I turn toward the source of my shadows' warning, darkness coiling defensively around our group—around Grim and Gwenievere, around Nikolai, who still leans on me for support, around Atticus and Mortimer and Zeke, who have positioned themselves to face whatever comes.
The figure that emerges from the dimensional chaos is familiar.
Silver hair that seems to carry starlight. Features that belong on classical statues, perfect and ageless, and somehowknowing. Eyes that hold secrets older than the Academy itself.
Professor Eternalis.
CHAPTER 3
Between Realms
~GWENIEVERE~
Something cold touches my forehead.
The sensation cuts through layers of unconsciousness like a blade through silk—sharp, sudden, impossible to ignore. I flinch away from the contact, pain blooming across my skull with intensity that suggests I've done something profoundly stupid to this part of my anatomy recently.
What did I do to my head?
The question floats through fog that seems determined to keep me from thinking clearly. I try to turn away from the cold, to escape whatever's pressing against my throbbing forehead, but my body refuses to cooperate. Every limb feels weighted with exhaustion so profound it transcends simple tiredness—this is the particular heaviness of systems pushed beyond their limits, of flesh that has forgotten how to function properly.
Hot.
I'm burning from the inside out, fever crawling through my veins with the particular insistence of bodies fighting battles they're not sure they can win. Sweat beads on skin that feels too thin, too fragile, as if the slightest pressure might make me dissolve entirely.
A hand touches my cheek.
The contact is gentle—fingertips tracing the curve of my jaw with tenderness that makes something in my chest ache even through the fog. The touch carries familiarity I can't quite place, recognition dancing at the edges of awareness without fully manifesting.
"Queen of Spades."
The whisper reaches me from somewhere impossibly distant, words traveling through layers of consciousness that keep trying to drag me back under. The nickname triggers something—a flutter of warmth beneath the fever, the ghost of a smile on lips I'm not sure I can feel.
I know that voice.
I know that name.
But the knowledge slips away before I can grasp it, fog closing around the fragment of recognition like water swallowing a stone.
Voices continue at the edges of perception.
They weave in and out of my awareness, sometimes clear enough to almost understand, other times fading to meaningless sound that might be words or might be my fever dreaming conversations that don't exist. I've been doing this for what feels like eternities—surfacing briefly toward consciousness before the darkness pulls me back down, each attempt at waking requiring more effort than the last.
This time is different.
The realization arrives with surprise. The claws of unconsciousness still pull at me, still try to drag me back into the comfortable nothing of sleep, but their grip is weaker now. I can feel awareness solidifying around me, thoughts organizing themselves into something approaching coherence.
"She needs blood."
Zeke's voice cuts through the fog with sudden clarity, the familiar musicality of his tone carrying concern that makes mystomach clench. "Her reserves are way too low. That's probably why she's still so sickly."
Blood.
The word resonates through me with hunger that surfaces from depths I didn't know I possessed. My body responds before my mind can process—something in my chest tightening, something in my throatachingwith need I don't fully understand.
"We tried a blood transfusion." Atticus now—I recognize his aristocratic tones, the particular cadence of vampire speech that's become as familiar as my own heartbeat. "Her body rejected it."
Rejected it.
