Chapter 31
31
Toorin
Darwin laid a hand on Juniper’s shoulder. I loved how big-brother protective he was of her, but that barely settled my outrage.
“We told him Toorin was the cousin to the Serenity Province’s chancellor,” Darwin said.
Because the Serenity Province was relatively close to the Tranquility Province and Toonu, my sire had had the chancellor to the residence on many occasions. “The chancellor’s sire had no siblings. He has no cousins.”
They all turned to me.
“What?”
“I doubt anyone out here knows the chancellor couldn’t have a cousin,” Bodie said.
I reached for Marc’s hand. “Sorry.”
I needed to clarify what was said to make sure Marc was safe. After finding the chancellor guard way beyond the bounds of Toonu searching for Marc, I wouldn’t be shocked to find a few here. If we had time to make it here, they could have, too. “So, they think I’m related to a chancellor in a province they’re likely never to visit?”
“Yes,” Juniper said. “And clearly, he believes it. We told him you didn’t want untold attention and not to bow, but…” She tossed her hands at us, indicating our minor freakout, and I relaxed.
Marc pulled his hand free and shook it to regain circulation.
Wrapping an arm around Marc’s neck, I pulled him close and said, “Sorry about your hand.”
“Why are you apologizing to him?” Juniper asked. “We’re the ones you accused of being as bloody dense as a nut sack on a—”
The door cracked, and Siv stepped in, holding the door open. No one followed. He stuck his head out and then straightened. “The doctor is here.”
Something thumped against the wall in the hallway. Siv cursed. “Stop running her into walls.” To Lyric, he said, “Hold the door.”
Lyric held the door, and Siv stepped into the hall and wheeled in an old woman in a chair. She had white hair, brown skin, and a clear tube draping over her ears and riding under her nose.
I was about to tell them they had the wrong room when the woman said, “You must be—”
Stepping forward, I reached out a hand as if I didn’t want her to say my name out loud. “Toorin.”
She had a slight, knowing tilt to her lips as if we were all in on the same secret. “Of course. Toorin . I guess that explains the entourage…” She looked us all up and down. “And the costumes.”
Hey, if she wanted to believe we’d come up with these clothes to hide our true identity and that my crew was part of some chancellor guard, I’d let her. To be fair, they were armed better than some of the guards I’d seen.
“How can I serve?” she asked.
How can I serve? I glanced at Marc. Was this the deference he’d lived with his entire life? She didn’t say it in a way that made me feel like she’d only help if it didn’t inconvenience her, but as if she would do whatever I asked, no matter the cost.
I didn’t mind being a captain or giving orders. But my crew was as likely to tell me to fuck off before following a command, and I liked it that way.
Instead of giving me any kind of look I could interpret, Marc turned to her and said, “A reaper stole his heart and gave it to me, and now I want to return it.”
She glanced between the two of us, clearly confused as to why the reapers had targeted the cousin of a chancellor, but I’m sure she’d seen stranger things.
She turned to Siv, who said, “Your next transplant has had a bit of a… setback. You have a little time before surgery starts.”
Sitting back, she refocused on me. “Tell me more.”
Out in the hall came a bunch of shouting. Something hit the wall and shook the room.
Bodie stepped toward the door. “Keep going. I’ll see what’s going on.”
“It’s nothing,” Siv said as if disturbances like that happened all the time.
As the shouts started receding down the hall, Darwin said, “I’m going with him.”
Juniper and Lyric stayed behind. Maybe they feared they’d have to step in if I didn’t tell the doctor the full truth. Before I could say anything, Darwin and Bodie returned with their eyes wide. Bodie shook his head when I caught his eye and stepped to the back of the room, where he and Darwin leaned against the wall with the others.
I’d have to get the details later. Right now, I had a promise to Marc to fulfill.
“The reapers replaced my heart with a faulty mechanical one and—”
“You’re lucky they didn’t leave you for dead,” Siv said. The doctor glared at him, and he added a hasty “Sorry.”
Mostly, I agreed with him. If they had, I never would have found Marc, but on the other hand, now that I’d found him, the thought of losing him sent sharp, stabby pains through my chest and made my bowels weak.
Juniper jumped in. “It keeps giving out on him. The last time, we almost couldn’t get it restarted.”
The doctor took her stethoscope from around her neck and gestured to the single chair in the corner. “Pull up the chair and have a seat.”
Lyric pulled it over, the four legs dragging and skittering across the floor. I pulled off my shirt and sat. She took in the puckered scar on my chest as if she wanted to roll her eyes at the hack job the reapers had done.
She listened intently to the whirrs and clicks in my chest. She listened from the front and then behind. Eventually, she straightened without comment, pointed at Marc, and said, “Now him.”
Marc and I switched places, and she examined him as thoroughly as she had me. When she’d finished, she laid her stethoscope in her lap and rolled a foot or two back.
Before she could speak, Bodie said, “Can you do it?”
“Of course, I can do it,” she said. Turning to Siv, she said, “We have room on the schedule for the day after tomorrow, yes? I think the Hercules, the 210 model will do fine for the donor.”
“Yes, doctor,” he said. “We should have that model in stock.”
Wait. Wait. Two days? Model what the fuck ?
Everything was happening too fast. I didn’t like it, not one bit. My competing emotions had me feeling like I was being tossed on the IP in the middle of a winter gale. I slipped my fingers through Marc’s. I needed that touch, that connection to ground me.
I held up my other hand. “Hold on a minute. We didn’t finish explaining. We can’t—I mean, he has—”
Marc squeezed my hand as my words failed me as they fought to fall from my mouth in a jumble. “What he’s trying to say is I have an autograft heart ready to go. I have the metalloprotease enzyme, which makes mechanical hearts…”
“Incompatible with life,” the doctor finished for him.
“Yes!” I said, glad someone finally understood.
“I can work with that,” she said.
“Doctor,” Siv interrupted, “it’s time to prepare for surgery.”
She waved him off. “Yes, yes, I know.”
The doctor started rolling backward, and Siv caught the door for her. “Make sure the heart is here on surgery day and—”
Marc paled. “My heart is in Toonu.” The steadiness in Marc’s voice slipped. “We were ho-hoping…”
Bodie, who was never afraid to speak his mind, spoke up now. “We want you to return to Toonu with us and do the surgery there.”
As fanciful as our plan had sounded before, it sounded even more preposterous when said in front of the doctor.
“That’s impossible,” the doctor backed toward the door.
Those words slapped. Knocking our hopes so far down she’d roll over them on the way out.
“Even for Chancellor Toft’s spawn?” Juniper spat out.
“ Juniper ,” I admonished. What in the bloody stars had she been thinking?
Instead of shrinking back, she came forward. “What? I’m not letting her go until she knows the truth.” She pointed to me. “He’s a captain of a scrapper boat.” Then she pointed to Marc. “He’s a chancellor’s spawn. We wanted to protect him. He’s the only heir to the Tranquility province. You have to do this.”
The doctor’s face softened. None of us would like what came out of her mouth next. I saw it. The rest of the crew saw it. Juniper didn’t. She still had that hope in her eyes, and I wanted to give her those last couple of seconds to believe in all the possibilities. Bodie rested his hands on her shoulders.
“If only I were younger,” the doctor said. Then she reached back and pulled a length of the clear tubing around for Juniper to see. “I’m tethered to the oxygen. I can’t leave the hospital for more than a few hours at a time, much less travel to Toonu. We don’t have the technology anymore. I’m sorry.”
When she said it, I genuinely felt the words were true and not meant to placate us.
“We could give Marc another donor heart,” the doctor said. “They cost many credits, but I’m sure for the right price—”
“ No . Wait.” Marc shook my hand free and squeezed his temples with both palms before letting go. “I don’t want a donor heart. I never even wanted this one!”
“Then the only other option is to give Toorin a new mechanical heart. But with the damage the bad one has undoubtedly caused, the chances of him surviving with another mechanical heart is… low,” the doctor said.
“I’m okay with that risk. It’s acceptable.”
Marc rounded on me. “To who?”
His eyes locked on mine. The desperation in them nearly made my brain forget I needed it to hold me up. I knew he was trying to save me, but all I needed in this world was to save him .
Marcelis
“Give us a minute.” Toorin’s eyes never left mine.
No one argued, grumbled, or had a comment to share. They departed as silently as the breath I slowly released.
I opened my mouth, and he shut me up with a finger to my lips, leaving so much I wanted to say boiling up the back of my throat. I had to swallow or risk choking on all the heavy words.
When all I wanted to do was convince him to take back his heart, he pulled me into him and held me tight. How could I not do everything in my power to give this man what he so deserved?
We wept in each other’s embrace until our breaths stopped hitching, and our tears nearly quit falling. He kissed the soft curve of my neck and pulled back, brushing the moisture from my cheeks with his thumbs. More took their place.
I had a lifetime of pent-up tears to replace them.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice a fraction of its usual boisterous timber.
I did.
“I love you. More than anything. Understand?”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was too tight to function. What he didn’t understand was that I felt the same. I tried to clear my throat, and a sob broke free.
His lips drew up in that soft smile that always made them irresistible. So I gave in and kissed him, tasting the salt on his lips and the truth in his words.
I never knew love could hurt like this.
I cleared my throat again, my eyes on his. Then his focus shifted and—
No.
No, no, no no no .
Toorin’s smile faltered, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. I caught him on the way down as my shout came from deep within. Strangled. Terrified. Primal.
Bodie ran into the room and hollered, “Someone get a doctor!”
He slid to the floor next to Toorin and pushed me aside as my blow to Toorin’s chest landed with no effect, my unchecked tears making Toorin blurry and my aim off.
Someone else entered and shouted, “Call in a resusc team.”
After that, time slowed. Then sped. Then warped. Vaguely, I became aware of someone holding me back as they loaded Toorin onto a gurney and rolled him out of the room.
“Is he alive? Is he alive?” I screamed as the door closed behind them.
“Marc. Marc .” Bodie took me by the shoulders and shook me.
He had to shake me again with enough force that the brain in my head rattled before I tore my eyes off the door.
“They’re doing everything they can,” he said, his voice steady though by the look in his eyes, it was just . “This couldn’t have happened at a better place. Promise.”
He was right. “I need to see him. I need to see him now.”
“We have to wait. We have to let them do their job. Right now, you’d only be in the way.”
In the corner, Juniper sat with her face in her hands, and Darwin and Lyric were doing everything they could to comfort her.
I hugged my stomach and tasted my soured breakfast at the back of my throat.
Bodie pulled the chair over and sat me down before my legs gave out.
Torrin couldn’t die now.
Not when we’d come this far.