Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
XANDER
T he shadows warn me that V doesn’t have much time left.
They whisper to me, their eerie, sibilant voices blending together, and I’m helpless to stop listening.
“Not much time…”
“Dying…”
“No cure…”
“Dying…”
“Dying…”
“Dying…”
Avril sits beside her brother’s bed, her face puffy and eyes red-rimmed. Tears cascade down her cheeks as she wipes at V’s face with a cold washcloth.
It’s strange to see someone other than Serafina being so…gentle with the psychotic prince. I didn’t know anyone else was capable of loving him.
The shadows continue to whisper at me, incessant and angry, and I subtly try to cover my ears with my hands.
It doesn’t work.
“He has to be okay,” Avril whispers in a broken voice. “He has to be.”
I want to say something reassuring to the younger girl, but I’ve never been good at providing comfort, especially when anything reassuring I say to her will only be a lie. So instead of answering, I just grab my wineglass off my coffee table and take a long swig. The fruity liquid burns my throat going down.
“Someone’s here…”
“Someone new…”
“With the wolf…”
The wolf?
Tristan?
I jump to my feet just as Tristan barrels into my apartment, his brown hair damp with sweat and his face red from exertion.
“We came as fast as we could,” he tells me, panting.
I glance over his shoulder, searching desperately for Sera’s familiar shock of bright-pink hair. My panic intensifies when I don’t see her, Foster, or Kian anywhere.
“Where are?—?”
“They’re coming separately,” Tristan says. “I wanted to get Cadmus here as soon as possible.”
Cadmus?
I must’ve spoken the name out loud instead of just in my head, because a strange man steps forward. I try to keep my surprise off my face, try to maintain my impenetrable mask, but it slips, regardless of my intentions.
I’ve never seen anyone like him before.
Cadmus ignores me and rushes towards V’s still form, the prince’s chest barely rising and falling as he struggles to take a breath.
“Who the fuck are you? Get away from my brother?” Avril screeches.
She jumps to her feet and balls her hands into fists.
“Avril, relax. He’s here to help. He’s a basilisk,” Tristan reassures her.
“A basilisk?” God, I need another drink, preferably something much, much stronger than wine. “That’s impossible. Their kind have been extinct for years now.”
“Maybe on Earth,” Tristan murmurs.
“Are you telling me…?”
“That he’s from Faerie? Yeah. And he may be the only one capable of healing V.” Tristan chews on his lower lip as he watches the basilisk anxiously.
Avril has stumbled away, moving until her back is flush against the wall, and Cadmus leans over V. Then, he places his lips to the prince’s.
“What the fuck?” I exclaim, my shadows coiling around my hands in preparation to strike.
The door to my spare room opens, and Gage steps out, looking disheveled and confused after just waking up. His gaze homes in on Cadmus—taking stock of his strange features and his lips on Vs—and lunges forward.
“He’s sucking the virus out.” Tristan places a hand on my arm, stopping me from marching forward. “Look!”
With gritted teeth, I focus on the two men before me.
“Holy fuck. I think it’s working,” Avril breathes, shuffling from foot to foot.
“He’s able to draw anything out of a fae’s blood—whether that’s a poison or a virus or a disease,” Tristan explains, the words tumbling over each other in their rush to escape. “We weren’t sure if it would work because he can’t heal the virus in Faerie, but if it’s a mutated version of it, then he should be able to, and yeah. I’m going to stop talking before I pass out.”
He sucks in a ragged breath, places his hands on his knees, and lowers his head.
V’s skin certainly isn’t as pale as it was before. Color returns to his limbs and cheeks, turning them ruddy.
Cadmus gasps and wrenches himself away from V, collapsing on the floor by the prince’s bedside.
“Are you okay?” Tristan asks, moving towards the basilisk.
I place my arm out to stop him before he can take more than a few steps. Tristan and the others may trust this basilisk, but I don’t. He’s a stranger in my home, and right now, he has my family’s life in his hands.
Tristan throws me an odd look, but I don’t explain myself.
I already almost lost my little brother once. I won’t risk it again.
“That was…” Cadmus shakes his head rapidly as he gets to his feet, his features twisted in disbelief. “That was unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before.”
“We think it was the virus found in Faerie,” Tristan says. “A weaponized version of it.”
“And that’s the only reason I was able to heal him,” Cadmus admits, then he frowns. “If it was the Faerie virus without any modifications, I doubt my gifts would’ve worked. They certainly didn’t before when I tried.”
Despite my suspicions over Cadmus’s loyalty, I find myself stepping forward. “So you think that V was injected with a modified version of a Faerie virus?”
That’s what we all suspected, but to have it confirmed…
“If it were the actual virus, you would all be dead,” Cadmus tells us gravely. “Whoever made this wanted a way to control who got sick. Think of it as a cross between a poison and a virus.” He grimaces, as if he can still taste it on his tongue. “If it were simply a virus, then whoever created this would have no control over how it’s spread.” He licks his lips and frowns. “It tastes the way poison would.”
“I don’t understand.” Exasperation causes my right eye to twitch. If there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s not being in control. Right now, I feel as if I’m the passenger in my own car and have no choice but to let the driver lead us straight off a cliff. “Something can’t be both a poison and a virus. That’s impossible.”
“When this substance enters the fae’s bloodstream, it acts the way the virus would,” Cadmus attempts to explain. “But it’s not the actual virus.”
“It’s a poison with the same effects as the virus,” Tristan surmises, even as I struggle to wrap my head around this onslaught of information.
What he’s saying is scientifically impossible.
Yet…
I can listen to dead people.
Science went out the window a long time ago.
“I think—” Cadmus breaks off when a hulking figure tackles him to the ground.
Before any of us have time to react, V wraps his hands around Cadmus’s throat and squeezes. His wings expand out behind him, knocking over an expensive vase and my discarded glass of chardonnay.
“Where. Is. My. Kitten?”