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Name.
No names.
They can’t know names.
Panic poured hotly, coldly, deadly. “H-He’s fine,” I whispered. “He just needs to go home. Please...just let us go home.”
“We’re just going to take him to the hospital first, okay?” she murmured gently. “We’ll look after him and then you guys can go home.”
“No.” I shook my head, pawing at her hands. Perhaps she’d be on our side if I could make her understand. She’d protect him. She’d hide him. “He can’t go to the hospital. They’ll know who he is.”
“Know who he is?” She cupped my cheeks, her fingers feathering around my head as if searching for a wound. “Why would that matter? We need to know who he is so we can make him feel better.”
I pushed her away. “Please. Just make him wake up and I can do the rest. I can look after him. I was born to be his, don’t you understand? You have to understand. If you take him away from me, he’ll die and—” A sob cut me off.
My body felt wrong.
My thoughts nothing more than storm clouds.
“I did this, don’t you see?” I cried. “He told me not to speak to them and I did. He protected me. He always protects me. And I distracted him. If I’d let him kill that bastard, he’d be fine. We’d be fine. I always do this. I make so many mistakes. I don’t think. I don’t listen. I...I—”
My stomach churned. Guilt slashed at my throat.
“Just ignore all that for now, okay? What’s his name, honey? Tell me his name and yours, and we’ll call your family to come be with you guys. How about that? You won’t be alone to deal with this anymore, okay? You’ll have family.”
Family.
My family loves Aslan.
Aslan’s father wants to slaughter him.
“He has to stay here. Promise me you’ll let him stay.”
The EMTs shared a concerned look. Finally, the man muttered, “Definitely shock.” Looking down, he inserted an IV line into Aslan’s veins. “No head wounds?”
The woman pursed her lips. “Nothing that I can feel.”
“Then it’s purely psychological.” His voice turned harder as he looked at me. “Climb into the ambulance. We’re going to go now. We’ll get you both feeling better as soon as possible.”
More sirens shredded the night, followed by more flashing blue and red lights.
The empty street became a hive of activity as two police cars joined the traffic jam of Mazda and ambulance.
Car doors slammed as uniformed officers climbed out.
Their buckles glinted.
Their buttons gleamed.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m—
I lost the battle.
Air swirled.
Night crushed.
And the last thing I saw was Aslan, bloody and broken, before I collapsed beside him, and everything went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Three
*
Nerida
AGE: 20 YRS OLD
*
(Love in Icelandic: Ást)
MY EYES FLEW OPEN.
I shot upright, dizzy and tingly, completely lost.
W-Where am I?
Organized chaos swarmed around me as nurses drifted from bedsides as patients were assessed and left in different stages of undress, malaise, and distress.
Nausea splashed on my tongue as I slowly sat up, pushing away the hastily spread blanket over me and holding onto the bed railing as the world swam and tilted.
“Easy, easy, just stay down.” A middle-aged nurse squeaked toward me in bright pink Crocs. Her head tipped down, her eyes scanning paperwork even as she hustled toward me. Dark-brown hair bordering on black gleamed in a tight bun, while her dusky-olive skin was flawless even under the harsh fluorescents.
Coming to my side, she finished reading whatever she had in her hands then looked up.
She froze and did a double take. “N-Nerida?”
I blinked and urged my useless brain to wake up.
Something wasn’t right.
Everything was wrong.
And yet...I couldn’t remember what.
But I could remember her, and the relief to see a familiar face made tears prick my stinging eyes.
“Jedda.” I swallowed hard as urges inside me did their best to figure out what the hell was going on. “Hi.”
“W-What are you doing here?” She scanned whatever notes had been formulated on me. “You fainted at the scene of a car crash?”
And just like that, everything came flooding back.
Every awful, crippling thing.
Aslan!
Oh God.
Where is he?
Panic clutched my nervous system; I swung my legs out of bed, fully intending to go sprinting through the hospital to find him. Only, Jedda placed a calming hand on my uncalmable heart. “Talk to me, Nerida. Tell me what happened.”
My eyes flew to her.
It took so much effort, so much self-control to obey her.
Out of every nurse to tend to me.
Out of every hospital.
This had to be fate, right?
Fate stepping in to help me keep him hidden and safe.
“Aslan. He was the one in the car crash. H-He was unconscious. I passed out when the police arrived.”
“The police?” Her familiar, pretty face blanched. “Good grief. They don’t know who he is, do they?”
I folded in on myself in gratefulness.
Jedda was the only secret my parents and I had ever kept from Aslan.
