Page 24 of Monster Queen Rising

"Yes."

Madison looks at her own hands a long moment. Then at me.

"I want both of you in here. You, and him. He said the rest was mine. I'm holding him to it."

I send Dean for Fen.

He comes in and takes the wall, hands flat against it, the way he sat in the truck. He looks at Madison's face.

"You said the rest was mine," she says.

His jaw works. "Yes."

"I'm going to take the reversal."

I feel it go through him. He gives her the only word he can carry.

"Yours."

Madison turns to Vance. "Do it."

Vance draws the compound from the case Dean sets on the nightstand. She holds the syringe up so I can see the line, says the dose out loud, says where it goes and why. Crull is at her shoulder. I am close enough that the voice would land before she finished a wrong move.

She finds the vein in Madison's arm. "Sharp," she says, and pushes it.

Then nothing.

Vance has two fingers on Madison's pulse and her eyes on her watch. Nobody in the room moves. The seconds stretch long enough that the voice starts climbing my throat — useless, because there is nothing here to command.

Then the tension goes out of her.

I watch it leave her face — her color going from bright to plain pale, her breath catching and then lengthening. Her hand stays on her stomach.

Madison takes another breath. Then another. Vance keeps her fingers on the pulse.

"She should be back on the protocol rate. About three weeks now — if she comes through it. I'll need to watch her through the night."

"You'll watch her under guard," I say. "Same terms. Every hour."

"Understood."

Beside me Fen has not moved off the wall, and the thread between us is so tight it hums, because what just changed in that room is half his.

Madison's eyes are already closing — the drug, or the exhaustion, or both.

"Thank you," she says, to the room, to none of us in particular. "For letting it be mine."

Fen pushes off the wall. He does not come toward her. He goes to the door, and there he stops and looks back at her.

Nobody ever asked him. Every needle, every extraction, every door that locked—nobody ever once let it be his to decide. He made sure this one was hers.

He dips his head once, and he's gone.

Chapter eleven

Jen

When he finally comes to find me, the cabin has gone quiet.