“I will, Maddox. But you need to rest now.”
He swallows. “But… Rouge…”
“You don’t have to worry about her,” I say, praying to the heavens above that I’m not lying. “She doesn’t know you’re here. Harrison and I are going to figure out how to make her pay for what she’s done to you.”
“May… Svetlana…”
I tilt my head. “What?”
“In the office… Safe… Journal…” His heartbeat monitor starts accelerating again.
I squeeze his hand. “Maddox, please. Take a deep breath and calm down.”
“River of tears… Writing raven…” His eyes roll back in his head and he loses consciousness again.
His heartbeat, thankfully, returns to normal levels.
Harrison rushes in. “Is he okay? I heard the monitor go haywire.”
I nod. “He woke up for a minute. I told him he was safe, that we had everything under control, and then he got very agitated when he tried to tell me something.”
Harrison widens his eyes. “What was it?”
I frown. “It sounded like nonsense to me. He might have just been delirious. He’s been through so much.”
He frowns, crosses his arms. “Yeah, well, we found the two of them because of a shampoo bottle, so I’ll take any hint we can get.”
I shrug. “Fair enough. He mentioned Rouge’s office. A safe? And then he said something about a river of tears and a writing raven.”
“A what?”
“Yeah. Like I said, he was out of it.”
“Alissa is still awake. Maybe she can help us make sense of what’s going on. Let’s go ask her.”
We walk over to Alissa’s room, where she’s lying down being fed more applesauce by Dinah. She’s gotten a little color back in her face and is a little more alert, but she has a long way to go before she’ll be back to herself again.
I cross over to her bed and offer a smile. “Alissa, you’ll be happy to know that Maddox woke up for a few minutes.”
Her eyes are sunken, with big dark circles under them, but still they seem to brighten just a little. “Really?”
“Yeah. He wanted you to know that he loves you.”
Her lip trembles. “Next time he wakes up, tell him I love him too.”
“You can tell him yourself. We’ll move you two into a shared room once you’re both a little more stable,” Harrison says. “But listen. He said something that sounded like gibberish to us.”
Alissa swallows, wincing. “What was it?”
I sit on the edge of her bed. “Something about a river of tears, and a writing raven.”
She widens her eyes. “Yes. The riddle.”
“The riddle?” Dinah asks.
She nods. “When Maddox’s father died, he left him a riddle to solve. Follow the writing raven through the river of tears.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dinah asks.
