Our physician, a man in his sixties with silver-white hair and a friendly demeanor, squatted outside the doorway. “I’ve only just arrived. Your brothers have almost routed the Widowmakers… But it wasn’t easy…” He glanced at his hands, tensely rubbing his knees, before meeting my gaze once more. And in that statement, I knew just how bad it had obviously been. But right at this moment, I didn’t give a shit about the Widowmakers and selfishly couldn’t bring myself to wonder who hadn’t made it.
“Penn’s done everything I could have done for the girl. Whatever it is…” he shook his head, lifting a shoulder. “I can’t help.” In his faded blue eyes was an apology that wrenched my insides. “Whatever’s ailing her isn’t natural. There’s nothing else we can do. She’s dying.”
I shot to my feet, disbelief blustering through my being. “Like fuck she is!”
“She’s refusing to drink any fluids, nor broth or water. She’ll effectively starve to death, burn up with dehydration, but this unnatural fever… That’s what will kill her first when her heart gives out.”
The room was deathly quiet, broken only by Nelle’s struggle to breathe.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” I begged him.
He shook his head.
My grip tightened around Nelle. She felt like ice beneath my hands. “Leave,” I hissed, filled with rage. A feeling I could control. A feeling I could unleash.
Penn picked up the empty vials and syringes. The clink of glass and ceramic as they fell from her fingers into the medical bag. The slow metallic whir of a zipper. She rose, clutching the leather bag to her chest, and drew away with one last pitying glance over her shoulder.
Our physician’s retreating footfall was a series of heavy thuds as he followed Penn down the spiral staircase. The noise of his footsteps kept time with my heart. A slow, ponderous pace. And then my heart slowed down even further and skipped beats, faltered, then beat impossibly fast before stumbling. Exactly as it always did when I was with Nelle, my heartbeat syncing with hers.
Nelle was too light in my arms. Her hair draped long, swaying in tangled knots, and her limbs dangled like a rag doll. She blinked sluggishly at me, and I bowed my head closer, whispering, “Nelle?”
She stared back with fever-glazed eyes. She might have mouthed my name, but I think it was more like—bastard.Her trembling hand rose, and I thought she was going to cup my cheek, but she—
Slapped me.
Not hard, because she was too weak for that. But a slap nevertheless. Her hand fell limply away.
A soft voice spoke from the open doorway. I hadn’t realized Ferne was here too. “Gray, we’re missing something obvious, I’m sure of it.”
I wasn’t able to help the cruelty in my tone.“Ferne.”She flinched. “Ican’t…Just go.” I didn’t know what to do.
My sister retreated into the shadows of the inner stairwell, slowly edging to the first step. Right as her foot drew downward, she froze. Her black hair slid over a shoulder as she angled her head back toward us. A deep, pensive expression crossed her features. She suddenly spun around and took several quick steps closer, her mouth parting.
And I justcouldn’t.
I was about to bark at her to leave,please,when she threw up her hand. “Shut it.”
Standing at the doorway, she spread her hands wide and trilled her fingers as if she were playing ivory keys on a piano, except she was feeling with her senses. I felt them rush into the room, poking and probing. She sucked in a sharp breath. “I can’t feel anything but the air-conditioning in here.”
Half-twisting about, I glanced around the circular room. At the smooth expanse of stone. No windows, no doors to the outside, apart from the one I’d entered. Of course, there would be air conditioning flowing from the shafts above set into the vaulted ceiling.
“We’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. There’s no light in here, Gray. No natural light.”
“That’s because there aren’t any windows.”
“Please tell me you didn’t trap her in here in stone with nothing but man-made light?” Her voice was heavy with accusation. “Nelle’s a Wyrm.”
“She’s…” I was about to say, human. But that wasn’t technically correct either.
“Human, yes,” my sister replied, following my line of thought. “But with the power of a wyrm inside her. She’s a godsdamned wyrm, Gray, and that side of her needs to bask in—”
“Moonlight or sunlight.” I finished for her. Or in Nelle’s case, deep in my gut, I knew she needed both.
“By locking her up here and denying her natural light, you’re forcing the wyrm into hibernation.”
The word drowned out everything else inside my mind.
The last of the wyrms, including a few my family had freed after the Final War, were buried beneath the earth, not extinct as most of the Houses thought, but hibernating. Lost, forgotten and safe.
