projection to do anything with that sensation. He reached out, and then stopped, because he couldn’t touch her. Could offer no physical comfort of any kind. So he let his arm fall and said, with false cheer, “Well, it looks like I stopped in at a bad moment.”
She jerked, head snapping back, hands slapping down on her legs. Her eyes were red, but dry, as was her face. She’d been fighting the tears, then, working hard to hold them in. Her expression went from shocked to smooth to embarrassed to glad, all in a single heartbeat.
She sniffed and wiped hastily at her dry cheeks. “Val. Hi.”
“Hello, Mia.” He smiled, and she smiled back, albeit shakily. “Don’t look so happy to see me,” he teased, but inwardly was screaming, Who hurt you? Who made you cry? Tell me and I’ll put their heads on pikes outside your city walls.
A tiny voice in the back of his head pointed out how very martial that was: so much like your brother after all.
“Oh, I am happy. I just.” She shook her head, then winced, and brought her hands up to cradle her skull. “I, um – this is embarrassing. I had…had a bit of a fall. One of my headaches. And Donna sent me in to get some Tylenol and rest, but…” She blinked hard a few times. “I’m sorry. I’m just so frustrated.”
“You fell?” He closed the distance between them in two long strides, hands coming up to hover fruitlessly above her shoulders. “Where? How badly? Do you need a doctor?”
Her smile opened across her face like a wound, red-edged and raw. “No, it’s…no.” She turned her head away from him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
His heart pounded in his throat, quick enough to choke him. He swallowed and said, “Like what?”
“Like you care.” Then, quieter, “Like you’re real.”
But I am real. He swallowed again. “I do care.”
She breathed a shaky laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t be a very good imaginary friend if you didn’t, huh?”
“Mia–” he started.
“It’s growing.” She turned back to him, and he shut his mouth so quickly that his teeth clicked together. Her smile tugged at one corner, muscle in her cheek fluttering. Her lovely blue eyes filled with tears. “The tumor. It’s growing again. That’s why I’ve been seeing you more – why the hallucinations are getting worse.”
His hands opened and closed in the air above her shoulders, utterly useless.
“The doctors can’t – or they won’t…” She wiped at her eyes again, and her fingertips came away wet this time. Her voice darkened. “My father called, and he says there’s this…this experimental treatment…”
Everything inside of Val went cold. His breathing caught; back in his cell, no doubt he was hyperventilating with his eyes closed, his stomach in knots. “But you won’t…I mean, you haven’t spoken to him…”
“I’m considering.” She looked and sounded completely defeated, and it crushed him to see that she’d given up. Even as a small, twisted little voice in the back of his mind whispered, But there’s a chance. He could save her.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s really selfish.”
“It’s not.”
She spun the chair slowly back around, so she faced the desk, and the myriad plaques that hung above it. Her eyes went to one, dark wood with a gold center, her name etched in the center, marking her the regional champion last year.
“You have to say that,” she murmured. “You’re a figment of my imagination.”
Sunlight filled the engraved letters, set them aflame: MIA TALBOT.
He’d wanted to touch her since the moment he found himself in the middle of her charmingly cozy living room several months back. She’d been curled in an overstuffed chair with a blanket and a book – about vampires, of all things, some silly bit of fiction rot in which two pining would-be lovers were kept apart by sunlight – and he’d been struck by the urge to hook a finger beneath her chin, tilt her head back, and press his face into her clean, smooth throat; see if she smelled the way she looked: petal-soft and rich with strong blood. But as time wore on, and he at first found himself with her by accident…and later by choice and no small amount of effort…he’d wanted to touch her in other ways. Had imagined it alone in his pitiful cell, with nothing but his own dirty hand for company.
He’d never wanted to touch her as badly as he did right now; wanted to set his hands on her shoulders, knead the tension from them. Press a kiss to the top of her head and tell her that all would be well.
It wouldn’t, though. She was dying, and there was nothing the doctors could do.
At least nothing the normal doctors could do.
He shifted so he stood beside her chair, able to glimpse her face and the grave sadness etched there. “Tell me about your father’s cure.”
She blinked and her eyes slid over. “I’ve told you before.”
“Tell me again.”
She heaved a deep sigh. “It’s experimental. A drug trial that’s only available to wounded combat veterans, which I am clearly not.” She gestured to her elegant riding attire, sullied by dirt down one side where she’d fallen.
Val tried not to let his panic overtake him again. He gave a sharp nod. “Yes, but if your father’s in charge, then he can do as he sees fit.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Okay, I may not work in experimental, government funded medicine, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works at all. And besides.” She bit her lip. “Dad is…” She shook her head. “It’s difficult.”
“He sounds like a horrid man from what you’ve told me,” he agreed, and having met the man, he agreed even more than he could tell her. “But if he could save your life…” He let it hang. They’d had this discussion before. Short of shaking her – which he couldn’t do – and begging her – which wouldn’t work, he didn’t think – he had no way of forcing the issue again.