Rhen rose with the witch held securely against his chest. She weighed almost nothing, and he hated the precision the realization demanded from him. He carried her into the corridor while her soft, involuntary whimpers followed every step.
He had spent his entire existence hating witches and distrusting them with a venom so old it felt like blood memory. They had threatened Leena, whispered curses into wars, and hidden every intention behind another price.
Now he was carrying one through his halls because she had saved Cole and because some nameless pressure beneath his ribs refused to let him put her down.
Veya’s tether had already made his instincts unreliable. That was the explanation. It was the only one he would accept.
Anything else remained shapeless, and Rhen intended to keep it that way.
The witch groaned as another wave struck. His teeth ground together, and he moved faster.
He shouldered open the door to his chamber. Darkness and cold waited inside, with shadows gathered along the walls and the familiar scents of smoke, leather, and old wood settled into the air. Nothing entered this room without his permission. Nothing remained unless he allowed it.
Rhen crossed to the bed and lowered her onto it with controlled care, refusing to examine why his hands knew exactly how gently to move.
Sweat glistened across her skin. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged pulls while pain continued to catch at her face, drawing her features tight and making her lashes flutter as though she were drowning somewhere he could not reach.
Rhen swore and dragged a hand through his hair.
He needed someone who understood living bodies better than he did.
“Mary!”
The door opened moments later, and Mary stepped inside with concern already written across her face. Her gaze landed on the woman in Rhen’s bed, and one hand rose to her mouth.
“Oh, my heavens. Rhen, what happened?”
“She’s a witch,” he said flatly, as though the word explained both everything and nothing. “She took Cole’s storm into herself to save him. Now her body’s paying for it.”
Mary stared at him before disbelief gave way to horror. “She took it into herself?”
Rhen nodded once.
Mary wasted no more time. She moved to the bedside and pressed careful fingers near the witch’s brow, assessing the heat pouring from her skin. Her expression settled into the calm authority she always carried when someone was bleeding, breaking, or dying.
“Get those wet clothes off her before the cold drives her into shock,” Mary said. “Then we need to bring this fever down without shocking her system.”
Rhen stepped back half a pace, although his gaze never left the witch’s face. “Do it.”
Mary glanced at him, gentle and entirely unafraid. “I need room to work.”
“I gave you room.”
Her mouth twitched, but she wisely left the answer unspoken. She reached for the soaked fabric at the witch’s shoulder and began easing it away with practiced hands, careful not to pull against muscles already locked by pain. All the while, she murmured the soft, soothing nonsense humans offered when there was nothing else they could give.
“There, love. You’re safe for now. We’ll get you dry, and we’ll get you through this.”
The witch jerked when cooler air touched her skin, and a broken sound caught in her throat.
Mary frowned. “The storm is still moving through her. It’s too much power for a human body.”
Rhen’s hands flexed at his sides.
He hated the helplessness of it. He hated that there was no throat to crush, no enemy to dismember, and no act of violence capable of forcing the power from her veins. Most of all, he hated that he watched her with the same fixed attention he gave a brother bleeding out on a battlefield.
“Do whatever you can,” he said.
Mary dried the witch quickly, replaced the wet clothing with a loose shift, and laid a cool cloth across her brow before drawing a dry blanket lightly over her. Then she checked her breathing and pulse again, her concentration deepening as another tremor passed through the mattress.
