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When Grace inevitably left this world, I would spend the rest of my nights serving Alek to make up for it.
Gabriel’s face fell. “She didn’t tell you?”
“She told me that it’s growing,” I managed to say. “Rapidly.”
He ran a hand through his usually perfect hair. “It is.”
I left thehow longquestion hanging silently between us. She’d been given three months over six weeks ago. We were halfway through her time. “She’s been spending her nights in the archives with Julian and Lyric. Have they found anything that might sway your opinion?”
He leaned back against his desk. “There were some experiments done around the time of the renaissance.” His blond brow furrowed. “All very…inhumane really, but some of our kind didn’t hold the highest opinion of humans.”
“What were the results?”
A sigh ripped from his lips and the door swung open behind me. A quick look over my shoulder confirmed what I’d guessed by scent alone. Zachariah was here.
“Nothing positive,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping.
“We’re discussing alternative treatments for Grace,” I explained to Zachariah as he moved to my side.
“Have you found any?” he asked.
Gabriel shook his head. “The experiments tried injecting our blood straight into tumors. They only grew faster.”
My stomach churned. “When I fed her, the tumor shrank. It was only a millimeter or so, but it shrank.”
“Could be that the difference was ingestion. Problem is that once you feed a human three times, they go into transition…” His voice trailed off. “Every record we’ve uncovered has found that to be an unsuccessful method.”
“They died.” I pocketed the bottle of pills and folded my arms across my chest. “Don’t bullshit around the truth on my behalf. If I didn’t want the truth, I wouldn’t have asked.”
Zachariah moved closer, a steady, comforting presence.
“They died,” Gabriel admitted. “But the experiments are flawed, Ajax. They don’t take vampire heritage into account. They don’t mention special abilities like both Lyric and Grace had during their humanity. They didn’t exactly do a control group for those transitioned with normal vampire blood and those transitioned with stronger warrior blood. There are too many variables to make any of it scholarly.”
“So we still have no clue if she’d survive transition.” I had to ask. Every day my resolve weakened, hoping for the sliver of a chance that Grace might live.
Gabriel shook his head. “And she still refuses human treatment?”
“She does. She watched her mother go through it. She was given three months and treatment gave her a fourth month, but she spent most of that month unconscious in the hospital.” I understood her choice, at leastpartof it. Her choice to transition was…unthinkable.
“I’m researching everything I can find. I just wish there was more I could do.”
We all turned as Saint pushed through the doors from the recovery room, his skin pale and drawn tight across his cheekbones.
“She out?” Gabriel asked.
Saint nodded and rubbed his hand over his close-cropped hair. “I got about a quarter of the canned shit down her. Made her think it was wine.”
Gabriel sighed. “That’s not nearly enough, but it’s better than yesterday. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” Saint’s dark gaze snapped toward Gabriel’s. “Samuel did that to her. It’s my fault she’s—”
“It’s not,” Zachariah interrupted. “You arenotresponsible for Samuel’s actions.”
“Well I’m sure as hell responsible for hunting him down and yet here I am, chained to this house because the only time Aurora isn’t screaming is when she’s asleep, or when I’m fucking with her head to make her think that she isn’t trapped in her own living nightmare. And believe me, her dreams aren’t any better than her reality. I’ve only seen moments of what he put her through, but it’s enough to make my stomach turn.”
None of us had a response to that.
“Has anyone told her father?” I asked.
