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“Thirty minutes if it fails. An hour if it holds.”
“And if it fails?”
“We go back to eleven doses and decide by severity.”
“No,” Marcus said. “If it fails, we find another answer.”
Del didn’t argue immediately. She looked at the eleven vials and then at Clara, whose stolen name had nearly destroyed them all. “If the twelfth patient were you, would you still say no?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.” Marcus came around the bench. “And before you tell me it’s not my decision, I know. I understand that your body belongs to you.”
Del crossed her arms. “That sounds like the beginning of a condition.”
“It’s the beginning of a request.” He stopped in front of her. “If your heart stops during the working, do you want me to turn you?”
The question removed every lesser sound from the room. Del looked toward the boarded window, where a thin draft moved smoke through the cracks. When she faced him again, fear had stripped the anger from her expression.
“No,” she said. “Not without asking me when I’m conscious and able to answer.”
Marcus nodded once. “Then I’ll not.”
“Even if it means I die?”
“Even then.” The promise hurt as it left him, but he didn’t qualify it. “Your trust doesn’t give me ownership of what you become.”
Del’s arms dropped. She touched his chest with one hand, her palm resting over a heart that hadn’t beaten since 1936. “You make that sound simple.”
“It’s not simple. It’s clear.”
“There’s a difference.”
“Yes.”
She rose onto her toes and kissed him. Marcus put his hands at her waist, careful of the bruises left by Sable and the long days of work. Del deepened the kiss until caution became impossible to maintain.
When she drew back, her forehead rested against his. “If I survive, ask me for something that has nothing to do with blood or medicine.”
“Dinner.”
“That was fast.”
“I’ve had time to consider it.”
“Then ask me afterward.” Del touched his mouth with her thumb. “I want at least one decision waiting for me on the other side.”
Marcus covered her hand with his. He wanted to tell her that she would survive, but false certainty wouldn’t carry either of them through the working. “I’ll ask.”
They returned to the cold-storage box and prepared the dilution test together. The altered concentration held for an hour without relapse, giving them twelve smaller doses that remained inside the effective range. Arrow had tried to force a sacrifice, and for once, the arithmetic refused him.
Chapter 18
The overhead work lights hummed. The clinic smelled of reagents and old wood. Delphine stood at the anchor point with her bleeding palm pressed flat against the central glyph.
The rune covered six square feet of concrete floor. Chalk lines overlaid with iron filings, the whole thing reworked and re-laid across three days of failed attempts. The layers were visible from where he sat at the diagnostic rig. Each version had left its ghost in the concrete: faint white traces under the fresh chalk, the iron darkening where blood had already soaked in.
