I’m alive. Bellamy is alive.
The curse is broken. It must be for that to be true. It required more than falling in love with Bellamy and having her love me in return. It required excising the evil that threatened to destroy us from within.
I smile. I fucking exult.
Forcing my eyes open, I squint, peering around the empty room. I’m alone and in the palace, but the room is unrecognizable. If it weren’t for the ornate woodwork and ancient oil paintings on the walls, I’d think I was in the hospital.
I’m shirtless with tubes and wires coming from my arm and chest. A heavy white bandage covers where Samil stabbed me. I can feel one on my back, too, and with every slight move I make in the bed, it hurts like a son of a bitch.
I close my eyes, breathing out a mournful sigh. Vaguely Iremember hearing Bellamy and Rowan. Phaedra. Was that a dream? A hallucination from whatever drugs they’re pumping into me through the IV? Struggle as I might, I can’t recover what was said. I just know they were here with me, and when I open my eyes again, I see I’m not alone.
“You’re awake. How are you feeling?” Bellamy gives me a watery smile as she slowly approaches the bed. She looks rough. Beautiful as always, but rough. Her cheeks don’t have the same pink glow to them, and her eyes lack their usual luster.
Then there’s her neck.
A track of more stitches than I want to count snakes up the side of her skin, starting at the center of her throat and ending just beneath her jaw. The side of her face is bruised, deep and purple. It makes me want to kill Samil all over again.
“You look worse than I do,” she tells me, clearly reading my expression for what it is.
“He hurt you and I wasn’t there,” I rasp, my voice rough and crackly. I lick my dry lips and swallow, but it’s as if my mouth is filled with sand.
“He hurt you too and Javier is right. Next time, don’t think you can take that by yourself. You should never have tried.”
“In fairness, I was holding the knife at that time.”
She rolls her eyes at me, utterly unimpressed.
“He was mine to deal with,” I say, my voice carrying an edge. “I was the reason it all happened in the first place.”
“Was that worth your life?” Her chin drops to her chest, her arms wrapping around her chest, holding herself tight. “I can’t lose you, Sebastian. I love you and this love…it’s not a normal love. It’s a love that goes beyond this lifetime. It’s a love that never dies, but that doesn’t mean I want to go the rest of this life without you only to hope I find you again in the next.”
“Come here, baby.”
Trembling, her gaze meets mine again, and I see it. Thedark purple stains beneath her eyes. The fear and strain this has put on her.
“I’m going to get the nurse,” she says.
I don’t want her to go. I want her here, and I don’t want to get poked or prodded by the nurse and doctor. “Not yet. Have you slept?”
She shakes her head and looks away. “Some. Not much. I’m taking a page out of your playbook with that.”
“You have healing to do, too. You need rest as much as I do. Now, come here.”
She shakes her head again, pushing down her emotions with her hands as they scrub over her face and through her hair.
“I can’t have you over there where I can’t touch you and comfort you, and unless you want me to get up, come here.”
Ever so gently, she sits on the side of the bed, but it’s not close enough. She gives me a reprimanding look when I gesture for her to lie beside me. “No. I don’t want to hurt you. I should get the nurse.”
“You won’t. Please. I want you. The nurse can wait.”
Slipping off her shoes, she scoots herself beside me, resting her head on my good side and closing her eyes.
“I’m worried about my girl. Are you okay?”
“I am now,” she tells me.
“What happened before I got there?”
