Chapter 17
Kate was pacing her room like a lioness, filled with anxiety and anger, when she heard the commotion. The urgent, heavy footsteps and quiet, frantic voices echoed from the compound’s main entrance. The feeling of unease that had been a tight knot in her stomach all evening turned into pure dread.
She was moving before she even made a conscious decision, her new speed a desperate, clumsy tool fueled by terror.
She burst into the main hall just as they were bringing him in. The sight of him shattered her. He was unconscious, his face a waxy, unnatural pale. His clothes were shredded and soaked in blood, both his own and that of others.
Luc and Antoine were supporting him, their own faces grim masks of pain and exhaustion. Luc’s side was a dark, spreading stain, and Antoine was limping badly, his usual grace gone. But their injuries were nothing compared to Devon’s.
He was a ruin. A deep, vicious gash ran across his back, and his thigh was laid open to the bone.
But it was the wound in his side that made her blood run cold.
A small, neat puncture, just below the ribs, that was weeping a black, sluggish fluid.
The skin around it was already darkening, necrotic, the poison spreading.
“Get him on the table!” Sophia commanded, her voice ringing with an authority that barely concealed the tremor of fear beneath it. She was already at Devon’s side, her hands moving with practiced efficiency, cutting away the ruined fabric of his shirt.
Kate stood frozen, a helpless spectator to her own worst nightmare. She had felt powerless when Aleksander had taken her, but that was nothing compared to this. This was the terror of watching the center of her universe flicker and die, and being utterly unable to do anything but watch.
“Silver poison,” Sophia stated, her voice grim as she examined the wound. “It’s designed to inhibit healing. He’s lost too much blood.”
Devon’s body suddenly arched on the table, a low, guttural sound of pure agony tearing from his throat. His eyes, still closed, squeezed shut, his hands clenching into fists. Even unconscious, the pain was immense, a white-hot fire consuming him from the inside out.
“We need to flush his system,” Sophia said, turning to her medical team. “Get the blood packs. O-negative. We need to dilute the poison and give his body the strength to fight it.”
As if summoned by her fear, Aleksander’s voice slithered into Kate’s mind.
He’s beautiful when he’s in pain, isn’t he? So powerful, so proud. And now, so broken. All because he was foolish enough to love you.
“Get out of my head,” Kate whispered, her hands clenched at her sides.
Sophia glanced at her, her expression sharp. “Kate? What is it?”
“It’s him,” she choked out. “He’s in my head.”
Listen to him scream, little Pet. That is the sound of his love for you. Every moment of his agony is a testament to his failure. He couldn’t protect you. And now, he can’t even save himself.
Devon cried out again, a raw, animal sound of torment that clawed at Kate’s soul. Sophia’s team was working frantically, inserting an IV line, connecting a bag of dark, rich human blood.
The scent of it filled the room, a strange, metallic tang that made her own gums ache, an instinctive reminder of what she now was.
“Focus, Kate,” Sophia’s voice cut through the haze of her fear. “Fight him. Don’t let him see this. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
Something inside Kate snapped. The fear, the helplessness, the grief, it all coalesced into a single, diamond-hard point of rage. She built a wall of pure, cold fury in her mind, and for the first time, she didn’t just block his voice.
She pushed back.
Get out, she snarled, a silent, psychic roar of defiance. You will not touch him. You will not touch me. This ends now.
The connection severed, not with a whisper, but with a psychic shriek of surprise and pain from his end. She had hurt him. The realization was a small, cold spark of triumph in the vast darkness of her fear.
She turned her full attention back to Devon.
The first bag of blood was already empty, and a second one was already being hung up.
His skin was still unnaturally pale, a sheen of cold sweat covering his body.
The wound in his side continued to weep black poison, refusing to close.
His breaths were shallow, ragged things.
“It’s not enough,” Sophia muttered, her brow furrowed in concentration. “The poison is too strong. His body is shutting down.”
The next few hours were a blur of controlled chaos.
More blood. Strange, alchemical tinctures administered by Sophia that smelled of herbs and old magic.
The constant, agonizing sounds of Devon’s pain.
Kate stood by the table, a silent, stone-faced sentinel, her hand gripping his.
She channeled all of her will, all of her desperate hope, into her touch.
She watched as his fever raged, his body trembling and convulsing.
She wiped the sweat from his brow, whispered his name in the brief moments of quiet between the waves of agony.
She refused to leave or rest. She would bear witness to his suffering, and she would be there when he came back. She had to believe he would come back.
Sometime in the deep hours of the night, the tide began to turn. The weeping from the wound slowed, the black poison thinning to a dark grey. The violent tremors subsided into a steady, low-grade shiver. His breathing, while still shallow, became more regular.
An exhausted Sophia placed a hand on Kate’s shoulder.
“The worst is over. The fever has broken. He’s fighting it.”
Kate looked down at Devon, at the faint hint of color returning to his cheeks, at the way his hand, which had been clenched in a death grip for hours, had finally started to relax in hers. The relief was so overwhelming it almost brought her to her knees.
He wasn’t saved yet. But he was no longer dying.