Free Alternate Worlds: The Fallen by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

preferred to think of him leaving
and going home to that possibility.
    It would make my life easier anyway. He’d
said he enjoyed fucking me. Until he’d had his fill, he would come
back whenever the mood struck him and I’d be a sucker and let him
because of my own needs. I couldn’t allow that. I was just as ‘in’
to self deception as the next person, but I was no fool. I was
already too attached to Gideon for comfort. There was always the
possibility that familiarity would breed contempt, but it wasn’t
something I was willing to gamble on when there was just as much
chance that familiarity would breed addiction.
    “I don’t suppose a different sword would
do?” I asked, wondering even as I said it where the hell I’d find
one. There were plenty of places around that made reproductions,
but I had a feeling that wouldn’t be close enough.
    His look told me no. I sighed. “Why don’t
you tell me how and where you lost it to start with? Maybe if we
backtrack, we can figure out what happened to it?”
    He glared at me. “I have done that.”
    “You haven’t done it with me. And I happen
to be more familiar with this world than you are.”
    He was silent for several moments, pacing,
either trying to decide whether it was worth the effort, or trying
to decide where to start. “I had run upon an enemy soldier—the
Garyn I spoke of—and engaged him in battle. We fought for many
hours, for we are very evenly matched in skill and strength. We
were moving all the time that we fought, sometimes in the air,
sometimes on the ground. As it grew dark, I managed to wound him,
but I was also at a disadvantage, for we Elumi cannot see as well
in the dark as in the light.”
    I rolled my eyes at that since I was fairly
certain humans were a lot more disadvantaged in the dark than the
Elumi were.
    He frowned. “We are not invincible,” he
growled. “We heal quickly, even great wounds, but there is still
pain and weakness from loss of blood.”
    “Sorry,” I muttered, wishing he wouldn’t
talk about that since it made me hurt just remembering what he had
looked like when I’d found him. “Tell me everything.”
    It took him a moment to pick up where he’d
left off. “He wounded me, as well. Still, we fought on. I thought I
had wounded him worse, for he began to slow and I could see that he
wanted to break off and retreat until he had healed to fight again.
My own wound began to pull my strength from me, though, and
although I managed to wound him several more times, he caught me,
as well, and I think we both began to realize that neither could
find victory at that point.
    “We withdrew finally by mutual agreement. I
had to find a safe place to allow my body time to heal since I
could not know if he would grow strong faster—or if there were
other enemies around who could take my head while I was too weak to
fight.
    “By the time I had found a place where I
believed I would be safe, I was not very clear in my mind—and it
was not as safe as I had thought. The humans came when I was barely
conscious. I fought them, but I was weak and easy for the four of
them to overwhelm. When I woke again, I was as you found me.”
    I was more than a little unsettled by the
time he’d finished. I was deeply distressed. Guilt crept into the
mixture for my part in his mistreatment, but I was far more furious
at what those cultists had done to him. I had to fight the urge to
rage over what they had done, which made it that much more
difficult for me to think objectively about his problem.
    “You were in an abandoned building when they
found you?”
    He shrugged. “So I had thought.”
    “Maybe an abandoned building,” I amended.
“You don’t recall having the sword when you were taken from the
building?”
    He gave me a look. “I was not
conscious.”
    I felt like crying, but stifled the
unfamiliar urge. “Not very helpful. So you wouldn’t remember
anything about the trip to the temple either?”
    He shook his head.
    I