“I’m not glad she did,” Caden stated.
The uncertainty returned. Why wouldn’t he be glad? They were enemies, and I knew that Aric had done things to Caden—horrible things to people the King cared about. He was going to use Caden to return… I lost track of the thoughts, my mind seeming to power down like a shut-off button had been pressed.
Caden didn’t reply to that, and then I must’ve faded out for a few moments because when I came to, the burning sensation had reached my shoulders, and I didn’t like it. I squirmed as it reached my throat.
“Hey,” Caden’s voice was soft in the darkness. “It’s okay. We’re almost there.”
It wasn’t okay. The heat swept over my head and then my skin turned prickly as if a million pins and needles began dancing over my flesh. “It hurts,” I told him, opening my eyes. “My…skin.”
Caden shifted me slightly, and his face came into fuzzy view. “It’s your temperature rising.”
I tried to untangle my arms in an attempt to push the blanket off.
“Don’t.” His arm curled, keeping the throw around me as he placed his palm on my forehead. I flinched. “You need to keep the blanket on.”
“It’s hot,” I whispered, stretching out my leg. Pain flared all along my skin and sank deep into the muscles. I gasped. “It hurts.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat. “I know. I’m sorry, baby. I am, but you have to keep the blanket on. You’re still not warm enough.”
I didn’t care. Fire ants were chewing their way through my flesh. I twisted, moaning as my ribs protested. The numbness had vanished, and I yearned for the return. “Why…why does it hurt now? It…stopped hurting. It had finally stopped.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Your body is warming up, and blood is moving like it should. It’s going to hurt, and then it’ll be better.”
It wasn’t going to be better. There was no way it could be when every long-forgotten cut began to sting, and every bruise started to throb incessantly. I couldn’t hold still, even as the King tried to keep me immobile. I became a twisting mess of aching, moaning flesh. Everything hurt, inside and out. Each breath was like breathing fire. Tears crowded my eyes.
“Not much longer,” Caden murmured over the top of my head. He said that more than once. Repeating it over and over. And then it became too much.
“Can’t you do something?” Ivy demanded, her voice pitched with worry. “Glamour her?”
“I can’t do that to her. Not now. Not after—”
“Please,” I begged, each breath coming in short, painful pants. “Please do something.”
“I know he’s done it to you multiple times. I can tell. I hate this. It’s killing me.”
“It sounds like it’s actually killing her,” Ren snapped. “So, why don’t you get over yourself and help her out?”
“You don’t understand,” Caden growled. “She’s on the brink of not coming back. I can see it in her eyes. She didn’t recognize either of you. She didn’t know me at first. Why do you think that’s the case?”
“Please,” I whispered. “Make it stop. Please.”
“I can’t.” His voice gentled as his hand curled around the back of my head. “One more feeding. One more glamouring, and that could be it. I will not do that to you.”
“I’ll drive faster,” Ren muttered.
“Please.” My voice cracked. “Stop it.”
“I’m sorry,” Caden said as I shuddered. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry.”
My skin felt like it blistered and then burst. My muscles felt stretched until they snapped. Every bone felt brittle and sharp-edged. There was no escaping this—
Sudden clarity flowed through me, pushing away the fog, and I remembered all that had been done. All of it. And I couldn’t deal with it.
I kicked my head back as a hoarse scream tore from my throat. Voices poured from the front of the car. Agony contorted my body, further inflaming the bruises and raw skin. My voice gave out, and finally, it was too much. I slipped into blissful nothingness, and the last thing I heard was Caden shouting my name.
* * * *
A stranger stared down at me, a female wearing a pale blue shirt. Others were moving around, tugging at the straps of the dress I wore as the fae’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her over the rushing sound in my ears.
“Stop,” I rasped, swatting at the hands. “Stop.”
“I’m a healer. I work for the King.” She caught my hand, carefully lowering it to the table. “We need to get this dress off and assess your injuries.”
Her words made sense but also didn’t. The material slipped down my shoulders—
The female jerked back, her eyes going wide. There were several gasps, and then the healer snapped into action, firing off orders at a rapid pace. “Get the IV in and use the morphine. Start her with four milligrams and then get some fluids in her. Get Ringer solution on board. Check to see what kind of antibiotics we have, and get one of the mortals ready to make a possible run.”
It happened so fast. The dress was removed, replaced by a warm, soft blanket. I felt the needle go into the vein in the top of my hand, but it was nothing compared to everything else.
“You’re going to feel a rush of warmth in a few moments. Maybe taste something weird in the back of your throat, but don’t worry. It’s just some medicine to take the pain away,” the woman said. “We’re going to look at these injuries, okay?”
I didn’t know who she was—who these people were. What had happened to Caden? Heart thumping, I started to sit up, and then a buzzing wave swept through me, somehow beating back the fire, cooling it down by degrees with each passing moment. Suddenly, I wasn’t struggling. I wasn’t….
People moved around me, and the woman was talking again, but I wasn’t following. My head lolled to the side, and my gaze connected with eyes the color of liquid amber.
Caden stood off to the side, his normally golden skin paler than I’d ever seen. All others gave him a wide berth, and he did not move, but I thought his lips did.
I thought he mouthed, I’m here.
* * * *
There were two things I became aware of.
The steady sound of beeping was the first thing I heard when I, well, stopped floating around out there in the fuzzy ether. The second thing was that I didn’t hurt all that much, and that was the most important part. I felt…a little sore and achy, but that was such a marked improvement that I wanted to cry.
I didn’t.
Instead, I tried to open my eyes. This time, it didn’t take an act of Congress to do so. Still took a while because my lids felt crusty and swollen, but I did it, and the smooth, white ceiling I stared at wasn’t the dark interior of a car or the stone ceiling of the chamber.
Another massive improvement.
I was alive, and I wasn’t in the tomb, chained to a stone slab, waiting to die.
God.
I swallowed, wincing at what felt like razor blades in my throat. I’m alive. I kept repeating that in my head because it didn’t seem real or even possible, but I was lying on a comfortable mattress, and the room was filled with soft, filtered sunlight. Memories of how I had gotten here were like sifting through a photo album of faded, distorted pictures. But I remembered Caden and Ivy and Ren, and the pain as my skin had warmed up…. Yeah, I wasn’t going to forget that pain anytime soon.