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“What?” Her face was almost mockingly calm in the face of my panic.
Daphne blinked at me once, cocking her head like she didn’t understand what I said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
My heart was still stuttering in my chest, pounding with the fear that the love of my fucking life was dead. “Daphne, I thought you were hurt.”
A little bit of sympathy bled into her eyes. “I tried to tell Loretta that it was immediate but not life-threatening.” She shrugged one perfect shoulder. “Oops.”
“Oops?” It was more of a growl than anything. “I run in here, thinking I’m going to find you bleeding out on the floor and your answer isoops?”
“Oh, Luke,” she said, still swinging her legs. At least she looked genuinely sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I know what that feeling is like. Not fun.”
I could barely hear her over the ringing in my ears. Hot-blooded fear was still coursing through my veins. I stomped up to her, grabbing her face in my hands and planting a firm kiss on her mouth, just to remind myself that she was alive and in front of me.
Pulling back but keeping close, I said, “You’re going to pay for that one, baby.”
Daphne just smirked and lifted a hand to coast over my beard. “Fine.”
“Ahem.” Piper cleared her throat from behind me.
Daphne moved my face to the side with a light shove of her hand. “Youcan wait until I’m done talking to Lukas. That’s what you deserve for poisoning me.”
I dropped my head to Daphne’s shoulder and had to take long pulls of air, tinged with her perfume, to remind myself that drowning Piper wasn’t an option.
When I felt steady enough, which still wasn’t anywhere near calm, I turned and leaned against the desk. Half of my body was practically on top of Daphne’s, but I needed to feel her breathing.
I had one more thing to do before I could move onto the two people tied up in front of us. I glanced down at the knives she had placed at her side. “You’re not hurt?”
Daphne shook her head, pressing into me.
I nodded once. “Good. Now,” I turned to face Piper and Avery. “What the fuck is wrong with you two?”
Piper opened her mouth, but Daphne cut her off. “Piper here has been poisoning my coffee since I’ve been back." She looked at me, explaining quickly, "The distance between us did have some impact, I think. Then her poison made it worse."
Daphne turned back to Piper."She upped the dose this past week because the few days I wasn't getting drugged seemed to solve all our problems. And Avery has been helping her do it. We were just getting tohowthey actually did it.”
Avery squirmed in his chair.
“What?” I barked. “Uncomfortable?” It would serve him fucking right, threatening to hurt my wife. Eventual wife. Whatever.
“My…arm…itches,” he said, sounding like his airway was closed.
Daphne looked at me for a second then jumped off the table, slipping right out of my reach. She walked over to Avery and knelt down where his hands were tied behind the chair. She shoved his sleeves up then gasped.
Avery groaned in pain as Daphne untied one of his hands, keeping the other secured to the chair. I stepped forward as she pulled his hand around to show me.
He had a tattoo, a circle like the one’s Dominic and Rose had described, festering and shooting black marks up his skin.
“Luke, tear me off a piece of fabric from his shirt.”
I bent down and ripped Avery’s shirt down the middle, then did it again to take a long scrap from it. I handed it to Daphne, and she tied it around his upper arm, a few inches above the black streaks, forming a tight tourniquet.
She pressed her thumb into the tops of a few of the lines, prodding around until she was satisfied that the blood was cut off.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked Avery.
He nodded. “It’s more of a throb now,” he said, his voice much clearer than it was before.
Daphne stood, coming back to sit next to me, stepping right into the space between my side and where my arm was outstretched on the table.
