Any unusual illness or injury would be reported and investigated, and an investigation would lead to Tarik, and Tarik would make sure neither of them survived to tell anyone what had really happened.
"Fine," she said. "I'll get your friend."
"Not yet. He's probably sleeping, and you don't want to wake a Russian bear for a minor emergency."
"I think that your condition is not minor."
"It is for a Russian." A ghost of a smile crossed his cracked lips. "I've been worse and came out fine. We're built to withstand harsh conditions."
Her chuckle came out closer to a sob, but Dimitri's smile widened at the sound.
"That's better," he said.
"You're delirious."
"Probably." He closed his eyes. "Stay."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Mattie had been saying that since she'd woken up and realized that he was running a fever. For hours now, she had lain curled on the narrow bed beside him, listening to his breathing and checking his temperature every time he stirred.
The fever had started as just warmth, then heat, then a raging fire that turned his skin to a furnace and made his whole body shake with chills that seemed to come from deep inside his bones.
This didn't look like a flu, a cold, or even pneumonia. Could it be the venom's effect?
A knock at the door made her jump, and she was on her feet before she consciously decided to move, positioning herself between Dimitri and whoever was on the other side.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"It's me. Petrov." The voice was gruff, accented, familiar. "Who are you?"
She opened the door. "Mattie. Dimitri didn't feel well last night, so I helped him get to his room and stayed to look after him."
Petrov stood in the hallway, looking rumpled but surprisingly alert. His eyes were clear, his stance steady. He wasn't drunk for a change, or at least not plastered.
"I see." He grinned, indicating that he didn't believe her and assumed that she had stayed the night for a different reason.
Heat rose in Mattie's cheeks.
"Let him in," Dimitri croaked from the bed.
Petrov's grin disappeared in an instant. "You were serious." He pushed past her. "You look terrible. What's wrong with you?"
"It's a long story."
Petrov looked down at Dimitri. "This doesn't look like a long story. This looks like a short story with very bad consequences."
"I'm too sick to tell it." Dimitri closed his eyes. "Ask Mattie."
Petrov turned to her and arched a brow. "Well?"
She took a deep breath and told him. Not everything, not the details of what Tarik had been doing to her when Dimitri arrived or the humiliation and terror of those moments, but enough. She told him about Dimitri's brave attack, the syringe, and the bite. She told him about the other immortals intervening before Tarik could finish the job and then convincing him that the incident needed to stay under wraps because Dimitri was important to Lord Navuh.
Petrov frowned. "Why didn't they thrall you to forget what happened?"
Mattie ran a hand over her mussed hair. "They told us not to tell anyone, but I assumed that they meant the authorities. You don't count."
Petrov regarded her with curious eyes. "If they were using compulsion, that would have made sense, but normal immortals can't do that. They can only thrall, meaning they can enter your mind and alter your memories so you remember what they want you to remember. But that hasn't happened to you. I wonder if that was because you were too distraught for your mind to accept the suggestion."
