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Kas nodded, sighing. “I questioned Jillian further, but of course, Merden never tried anything to reverse the damage.”
“And she hasn’t woken at all?” I confirmed, touching my fingers to the girl’s wrist. She was cold, even for a vampire. I frowned, thinking that veins full of animal blood should make her warmer.
“She’s been reportedly unconscious since before Merden fled,” Rush said.
“Well, I guess we need to start somewhere,” I agreed after a beat of silence. I had no better ideas.
Kas looked haunted as he helped Rush set up the necessary equipment for draining her blood, and then readied the container of fox shifter blood that they must have taken from Girard’s shelves.
“Careful of thefin de vie,” I warned, although I knew they would be. If we took the final drop of her blood by accident, she would die no matter what we filled her veins with.
The process took barely an hour, and we sat in silence the entire time, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
“How long should we wait?” I asked as the last drop of fox blood drained into the girl’s arm.
“Jillian mentioned that Merden first waited several days between the steps, but that many of the slaves were already so broken that their minds went much quicker,” Kas said, halting between the words as though he didn’t want to say them out loud.
“Fuck, I hate her,” I murmured, sweeping a bit of the girl’s limp black hair away from her face.
“I suspect the guards were engaging in their own brands of torture with anyone captured,” Rush added in a low voice. I winced, thinking of the sexual assault Jax had tried to describe. My heart would always hurt for the cruelty they had faced, just for being childhood friends with me.
“There is no fate in this world horrific enough for that woman,” Kas said, turning away and walking to the room’swindow. It was one of the vacant nobles’ rooms, and I was surprised they’d found the space.
“How are the others? In the ballroom?” I asked Rush, needing to pass the time without thinking about how much I wanted to kill Merden. I’d been thinking of little else for a decade.
“Nearly all the injured citizens are recovering, some faster than others. The ice wolves sustained remarkably few injuries from the gobbelins, and they have preferred to tend their wounds outside the palace. The vampires seem less threatened with that, as well.” He continued to describe a few odd cases, his voice soothing me without asking anything back. I leaned into him, thanking him silently, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
The girl on the bed began to cough, and we snapped to attention.
Her eyes were still closed, but choking coughs racked her thin body, growing worse and worse each second.
“Can we sedate her?” I cried, scanning the room. But this was Haret, not an emergency room on Earth. We had very little medical equipment and no mage to make potions for pain.
Rush laid hands on her chest, his energy magic pulsing in golden waves through her skin, but his eyes met mine. His expression told me the worst.
“Her body is rejecting the blood,” I guessed, and he nodded.
The girl’s coughs grew more violent, and blood began to bubble between her lips. Kas moaned wordlessly as more blood streamed from behind her closed eyelids, and the veins on her wrists split wide again, soaking the bandages we’d just placed.
We all watched helplessly as the girl quickly bled out on the bed before us, soaking the blanket in seconds.
And we were equally helpless as the mist swirled into the room, silent and inevitable. It floated across her body, dissolving flesh and bone and accepting her spirit into its gray depths.
“She’s with your ancestors now. At peace, without pain,” Rush whispered, and I knew he was trying to help. The poor girl deserved peace, of course.
But she deserved to live even more.
“Fuck!” Kas shouted, tossing the empty blood container and all our instruments against the walls in a crash and clatter of rage. He stormed out of the room, and I thought it was better not to follow him yet.
Then again, he was probably headed to Jillian’s cell, and I didn’t trust him not to kill her after this.
I vaulted over the mess and sprinted down the hall after him.
“Kassian!” I yelled down the corridor, ignoring the stares of several vampires who had been wandering the halls. Opening up my speed, I quickly overtook him, grabbing him by the arms and shoving him against the stone wall.
“Let me go, Kana - I’m going to cut it out of her if I have to,” he cried, fighting against my hold. For several seconds, we scuffled. He threw rage-blind punches and slashed at me with open fangs. But I was faster, and I was stronger.
“We will solve this. But not like this, Kas. Not like this. We’re still in the Trials,” I panted, subduing him in a chokehold. Thank the Goddess we’d turned down a narrow, empty hall where no curious vampires could watch their future queen and king try to claw each other to pieces.
