Chapter 18
MORGAN
Pain was the first thing to anchor me.
It was a throbbing heat that radiated from somewhere on my right side, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, which felt too slow, too labored, as if my body was struggling to keep up. I tried to move, to shift away from it, but my limbs were heavy, unresponsive, like they belonged to someone else.
There was a smell hanging in the air, thick and metallic, coating the back of my throat with every shallow breath, and it mingled with something sharper, like charred herbs or singed cloth.
Sounds filtered through the haze, muffled at first: a low mutter, the rustle of fabric, the scrape of something against concrete.
Hands on me, pressing down, firm and insistent, sending fresh waves of stinging fire through my arm.
I wanted to pull away, to tell whoever it was to stop, but my voice caught in my chest, emerging only as a weak groan that echoed strangely in my ears.
The world tilted, or maybe it was just my head lolling to the side, and for a moment everything blurred into gray nothingness, pulling me under again.
When I surfaced next, the pain had sharpened, localized now to my wrist, a burning ache that felt… wrong.
Xavian's face swam into view above me, his features tense, brows furrowed in concentration, sweat beading along his hairline despite the chill in the room. His hands were on my arm, wrapping something tight around the source of the pain, cloth or bandages, soaked through with red.
Blood, I realized dimly, my blood, staining his fingers and pooling on the floor beneath us.
He was muttering under his breath, words I couldn't quite catch, his voice rough and edged with something that sounded almost like fear.
One of his hands pressed down hard on my wrist, holding it steady while the other traced patterns in the air above it, faint lines that shimmered briefly, like the runes we'd drawn outside earlier, but these glowed with a sickly blue light that made my skin crawl.
I faded again, the darkness tugging at me insistently, but not before feeling the heat from those runes seep into my flesh, a strange warmth that battled the cold seeping through my body.
It hurt, god it hurt, like fire meeting ice inside my veins, but there was a purpose to it, a sealing sensation that dulled the throbbing just enough to let me breathe.
The smell of blood intensified, cloying and overwhelming, mixed now with the acrid tang of whatever he was doing.
His touch was rough, not gentle, fingers digging in to hold me still as I twitched involuntarily, my body reacting to the pain even if my mind couldn't keep up.
I heard him curse softly, the sound close to my ear, his breath warm against my cheek as he leaned in to adjust the wrapping. "Stay with me," he said, the words clipped and urgent, but they dissolved into the fog as I slipped under once more.