“He survive. You survive. It over.”
But she was wrong. It wasn’t over. I’d almost gotten him killed, and it wasn’t over at all.
“Olga, can you?”
That was Claire, passing her the horrible brew. Which Olga fed me like I was a baby. It tasted as awful as it smelled, and was a complete waste of time because it didn’t do a damned—
* * *
—
The next time I woke up, the sun was shining through the curtains and Louis-Cesare was gone. For a moment, I just stared at the indentation in the mattress, at sheets that still held the scent of his body, at faint traces of blood on the duvet. And then I was up and running for the door, and bursting out into the hall—
Where Gessa was playing with the boys on the sunny boards of the landing.
I stared at them. There were blankets and toys and a large, pinkish bear that had now lost both ears but otherwise seemed to be holding up. It was regarding me quizzically, like everyone else.
I swallowed, and just stood there, swaying for a moment. “Where—”
“He fine,” Gessa told me. “He go talk to Senate. He said tell you.”
I swallowed again. “Okay.”
Stinky came over and offered me a cookie. It was half-eaten and the rest was seriously slobbered on. He was badly in need of braces—if his adult teeth ever finished coming in—and he drooled a lot.
“Thanks. I’m okay,” I told him, and went back into the bedroom.
I was not okay. I looked down to see that my hands were shaking, which was absurd. I sat down on the bed, but all I could see were bloodstained sheets. All I could hear was the sound of those bullets hitting flesh. And tearing and rending and—
My breath started coming faster, and I wondered if this was what a panic attack felt like. I didn’t know because I’d never had one. Dhampirs didn’t. Of course, dhampirs didn’t have friends or families or children or—
I got up and went to the bathroom.
My face in the mirror looked like a stranger’s: gaunt and dead white except for the burning, half-golden tint of my eyes. They looked like my father’s, when he was calling up power. They looked alien.
They looked like hers.
I cut that thought off hard. I didn’t want to think about her right now. How she’d taken over my body, and forced me to follow her commands, instead of helping him. Together, Louis-Cesare and I could have laid waste; together we could have cleared the fucking room. Instead—
I saw my lip curl, showing fang. I wanted to put a fist through the mirror. I wanted—
To look at something else, I told myself harshly. Before you give her even more control! Calm down!
I didn’t calm down, but I did look away. And let my eyes roam over the bathroom, but that didn’t seem to help. Couldn’t think; didn’t know why I’d come in here.
Until I bent over the sink, to splash some water on my face, and my ribs screamed at me.
Oh.
That was why.
I peeled off the baggy sweatpants and T-shirt someone had put on me, and checked out the damage.
The slinky jumpsuit had provided zero protection, but Louis-Cesare had drawn most of the fire and I’d been surrounded by troll. The worst I’d suffered was a bunch of weird, round bruises, peppering my stomach and thighs, from the porcupine-quill-like shrapnel thrown up by the destroyed floor. They were puffy and sore, with an angry red eye in the middle of each one. My ribs were also pissed off again, I was stiff as hell, and I felt uncharacteristically weak from the blood loss. But it could have been worse.
It could have been a lot worse.
I sat on the side of the tub and put my head in my hands.
I felt like shit, but it wasn’t physical. I’d fought in worse shape than this—way worse. But I’d never hurt like this.
He’s okay, I told myself. What is wrong with you? Get up, get dressed, get busy! You only have about a thousand things to do!
I didn’t get up. And I already felt busy, like my head was sucking up all my strength, trying to sort out a mess that couldn’t be sorted. I didn’t have the skill set for this. I didn’t even know where to start. My thoughts just went round and round, until they made me dizzy, until they made me want to throw up.
If we hadn’t been attacked so ferociously, and thereby held up, would Dorina have drowned a theatre full of people? Would she have pressed that trigger if they’d still been inside? I didn’t know.
Like I didn’t know how well she’d been following the fight. With her mind literally elsewhere, had she realized how much danger she’d put us in? Did she care?
Or was she confident that she could get me—and therefore herself—out of there, and fuck everyone else? She’d saved the fey, people she didn’t even know, but what about the people I knew? What about Olga and Ray and—
If Louis-Cesare was anyone else, he’d be dead right now.
The thought intruded on my mental battle, loud and clanging, like a cymbal dropped on concrete. It made logical thought impossible, because every time I tried, there it was again, resonating. Over and over, louder and louder, that moment when he’d pushed me out of the way stuck on repeat in perfect clarity.
I could see the brilliant crimson of his blood, brighter than the acres of curtains; could feel the warm stickiness hitting me in great bursts; could smell it in the air, partially vaporized by the force of the bullets, and rich with power he could no longer use. Shook again as I hit the floor of the box, sliding painfully into the hard wood of the side, unable to stop with his weight on top of me. Felt her throw him off and jerk the weapon out from under him, like it was nothing, like he didn’t matter.
Because, to her, he didn’t.
I finally got up and took a shower. The water hurt the bruises, but it was a familiar, burning ache, almost comforting. I knew how to bleed; I knew how to heal. But this . . . I didn’t know how to do this.
The hot water ran out before I was finished, because we only had about a thousand people taking showers these days. I rinsed in cold, got out, dried off, and put on some clean sweats. I thought about combing out my hair, but it didn’t seem important. Neither did the hunger clawing in my belly, the ever-present cost of a dhampir’s metabolism. I felt it; I just didn’t care.
I wanted to call somebody, to report what I’d seen, but Louis-Cesare was already doing that. The only thing he didn’t know was what Dorina had overheard in that underwater room, but that seemed . . . really unlikely. The mage had told Curly that he was in charge, and it had sounded like he was talking about Geminus’ family. Only vampire families didn’t work like that.
Like really didn’t.
Vampires thought of themselves as a breed apart, better, smarter, longer-lived—basically an evolved sort of human. Homo superior, I’d heard one say once, and he hadn’t been joking. To take orders from a regular old garden-variety human, even a magical one, would be like . . .
Well, like your dog walking you.
It just didn’t happen.
And then there was the fact that what I’d heard, or thought I’d heard, had come from Dorina. She’d been riding that guard; she’d heard what was said, not me. So this was secondhand information, filtered through a wobbly link, and from a source I didn’t entirely—
Goddamn it!
I’d twisted wrong, picking up a dropped towel, and pain ripped through me. I stood there, panting by the sink for a moment, tamping down a desire to rip it out of the wall. Screw it. I couldn’t do this right now. Like I couldn’t heal if I didn’t eat.
I threw the damned towel in the bathtub and headed out the door.
And almost tripped over some fey drinking coffee.
I must have been in the bath longer than I’d thought, because Gessa and the boys had moved on. The fey were in their place, looking like they were taking a break from whatever fresh hell Claire had been putting them through. And eating their version of biscotti, with big mugs of steaming-hot brew.
Or, at least, they were until I showed up, when they abruptly scrambled to their feet.