Chapter 12 Areana
AREANA
Areana stood in the narrow corridor outside the medical bay because there was no room for her inside, the blanket and towel doing little to warm the ice that filled her chest. She could hear everything through the door, each sound painting a picture she didn't want to see but couldn't escape.
"Multiple fractures is a gross understatement," Julian's voice carried through the door. "The internal bleeding is slowing. His natural healing is engaged, but the damage is too extensive for it to fix itself."
Areana leaned against the hallway wall and closed her eyes.
Five thousand years of waking beside Navuh, of knowing his breath, his heartbeat, the way he muttered sometimes in his sleep when nightmares haunted him.
When he dreamt of his boyhood. Five thousand years of loving a male consumed by an insatiable thirst for power and the need to prove himself to a dead father who had never approved of him, no matter what he had achieved or could ever achieve, save perhaps for the ultimate goal of world domination.
Had he even been aware that he was continuing his father's legacy of hatred because of some perverse need to please Mortdh's ghost?
It didn't really matter. She couldn't change him. Fates knew she'd tried. All she could do was adapt and mold herself into someone who was so dear to him that he was willing to make some concessions for her.
Those concessions had saved countless lives over the five thousand years they'd been together, and that had to be enough to justify her devotion to him, but the truth was that the only justification that mattered was her unconditional love for her mate.
"We need to re-break his ribs," Julian said. "They are fused at the wrong angle, and we need to remove the pressure from his heart."
The cracks that followed made her flinch.
Someone touched her arm, startling her momentarily because she'd forgotten Esag was standing next to her.
He was offering his silent support, and she was grateful for his presence.
It would have been even more miserable standing alone in the narrow corridor outside of the medical bay while the doctor and his assistant pieced her mate back together like a broken doll.
"Blood pressure dropping," Aiden reported. He sounded alarmed.
"Push more fluids," Julian said. "His body needs resources to repair this much damage."
Resources. Such a clinical word for what was happening. Navuh's immortal body was trying desperately to heal itself, knitting bone and tissue back together, but even immortal healing had limits.
It was a miracle he was alive.
He'd jumped off a cliff after her. She still couldn't believe that he'd done that.
The sound of his roar when he had seen her fall, the image of him changing trajectory when he'd heard her scream, those would be forever seared into her memory.
His complete lack of hesitation before he launched himself after her. No calculation, no strategy, just pure instinct to save his mate.
"The leg needs realignment, too," Julian said. "Hold him steady."
Another crack. Another wave of nausea she pushed down. He was heavily sedated and felt nothing, which was a mercy, but those sounds were terrible nonetheless.
"How did we come to this?" she whispered, not really expecting an answer. "How did this happen? Did the Fates want this to happen?"
Esag shifted beside her. "The Fates work in mysterious ways. Sometimes it takes thousands of years for us to realize even one thread in their grand design. They use love and duty to pull us in the right directions."
She looked at him, really looked at him for the first time.
She hadn't remembered him from the time the gods still walked among humans.
She'd only known him by reputation and what Gulan had said about him.
Other than the flaming red hair and the handsome face, he didn't look like the young male Gulan had described. There was no playfulness left in him.
He looked broken.
Life would do that to a person, whether human or immortal, and it took incredible resilience and deliberation to keep positivity from crumbling to dust.
Areana had decided a long time ago that her life was about the small moments of joy. She collected them like someone collected precious stones, storing them in what she imagined as the positivity depository in her mind, from which she drew her strength.
"I did it to save Tula," she said quietly. "But it was still a betrayal, and yet he dove off a cliff to try to save me. The irony would be poetic if it weren't so tragic."
"The ribs are setting properly now," Julian's voice came through the door. "But the skull fracture concerns me. There's swelling."
Swelling meant brain damage. The possibilities stretched before her—Navuh waking up but not himself, or even worse, waking up exactly himself but worse. Or not waking up at all, trapped in an endless sleep while his body lived on.
"He's strong," Esag said. "Weaker immortals have recovered from worse."
Had they? She'd seen immortals survive terrible things, but the mind and the heart were fragile even in immortals.
She thought of Navuh's father and the compulsion gift that came packaged together with madness and was passed down through the generations like a poisoned chalice. What if this injury made it worse?
"Pulse is stabilizing," Julian reported. "The healing is accelerating now that we've stopped the internal bleeding, and the bones are properly aligned."
Small mercies.
Areana pulled the blanket tighter, trying to stop the shaking.
It wasn't cold that was making her tremble, it was the terrible knowledge that the mercy this doctor and his assistant were showing Navuh would never be reciprocated.
He wouldn't feel gratitude. He wouldn't abandon his vendetta against Annani and her clan.
He would keep hating them, and now he was at their mercy.
"That's all we can do for now." Julian sounded exhausted. "His body has to do the rest. We'll monitor the brain swelling, but..."
But. Such a small word to carry such enormous uncertainty.
The medical bay door opened and Julian emerged, with blood on his scrubs and weariness in his eyes. "He's stable, or as stable as we can make him."
"Thank you. You saved his life."
"Don't thank me yet. I did my best, but it's up to the Fates now."
She nodded, fighting tears. "Can I see him?"
Julian hesitated. "He's sedated. He won't know you're there. You need to get dressed and get warm. Have something to drink and eat."
"I'll know," she whispered, "that I was with him."
"As you wish." Julian stepped aside, and she entered the cramped medical bay.
Navuh lay on the gurney, looking nothing like the powerful immortal who'd ruled for millennia through fear and the power of his compulsion.
His face was still swollen, purple and black with bruising that would fade but hadn't yet.
His chest rose and fell unsteadily, his natural healing ability stretched beyond its limits, struggling to keep him alive.
But would it repair his mind? Would he wake as himself or as something else?
She wouldn't even consider the possibility that he wouldn't wake up at all.
She touched the back of his hand, the only part of him that wasn't bandaged.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry you got hurt. It was never my intention. I only wanted to help Tula and her baby. I never wished to harm you. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I love you."
He loved her too. He'd jumped off a cliff after her, but love and forgiveness were not one and the same, not for Navuh.