Feed the Fever #5
I hold her gaze until she answers me properly, until the words form.
“I don’t know why or how, but—” She palms her chest and rests her hand over her heart.
“This feeling…I recognize it. It has always been a connection I couldn’t explain.
For years, I fought it with everything I had.
But doing so now, I…it feels exactly like what you said. Fighting any more feels impossible.”
The tension in my shoulders eases. My thumb brushes along her jaw.
“Good,” I murmur, a faint smirk curving my mouth. “Because fighting with you is the last godforsaken thing I want to do. This is far more enjoyable.”
She rolls her eyes and slaps my bicep in mock offense, though there’s no real heat behind it.
I fall onto my side and bring her with me.
She settles easily, instinctively, burying her face into my neck.
Her breath warms my skin. My arms close around her, anchoring her there.
Behind her, Pollock shifts closer, claiming the space at her back.
His arm slides over her waist, where mine do not, his presence a permanent and unmovable one, but in a different way than my own.
She falls asleep the way she was always meant to, between us.
Her breathing gradually evens out. Her fingers slacken where they rest against my chest.
Only then do I lift my gaze to my brother.
He hasn’t stopped watching her.
There is no mistaking what lives in his expression. He is taken with her. Entirely. He wants her in his arms, that much is clear, but for now, he is content simply because she remains here.
Alive. Breathing. Ours.
“Just be grateful she no longer wants to kill you,” I say lightly.
He exhales, long and slow, and something flickers across his face — a memory of how close we came to a very different ending.
“There’s always tomorrow,” he replies dryly.
“Yes,” I answer, adjusting her slightly so she’s more comfortably tucked against me. “So perhaps try not to enrage her quite so thoroughly next time. And for now, stay out of her thoughts unless she invites you in.”
He rolls onto his back, one arm folding behind his head. “The spear through the gut delivered that lesson rather effectively.”
“Then there’s hope for you yet.”
His quiet chuckle fills the dim room. After a moment, his eyes drift to mine.
“Will you tell me how you met?” he asks. “What I missed out on. My mind won’t quiet, and I doubt I’ll sleep unless you give me something else to think about. I need a distraction.”
I nearly roll my own eyes at this because there were many nights in our long existence when I had to do precisely that, keep him occupied so he didn’t do something reckless and get us both in trouble. His mind has always been a restless labyrinth, and stillness has never suited him.
I glance down at the beauty in my arms. Her breathing is slow, even. Peaceful in a way neither of us has ever mastered.
Then I look back at my brother.
And I begin.
Pollock listens as if I am recounting some sacred epic with hands clasped behind his head. His gaze occasionally turns to take in the emotions covering my face. At times, the faintest smile touches his mouth, but also a frown when I speak of danger.
Hours pass unnoticed.
At some point, sleep claims him. I follow not long after, entering a dream state where I find my Eliora waiting for me.
I’m not sure how much time passes, but when I wake, it’s all at once. It is not from sound, but a shift. A bone-deep sense of wrongness and the scent of copper in the air. That of blood.
My eyes snap open to find Nexus standing at the shattered window, her head poked through. Her breathing is ragged, each inhale hitching as it costs her something.
For half a second, my mind refuses to understand what I’m seeing. Then I move. I am off the bed before I am fully upright, crossing the room in three strides. My bare feet slide through something warm.
My hand finds her neck. It comes away slick. Dark. Sticky.
Blood sheets down her side, dripping from her to the hardwood in thick, steady drops. The curtains are stained with it. The floor is painted. The air metallic.
Deep gouges mar her hide — wide, jagged furrows torn through flesh as if something enormous tried to carve her open. The wounds are not clean, not natural, and were definitely not made by anything that walks this Earth.
“She’s been attacked.” My voice sounds distant.
Eridessa is at my side instantly. Pollock is right behind her. Eridessa’s fingers clamp around my arm. She asks me something in a panicked voice I do not have an answer for. Nor can I answer the question Pollock throws out an instant later.
“Where is Lila?”
“Why isn’t she healing?”
Dread coils low and heavy in my stomach. Nexus lowers her head toward me. Her pale eyes—those impossible, luminous eyes—plead with mine.
My throat tightens. She should be healing. The fact that she isn’t has dread coiling low and heavy in my stomach.
Testing what I barely understand, I press both palms to the largest wound. Heat stirs beneath my skin. I also turn to my brother as I draw my powers to me and tell him to use his gift. “Search her mind. Find out what happened to the woman she was carrying when she fled here days ago.”
Light fractures outward beneath my hands, thin at first, then brighter. I force it forward, channeling life, my life, into her torn flesh, and pray to God that this works.
To Be Continued…