“Exactly how you look then.” She nabbed a plastic cup from the bedside table and brought a straw to his lips. He sucked greedily, expecting water but getting a delicious sweet liquid instead. With raised eyebrows, he pinned the cup between two bandaged hands and drained it dry.
“Peony nectar,” she said. “It’s supposed to speed healing. They covered your burns in fire lily balm, but the doctor said it would take at least twenty-four hours for your skin to grow back. And it’s not going to feel good when it does.”
“Heart?”
“I have it. It’s fine. Your backpack is ruined, but dragon hearts are remarkably heat resistant.” She laughed.
“She said it was a trap.”
“Really? The person trying to steal the heart told you the heart was leading you down a road to doom. You don’t say?”
He licked his lips. “She said someone tricked her into giving me the heart. What if she wasn’t lying? What if someone manipulated Soleil?”
The corners of Meredith’s mouth pulled back in contemplation. “I think she gave you the heart to win you back. Her demon lover got angry, demanded its return. She sensed it was over with you anyway and regretted her earlier generosity.”
“It is the simplest explanation,” he mumbled.
“Occam’srazor, the simplest hypothesis is the most likely to be true.”
He shook his head slightly. “She said… there was something she couldn’t tell me. A reason she’d changed her mind.”
“Hmm. That’s convenient.”
“I think one of us should interrogate her.”
“Well, when she wakes up, that might be an option. Right now, a bunch of fae doctors are trying to pick the iron out of her chest without starting themselves on fire.”
With a moan, he sought to scratch his shoulder, the movement causing pain to radiate through his entire body. Meredith carefully scratched the spot for him.
“I can ask them to give you something for the pain.” She refilled his drink from a pitcher on the bedside table. “But Jason and Selene are on their way to give you an update. You might want to stay sharp.”
As promised, a knock came on the door a few minutes later, and Jason and Selene entered. “We came as soon as we heard.”
Meredith welcomed them in. Kissing a small space above Silas’s right eyebrow that didn’t hurt as much as the rest of him, she gathered her things. “While you three talk, I’m going to go take care of a few things. I’ll be back later.” She swept from the room.
“How’s it going, brother?” Jason said, scanning his bandages with a look of pity.
“Hurts,” Silas said. He didn’t expand on the statement. Even his lips hurt.
“We’re about to make you feel a hell of a lot better.” Jason took a seat in the chair near the bed. “Ryker wasn’t happy when he heard you had the heart. Soleil had promised to keep it in her possession while Alex was on the move, and Ryker was worried it wasn’t safe enough in his shop anyway. Apparently, celestial fae are known to have hiding places that are impervious to outsiders. He acted rather hoodwinked and regretted taking Soleil up on her offer, although the sex was, in his words, delectable.”
Silas scowled. So it wasn’t Ryker who pressured Soleil to get the heart back. He didn’t even know she’d given it to him until Jason had said something.
“Sorry. That last part was probably an unnecessary detail.” Jason crossed his arms. “Maybe you should take this, Selene.”
With a conciliatory nod, Selene said, “When we asked Ryker about the ritual, he became extremely agitated. After a cursory inspection of his inventory, he admitted he’d only ever heard of one book with magic dark enough to mingle dimensions. It’s a text calledThe Book of Flesh and Bone. It’s like Panaal’s own grimoire or something. It’s written in blood on dried human skin with spells that Ryker said are powerful enough to raise the dead. Only, there’s one copy, and he says it’s been missing for years.”
“No. He did not say that,” Silas mumbled. “The Book of Flesh and Bone? Are you sure?”
“Yes. He said it used to belong to a clan of shifters.”
“Nekomata,” Silas said.
“How did you know that?”
“Because I helped Grateful Knight defeat the last group of supernatural baddies that tried to use that book to change the natural law.” Too many words. Silas pressed the cold side of his cup against his sore lips. He needed to talk to Grateful. He tried to sit up, but the pain was too great. He fell back onto the pillow with a groan.
Looking worried, Selene reached for the call button. “Do you need me to call the nurse?”
