And that would be that, Gabby concluded.
She nodded, and without further ado, Nolan ripped the bloody and battered sleeve of her dress, tearing it straight off at the shoulder seam. Gabby remembered applying mercurite to one of Nolan’s wounds, and the way the viscous silvery liquid had beaded up and seeped down through the curving line of stitches. The liquid silver and mercury worked together to surround the poison and then destroy it. She also remembered the grimace on Nolan’s face.
The first splash touched her shoulder and shocked the breath out of her.
“It won’t last long,” Nolan said, as soothingly as a mother tending her sick child.
The bone-crunching cold gave way to an itch, then heat. And with every passing breath the heat intensified, until it clawed deep into tissue and then bone. Gabby’s whole arm, and a path across her back, felt as if it had been consumed by flames. She whimpered but swallowed a scream. Nolan was trying to hide her presence.
He pressed his mouth against her forehead and mumbled words she couldn’t comprehend. Gabby heard only the rush of blood through her ears, the pealing scream she held blocked in her throat.
And then it was over. The burn collapsed inside her and she dragged in a gulp of air. Every tensed muscle sagged toward the table.
“It’s over,” Nolan confirmed. “God, Gabby, I’m sorry. I know what it’s like, especially the first time. But—” He paused, and even though her eyes were closed, she could see him screwing up his face in frustration. “How the hell did this happen?”
She rolled her head away from him. Lying wounded before Nolan hadn’t been part of her plan tonight. She’d failed. And now he knew.
“You picked a fight with it,” he guessed, and when Gabby didn’t deny it, he slammed a fist onto the metal table. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed!”
“I can fight,” she said, testing her shoulder. She wanted to get up and away as fast as she could.
Nolan brought his palm to her opposite shoulder and held her down. “How the devil can you fight, Gabby?”
She couldn’t tell him about Chelle’s lessons. She couldn’t send Chelle to the guillotine like that.
“I can prove to your father that I belong here,” Gabby said instead.
“If he found out about this it would only prove how much of a liability you are,” he growled, but then reached his fingers into her hair, combing the tangled strands. “I don’t agree with my da. He’s wrong about you, Gabby, but there’s no telling him. He won’t be swayed. You don’t know him.”
He stopped, dipped his chin, and picked up the bottle of mercurite he’d set beside Gabby’s hip. The black glass had no label. “Hell, I don’t even know him anymore.”
He corked the bottle roughly as Rory returned to the room.
“We’re clear. Uncle is still out on patrol,” Rory relayed.
Nolan thanked him, then turned back to her. “Gabby, this is my cousin.”
Cousin. Those eyes made sense now. Gabby met them again and Rory nodded a hello.
“We’ve met,” he said.
Nolan’s cousin was a half head taller than him, and at least twenty pounds heavier, though Gabby was sure it was all muscle. Again she noticed his brown leather vest, strapped with a half-dozen gleaming silver daggers. Clearly his weapon of choice.
“She needs a second dose of mercurite,” Rory said, his eyes on her bared shoulder.
“I’ll wait for gargoyle blood,” Nolan replied. He seemed to just then remember the gargoyle standing at the foot of the table. “Luc’s, by the look of it.”
Dimitrie lifted his head. “He’s here.”
Rory calmly strode back out into the hall, and Gabby knew it was to meet Luc on the roof.
“I don’t need Luc’s blood,” Gabby said, feeling more embarrassed and angry by the moment. And guilty, too. She’d screwed up, and Luc and Dimitrie would suffer for it. It wasn’t fair. Her actions were her own. She should suffer the consequences for them, no one else.
Nolan came to her side and cupped her cheek. In all the madness, she hadn’t once thought about the scars along her face. He tenderly swept his thumb over them. “I won’t use any more mercurite than I need to, lass. After a while …” He sighed and pulled his hand back. “After a while, it changes you.”
It had changed his father. Gabby pieced together a few of the comments he and the others had made about Carrick Quinn. The mercurite had changed him, and not for the better.
She couldn’t help but wonder: how long until it changed Nolan?