Knight's gaze flicks to the floor.
"And you mention thisnow?" I snarl.
He squints at me over those stupid glasses I should have put in a meat grinder a long damn time ago. "Why the fuck would I mention shit toyou? We were trying to kill each other less than a week ago."
He has a point, as loath as I am to admit it. There's only one reason two alphas who hate each other's guts as much as we do would stop fighting.
And she's standing right in front of us.
Even if her brain's a thousand miles away from here.
"What do you mean, dissociating?" Raven demands, gripping Nikolai's arm. "What happened?"
"I don't know, okay? She just… spaces out," Nikolai says, gesturing to her. "Disappears into herself, like nothing else exists."
Judging from the looks of her right now, he's not wrong.
"It's a fugue state."
Plague's voice cuts through our collective panic like a scalpel. The prince sits there, blood still trickling from his split lip, watching Cosima with clinical interest that makes me want to put my fist through his regal skull. He's the reason we're in this fucking shit to begin with.
Technically, he's also the reason we found her. But I'm not giving him credit for fate, which apparently, I believe in now.
"It happened while she was in our custody," he continues, like he's telling us about the weather. "An episode just like this. She's clearly unwell."
"Shut your fucking mouth," Raven snarls, but Plague ignores him.
"If you take off these restraints and allow me to order the conductor to stop this train," Plague says flatly, "I can take her back to Surhiira where she can get the help she clearly needs."
I expect Raven to be the one who snaps. Maybe Nikolai or Knight, who's always a wild card. I think they do, too, but no one is more surprised than me when I end up with my hand around Plague's throat.
The prince's eyes widen like he knows he's one sanctimonious remark away from having his spinal cord disconnected. "Help?" I grit out through my teeth. "From the alpha who left a clearly unwell omega in the hands of the shadiest fucking warlord in the Outer Reaches? Offense absolutely intended, by the way."
"None taken," Nikolai sneers, flashing a fanged smile as he folds his arms over his chest. "But he has a point. I'm not exactly reputable, and that's a mighty high horse you're riding, your majesty."
Plague's eyes sharpen. He's smart enough to know he's crossed a line, and if Cosima wasn't a ticking time bomb right now, I'd push him over it. We're already fucked. Kidnapping a prince, killing one… pretty sure they hang you either way.
"Geo?" Raven's strangled voice alerts me to the fact that Cosima has moved from where she was, but the gun hasn't. It's still strangled in her grasp, but now both hands are wrapped around it, her thumb dangerously close to brushing the trigger.
My hand finally unwinds from around Plague's throat.
"Stupid," she mutters under her breath, staring into the metal like it's a scrying mirror. "So fucking stupid."
"No, Goddess. Don't say that, you're not stupid at all," Raven says in a hushed, soothing tone, his empty hands outstretched as he takes a step toward her like his only care in the world is her turning that thing on herself.
Unfortunately for me, I havetwocares.
"Don't," I growl in warning. "She can't hear you right now."
He hesitates, but I can tell he's forming the same conclusion when he looks into those vacant violet eyes. Realizing the extent of the damage, just like the rest of us.
Not that I can blame her. Gods only know what she's been through. The hints she's dropped, the way she flinches sometimes whenever anyone gets too close without warning, the fact that her general opinion of alphas seems to exist somewhere in hell's basement… Raven's probably the only one who can actually understand that kind of damage.
"Like I said, she needs help," Plague chimes in, because apparently, he misses wearing a hand necklace.
"You can take your 'help' and shove it up your royal ass," Nikolai snarls. "We're not handing her over to you."
That, we can agree on.
