I set my jaw. There was no other way. There was only a healing spell, drinking vampire blood, or letting the burns heal on their own. Alice had to know the dangers of consuming vampire blood as well as I did. And while letting the burns heal on their own was an option, it wasn’t a good one.
“Will it be worse than the ones Malcolm used earlier?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I might have been stalling while I wracked my brain for some other option that didn’t exist.
She tilted her head. “Probably. Those were earth magic. Blood magic is more intense. Maybe you should go downstairs while I do this.”
No way in hell would I leave her to face this alone. “If you can stand it, so can I.”
Only then did it occur to me that she could have asked—ortold—me to leave the room, or even leave the house, but she hadn’t. She’d only suggested I go to another room, and not very insistently.
Maybe, just maybe, she wanted me to stay.
“Okay,” she said, and let out a breath. “Give me some space, then, and get the trash can for me in case I need it.”
I wanted to hold her, to try and take some of her pain if I could, but she’d said I couldn’t touch her until the spell was finished. What it might to do me, I didn’t know. I doubted it could be worse than what it would do to Alice, or worse than the feeling of being relegated to spectator.
I was in the room, but I still felt like I was leaving her to face this spell alone. My belly filled with rage at myself until my hands shook.
I sat on the edge of the bed and moved the trash can close enough for me to grab it at a moment’s notice if she got sick.
Alice pulled up one side of her nightgown, baring her hip and side, and grabbed one of her pillows—the one I’d used to sleep on—with her other hand. What was the pillow for?
Without hesitation, she slid her hand under the nightgown, pressed the purple crystal to her bare abdomen, and spoke a single word: “Helios.”
Red magic erupted from the crystal with a force that ruffled my hair. It pulsed into Alice’s body and crackled on her skin.
She crushed the pillow to her face and screamed into it. The sound was guttural and so full of agony that it made me want to rip that crystal out of her hand and throw it out the window.
My wolf wrenched at me so violently that I fell off the bed and landed on my hands and knees on the hardwood floor. My back arched, my bones cracked, and a dagger of pain shot through my jaw as my wolf tried to force me to shift.
I made a sound I’d never made before: part whine, part growl, part very-human “Fuck.”
I couldn’t shift now. I had to stay human. Alice needed me to be human, not wolf.
Stop, I commanded my wolf, and shoved him down into submission with more force than I’d ever used before—not even in my early days of being a shifter, when learning to control my wolf had been so difficult and crucial.
He hunkered to his belly and whined.
Alice’s screaming didn’t stop. Neither did the pulses of magic. This was hellish.
With a groan, I got to my feet.
Her fingers were gripping the pillow so tightly I thought her nails might go through the fabric and her knuckles were white. She screamed and screamed, with ragged gasps for air in between.
I felt rooted in place, like my feet were ankle-deep in cement, but I forced myself to move.
I paced around the room and growled, my hands clenched so I didn’t grab anything—like the upholstered chair in the corner—and rip it in half. My vision was entirely gold, not just around the edges, so my eyes probably blazed like beacons. I didn’t bother trying to rein that in.
It took an eternity for her screams to start to get quieter.
The pulses of magic faded too, taking with them the odor of powerful blood magic that had singed my nose for the past several minutes—or several hours. However the hell long it had been.
When I heard a gasp and no more screams, I looked at the bed. Alice had moved the pillow off her face.
She was looking at me, her chest heaving, eyes red, and face flushed. Beautiful even now, though I shouldn’t have noticed that.
I went to the bed and leaned on it with both hands. “Is it done?” My voice didn’t sound like mine, or even like my wolf. It was ragged and full of pain.
Alice dropped the purple crystal on the bed. “Now it’s done,” she managed to say.
