What if I die? I didn’t tell Kolden I have people to save or my plan to free them. And now my breaths are so wet I doubt I’ll be able to get the words out before my last heave.
Shit.
“You’re okay,” he grinds out, shoving into the lobby as that numbness reaches the back of my tongue, making it feel floppy. I lose the ability to keep my head upright. “You’re going to be okay. Just hold on.”
He powers past the door into my moonlit suite, and I watch the world slip by upside down. He settles me on the ground, my limbs like felled branches.
Kolden stomps away with hurried steps, then tromps back again.
“Which one, Orlaith?Point.”
Wheezing, I look through slitted eyes at the four different-colored petals he’s waving at me, then let out a mangled groan when I fail to move my arm. I focus on the white one and try to jerk my chin at it. Guess I get the point across because he cranks my mouth open and lays it on my tongue.
“Chew!” he bellows, stamping my mouth closed, like he thinks I’ll spit it out and get straight back to dying.
I can’t die yet. I’ve got promises to keep.
That foreboding chill seeps further up my tongue, the deadly numb trailing just behind, and I grind my teeth against each other one slow, chattering chew at a time. The spicy petal mashes with the frothy stuff that was forming, setting fire to my taste buds and making the back of my nose burn.
“Swallow,” he orders, and I oblige, feeling it sear a path down my throat and pool in my belly, chasing away that numbing sensation with everything it touches.
Torches.
Relief weaves its roots through my chest.
Kolden opens my mouth and places another petal on my tongue. “Again.”
I want to tell him it’s unnecessary, that this stuff is so potent it could reignite a graveyard of poisoned folk, but it takes less energy to chew.
That burning sensation spreads, paving a fiery path through my veins, making my hands and feet tingle with the rush of warmth. I flap my floppy arm about until my hand connects with the golden urn, remove the lid, then wrap around. My entire body convulses with the force of a violent, lung-scraping cough.
Wet stuff loosens from my chest and splats out of me, dribbling down my chin.
Again.
Teeth chattering, I peek up from the urn, clinging to it like a lichen tethered to a rock. Kolden’s standing over me with his arms half crossed, right hand massaging his jaw as he watches me with stern eyes.
“Ships?” I ask.
“I haven’t heard yet, but no news is good news.”
I nod, then bark out another round of splattering coughs that echo through the urn, spitting more thick stuff free of my heavy chest.
That’s good.
I peer up again, feeling goo stringing from my chin like a sticky spider web, seeing the smear of blood on Kolden’s chestplate.
I frown, catching his stare.
He glances down, sees what I was looking at, and begins ripping at one of the leather straps on his shoulder that tethers the chestplate to his body. “One of the Elders stayed back and was lagging by the door, getting off on the sounds. You’d been in there too long. I got concerned,” he grinds out, his motions growing sharp and desperate, until the buckle finally pops loose. “I did what I had to do, then stuffed him in an urn before I charged in.”
My stomach roils.
Cainon could have still been awake. Somebody in the smoke pit could have clambered out and seen him—though I doubt it. They were pretty well occupied.
Even so …
“You”—I clear the tickle from my throat—“saved me.”
