Chapter 21
Twenty-one
Morning sunlight streamed through the curtains. Lena blinked, pain stabbing at her too-sensitive eyes. She was so thirsty, her mouth bone dry. “Where am I?”
A shadow moved on the edge of vision. Lena shot to alertness, her heartbeat slowing down when Charlie grinned at her.
“She’s awake!”
Honoria materialized, her face white and pale with lack of sleep. Her hand slid over Lena’s forehead, deliciously cool. “Charlie,” she murmured. “Could you fetch some more water? And something to eat?” The last question was directed at Lena.
She nodded sharply. Her stomach growled at the thought, twisting with emptiness.
Honoria held a glass to her lips. Cool water wet her dry tongue and she gasped greedily at it. The door shut behind Charlie as Honoria settled on the edge of the bed.
“Drink it slowly,” Honoria said. “You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
By the time she’d drained the glass she was feeling marginally better. Looking around, she recognized her old room in the warren.
“Will?”
“He’s still asleep.” Honoria stroked a hand over her damp hair. “Lena, your temperature’s abnormally high. You’re burning with fever. How do you feel?”
She considered her body. “Hungry?”
Concern flashed through Honoria’s dark eyes.
“What happened? Can you remember? All Rip could tell us was that he heard a whistle of distress and then Will was gone. We found your carriage turned over in the street, but no sign of either of you. Blade and Rip searched the tunnels but lost Will’s scent trail.
Someone had sprayed the area with some sort of chemical that obliterated smell. ”
Everything that had happened flashed through her mind. She opened her mouth. Then shut it. She had sworn that she would speak of the humanists to no one. And she didn’t dare get her sister involved.
Tears sprang into her eyes, her emotions strangely raw. “Honor, if I asked you a question, would you answer it?”
“Of course.”
Their eyes met. “Was Father a humanist?”
Stillness radiated through her sister’s body. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
“It’s true then.” Lena’s voice hardened and she struggled to sit up. “What else did you think was best kept secret from me? Father’s work for Vickers? The truth of what he was really doing?”
Honoria stiffened. “Where did you learn of this?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all true, isn’t it?”
Something old filled Honoria’s eyes. “Yes. I don’t know how much you’re aware of, but it’s true.
In the last years of his life Father grew dissatisfied with the way of the world.
He started working on a cure for the craving for Vickers, but in his own time he researched a blue blood’s weaknesses.
He wanted to discover methods of destroying them. ”
Lena pressed her hands against her face. Everything that Rosalind had told her was correct.
Honoria eased a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Lena? You’re not angry at me? I did as I thought best. The information is dangerous. I was only ever trying to protect you both.”
“You should have told me.” As soon as she said the words she realized how familiar Honoria’s statement sounded.
They were all excuses she herself had used.
A similarity she never thought she’d ever have shared with her sister.
They were so different at heart, and yet she couldn’t deny that Honoria would risk her own life for her and Charlie without pause.
Sliding a hand over her sister’s, she squeezed gently.
“Lena, what happened in the tunnels?”
A world she could never reveal. “Someone kidnapped me. I’m not sure who. Will came after them and saved me.”
The story was far too brief to appease her sister and they both knew it. But whatever guilt currently flayed Honoria, she didn’t dare question the statement.
“Do you think I could see Will?” Lena asked softly.
“He’s asleep.”
“Just to check on him.” She’d thought him lost. The urge to make sure he was safe and alive was suddenly a crushing need. “Please.”
Honoria sighed. “I’ll allow it. But only because I understand what you’re feeling.”
***
Honoria eased a hand over her sister’s forehead, smoothing her damp curls out of the way. Though she’d left Lena sitting in a chair beside Will’s bed, when she’d returned with more water, she’d found her curled up on top of the blankets asleep, her fingers entwined with his.
Blade’s arms slid around her waist from behind and he rested a chin on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re troubled,” he said simply.
Pressing a finger against her lips, she led him out of the room and eased the door shut behind her. Though he arched an eyebrow in question, she shook her head and led him upstairs to her workroom.
“What is it, luv?” he asked, frowning as he closed the door behind him.
Nobody would hear them up here. Honoria crossed to her desk and tugged a heavy book down from the shelf. She opened it to the page mark and pressed her finger to the spidery script. “Read it.”
Blade squinted at the page, his lips moving slowly. “Don’t understand. This is the first stages of the loupe virus and its effects.”
“I was studying it in order to try and find Will’s cure,” she admitted. “The first sign of the loupe is a fever. Headaches, hot and cold flushes, the sweats…”
He understood immediately.
“She’s burning up,” Honoria whispered. “She shouldn’t be that hot, not without severe signs of discomfort, but all she feels is hunger and thirst.”
Blade’s face paled.
Honoria bit her lip. “There’s more. Did you know that the loupe is an extremely virulent disease, and yet there are few verwulfen around?
” Heat burned in the back of her eyes and she stroked the page in front of her.
She’d come up here to read more as soon as she first suspected what was going on.
“Blade, the statistics for surviving the initial fever are extremely poor. Perhaps one in fifteen makes the transition. In Scandinavia and Germany, only the strongest warriors are allowed to be infected. They must prove themselves in a test first, to ensure that they have the strongest chance of surviving.” Her vision blurred.
“This is why no verwulfen is allowed to mate with a human. Oh God, what have I done?” Her words faded to a whisper, an ache burning in her chest. “I should never have allowed her near him. I should have realized. I should have—”
Strong arms tugged her close, burying her against his chest. “I’ve a feelin’ nothin’ we done coulda kept ’em apart.” He stroked her hair. “Hush, luv. Ain’t your fault. You couldn’t a known. There’s so little information ’bout the loupe goin’ round. And who knows, she might be strong enough.”
Honoria hiccupped a sob. “The strongest warriors, Blade. And most of them don’t survive.”
“Then,” he said, tipping her chin up toward him, “we need to work out what she needs. How to ’elp ’er.”
The thought penetrated where no false comfort ever could. This she could do. She grabbed the book and dashed the tears from her eyes. She hadn’t been able to save her brother from the craving virus, but she’d be damned if she’d let her sister’s life fade.
“Sit. Read,” he said, pushing her into a chair. “I’ll fetch a pot of tea and somethin’ to eat. Then I’ll check on them.”
Honoria’s eyes were already racing across the lines on the page. “Thank you.”
***
The world beneath her moved. Lena blinked sleepily. Arching her fingers, she dug them into the soft body beneath hers and yawned. Her pillow threatened to dislodge her and she grabbed onto the sheets.
Will rolled onto his side, blinking warily at her. Thick slabs of muscle covered his chest and shoulders, and for a moment, the urge to run her hand through the hair on his chest was almost irresistible.
Grabbing at the sheet to stop it from dropping too far, he stiffened. “We’re at the warren.” A frown. “What happened?”
“Don’t you remember? You collapsed,” she said, “and Blade had you brought here. You’ve slept the day away. How are you feeling?”
His gaze drifted past, toward the water jug.
“Here,” Lena said, hopping off the bed in her nightgown and pouring him a glass. She held it out to him, but he grabbed the jug instead and tilted it up. The muscles in his throat worked, rivulets of water pouring down his jaw and into the hollow of his collarbone.
Heat burned between her thighs and she gripped the cool glass hard. Sheer longing was almost a knife to the chest. She had promised herself that she would speak to him if he survived, tell him how she felt, but suddenly she was nervous and tongue-tied again. The way he always made her feel.
She, a woman who could twist a man around her finger with a simple smile if she chose.
A crack appeared in the glass. Then another. Lena looked down in astonishment as the glass shattered, pieces crumbling to the rug. Blood welled from her fingers.
Will lowered the jug, his gaze dropping to the glass. “Bloody hell, Lena.” He leaped out of bed, moving with the same economical grace that always drew her eye.
An excess of golden skin. Naked skin. Lena’s eyes widened. She had a second’s grace to drop her gaze before he swore and jerked the sheet around his waist, tucking the edge in.
Oh my goodness.
Anatomy books could not even come close to picturing the truth.
The heat flushed out of her face. She’d caught only a glimpse of his member, half aroused and enormous, bobbing from the thick thatch of dark hair that nested it.
The breath caught in her throat. There was no possible way they could fit together…
“Here,” Will snarled, taking the remains of the glass from her and tearing a piece off the sheet. He dipped it in the water jug and wrung it out, then dabbed tenderly at the cut on her hand. “What happened?”
“It cracked in my hand,” Lena said distantly. A shiver of need swept through her, igniting desires she’d kept under lock and key in her heart.
Will hesitated.
“What is it?”