Chapter 28 The Human Part
The Human Part
My heart was heavy as I watched Lucien holding Anais down by the shoulders, while Remi and Blaise were on each of her sides, restraining her as well. Not that it did anything much—she was thrashing against them, rattling the bed in the process, her sharpened teeth biting air.
Thayer and I stood by Enoch, who was stationed at the end of the bed, his face grim while his eyes took on a chilly look. He stretched out his hands and gently curled them around Anais’s ankles. Then he grew still.
A moment later, I gasped as something flared beneath her skin in violent pulses.
It spread all over her body, coloring her veins an eerie, acid-like green.
It flickered on and off, and there was a hum in the air, like a soft, barely audible whistling sound, that disappeared when Anais began to scream.
Aside from Enoch, who kept focusing, everyone else flinched at the bloodcurdling, inhuman shrieks coming out of Anais’s elegant throat. I snapped my gaze to Lucien, whose jaw locked tight, his knuckles white due to the force he held down Anais with.
“I see you behind the rising tide, Anais Verdin,” Enoch said suddenly, his voice low, steady, and almost priestlike. “Rise from the deep and come forth.”
The reaction was instant: Her flickering veins caused her body to recoil like something struck. A rippling shock wave rolled under her skin, the luminescence collapsing inward before flaring again, almost as if it was confused. Enraged.
Enoch closed his eyes. When he spoke next, his voice took on an edge of something else. As if something other than Enoch was talking through his throat. “Take back what you have forsaken.”
The screams stopped. Anais froze.
Tension spread through the room, along with something else. Something I couldn’t quite see, smell, or taste, but I could feel. As though another existence was present beyond what the eye could see.
Then, a soft light spilled from Enoch’s hands—not too bright, more like the soft glow of the sun reflected in a lake.
It sank into Anais’s skin through her ankles and rapidly crawled up her thighs to her waist, torso, neck, arms, and head, engulfing her entirely, before her body jerked once, sharply, as though shocked by an invisible defibrillator.
Enoch let her go, but the light stayed. The others released her as well when Enoch gave them a confirming nod, his eyes still closed, and we all watched as the light seeped into her skin, melting within it, taking over the hellish green that colored her veins and instead turning them a soft white, like scars all over her body.
Her eyes snapped open, and they were no longer lost and gone. They were soft and terrified.
“Thayer?” she whispered in a voice turned raspy from her screams, as though surfacing from a dream she’d been drowning in. “Enoch?”
Thayer rushed to her side, taking her hand in his, face so pale, it was a wonder he didn’t pass out. “I’m here,” he whispered. “Thayer. I’m here.”
I turned to look at Enoch as he opened his eyes. For a moment, they weren’t the fragile brown of an ordinary man’s. They were silvery, translucent—as if a soul’s light was shining through his pupils from the wrong direction.
Then he blinked and it was gone, and I couldn’t help but think I might’ve imagined that.
Enoch moved toward Anais’s other side and drew her wide-eyed deer-caught-in-the-headlights gaze. “You’ve been afflicted with Wildlight,” he said, gentler now, but in a hurry. “I’ve pulled your humanity forward, but it’s a mere thread. I cannot hold it long.”
Her breath steadied. The slight shimmering of her veins beneath her skin calmed, as if tamed by the strange gravity of Enoch’s presence.
Lucien, whose eyes were still on Anais, asked hoarsely, “How long?”
“Five minutes,” Enoch said. “Maybe less. The Wildlight cannot be held at bay for much longer than that.”
Anais swallowed, blinking tears away. Thayer, too, seemed so crushed, I felt myself on the verge of tears again. None of it was fair. Wildlight wasn’t fair. While I didn’t know Anais that well, she did not deserve this. No one did.
“Show me your back, Alpha,” she suddenly said, voice shaking but clear, as she turned to stare at Lucien. “Before I disappear again.”
Lucien hesitated, but Enoch shot him a warning look. He sucked in a breath and took off his shirt, showing Anais his back.
“Scalpel,” Anais ordered, and Remi handed her one from the cabinet near her bed. “I’m sorry, Alpha, but we don’t have time to put you under—”
“Just do it,” Lucien cut her off through gritted teeth. Blaise had brought over a chair, and Lucien propped himself on it, leaning his elbows on its back, facing away from Anais, who, with Thayer’s help, was now sitting. Thayer did not release her, with his hand behind her back, keeping her steady.
Wordlessly, Anais dug the scalpel into Lucien’s back.
Instinctually, I rounded the bed toward Lucien and held his hands, sick with worry at everything that was happening. But Lucien didn’t move. He sat as still as a statue, his muscles tight, and not a muscle moving on his blank face.
Blood poured from Lucien’s back as Anais carved new lines over the Spellscript.
I did not understand what she was doing at all; obviously, she was overwriting the Spellscript with a new one, but the lines of the new one were odd, jagged, not as symmetrical as other Spellscripts I had documented throughout the years.
“Two minutes,” Enoch’s voice echoed in the silent room, and his voice was a little strained now. Glancing at him while still holding Lucien’s hands, I realized he was leaning against the wall, sweat glistening over his face. He seemed dizzy.
Anais murmured something unintelligible as she carved more lines into Lucien’s back. His blood was creating too large a pool under his chair—so much that I feared this was more than his body could handle.
With a sudden movement, Anais threw the scalpel on the floor and put her bloody palms over Lucien’s messed-up back. She closed her eyes, and a soft light poured from her into Lucien’s skin. The light was different from Enoch’s: brighter, more purple in color.
Lucien’s back soaked in the light, and Lucien’s hands suddenly clenched mine—the only time he’d moved in the past couple of minutes.
His face remained expressionless, and the rest of his body didn’t move, but he was holding me tightly.
And when I saw the raw, tattered skin was being woven together, closing the wounds, it looked so painful, I squeezed his hands right back.
“Thirty seconds,” Enoch said, his voice a soft whisper. From the corner of my eye, I saw he had slid down to the floor, almost as if he couldn’t keep himself standing.
Anais suddenly took her hands off Lucien. His wounds, I saw, were closed. All that remained were the scars of the Spellscript carvings and the new ones Anais had inflicted.
“Done,” she murmured, sagging back against Thayer, who wrapped his arms around her, face a little ill, though his eyes were lit with a horrified kind of wonder.
The same kind I was feeling right now too. Because Lucien sagged against the chair, not falling to the floor only because I was still holding his hands, and Blaise, who’d stood next to him, caught him in time.
“Lucien!” I called, hovering over him when I saw his eyes were closed. My heart fell as terror filled me, and I turned to Anais. “What’s wrong—”
But Anais was no longer human.
Everything happened in a blur. Blaise practically peeled Thayer off her and shoved him back as he and Remi went to restrain her.
Anais growled and thrashed against them, but she seemed a little weaker than before, and Blaise and Remi shackled her successfully to the bed again.
She growled and growled, trying to bite into everyone who came close, and Blaise had to physically hold Thayer back.
My stupid brother had tried to reach her.
“I’m sorry,” I heard Enoch faintly say, before the hospital director succumbed to his own darkness and lay still on the floor.
I stared at Lucien’s sleeping face as I held his hand, wondering when he would wake up.
Remi, who wasn’t just his cousin but also a healer in the Concordian Ward, said it would take a few hours.
Having his Spellscript overwritten, along with Anais’s unplanned deep healing, would’ve taken a big toll on anyone, but since Lucien was an Alpha, Remi believed he would awaken after a good few hours of rest instead of staying unconscious for days.
It didn’t sit well with me either way, and so I stayed by his side after Teya and Blaise helped him get back to his cabin in the woods so he could sleep soundly in his own bed.
I told Thayer he should come back to the cabin with me, but he refused. “I want to stay here,” he’d said, face calm, though his eyes showed his distress as he sat next to Anais.
Despite his dislike for her, I understood why this whole thing hit him so hard.
It hit me hard too. Seeing someone you knew, even for a short time, losing their humanity like that, with no hope of ever returning, was a lot to process.
Thayer had spent most of his time since we arrived at the Ward with Anais and Enoch, as the two searched for a way to neutralize Lucien’s Spellscript.
Beyond their mutual dislike, I believed Thayer respected her.
And that must’ve been even worse, seeing someone you respected turning into an incoherent beast in human flesh.
“Here you go.”
Blaise’s heavily accented voice made me snap out of my dark reveries, and I looked up to see him holding two cups of coffee. I could only nod as I thanked him, taking one cup from him.
He took a seat next to me, right near Lucien’s bed. “He’s going to be okay, you know,” he told me, dark eyes reassuring. “Lucien is strong.”
The way he pronounced Lucien was almost musical. It made me give him a weak smile. “I know he’s strong,” I said softly, “but I can’t help but worry.”
He nodded with a heavy sigh, his eyes fixating on Lucien’s serene face. “Did he tell you about Montvoilé?”