Free Bound (The Divine, Book Four) by M.R. Forbes

freezing. "
    "I'll survive. If I have a shot at the Box, I'm going to take it. Be ready."
    " Okay. Good luck. "
    "You as well, Rebecca."
    I focused my desire on finding Landon and then let go completely, feeling myself evaporate through her, my mind reduced to little more than a whisper. I needed to know where the Box was. I needed to stay in the house, because that was the way to find out.
    Elyse could see me with the Eye. She waved at me, and then made her way out.

CHAPTER TEN
    Landon

    We were in a house. I couldn't say where, or even when, because the house had no windows, and none of the doors led anywhere but to another part of the house, or in some cases, to a part of the house we had already seen before but couldn't connect under any string of architectural logic.
    There was nothing new about it. Nothing fresh. The house was a cliche, a tired idea it seemed that Ross had caught onto somewhere and fallen in love with. He used it in unoriginal ways, sending things out of the woodwork to try to attack us, while his laughter reverberated through the rafters.
    Ross. I'd stopped calling him the Beast. I'd stopped thinking of him as the Beast. It made him sound more powerful than he deserved. True, he was still destroying us with near impunity, and sure it still hurt in every way imaginable, but from the hopelessness of it had sprung a new kind of strength that I hadn't even known existed.
    "No attacks for a couple of minutes," Charis said.  
    We had settled into a pair of high-backed, winged chairs angled in front of a roaring fireplace. I stared into the fire, waiting for it to spring out at us, or for something to spring out from within it.  
    "Stay focused," I said.  
    It was the realization that had brought that hidden strength into play. Our fight wasn't against Ross. Our fight was against ourselves. Each time he killed us, we lost what had happened before, all the memory and none of the emotion. Each time we came back, we remembered a little bit more. Each time, he made sure to start the cycle again before we could put all the pieces together.  
    We had to stay focused to remember the parts that were important. We had to repeat them in our minds, over and over and over, until it was so committed that it became a part of the bare threads of who or what we were in this place. It had taken time to figure that much out, and in that time we had lost important information.  
    Other things, we brought back, some almost as soon as we re-spawned. It was funny to think of it that way, like we were trapped in a video game, but having passed through a door just to wind up on the opposite side of the same room, it felt like one.  
    "Our power is his power," I said. " We can use his power."
    "Not against him," she replied. "It doesn't work."
    "Not directly. What if there was another way?"
    We were both silent for a minute, each of us repeating the mantra. 'What if there was another way? What if there was another way?'
    "He created this place," Charis said. "What if we created something? Made our own monster?"
    "It's still his power that is making it. He can unmake it."
    She gave an exasperated sigh. "How does that not put us back to square one?"
    I heard the creak of the door behind us swinging open, and got to my feet. "Where is our power, Charis? It can't all be his. It just can't. Sarah had to pour some of her energy into the Box. We're almost the same as she is. It has to be available to us."
    I looked up at the creature that had stepped into the room. A young woman in a long white Victorian style dress. She looked back at me with cold black eyes.
    "This is really unoriginal," I shouted. I knew Ross would hear me.  
    "You don't like the ruffles?" he asked, through the mouth of the woman. "I mean, I know you tend to go for the ones in the skintight denim, but look, she has black hair." She reached up and twirled a strand of it between her fingers.
    "Just get on with it," Charis said, stepping up next to me.  
    "Now, what