Svana leaned in and sniffed me before she wrinkled her snout. “You are quite poisoned, My Lady. I’m afraid I may have to make two puncture wounds.”
My eyes widened, and I whipped my head around to face Cassian. “Puncture wounds?”
“Of course,” Svana revealed as she curled her tail around my back. “We of the Whispering Scree have many centuries of experience inserting and removing poison from humans.”
A squeak came out of me, and my face contorted with horror. “Poison?”
“There’s no need to worry,” Svana assured me as she showed off her fang-filled grin. “I won’t be injecting you with my poison.”
“Cassian!” I shouted as I found the energy to leap up and into his arms. I grabbed hold of his shirt with both hands and stared up at him with wild eyes. “I don’t like this idea anymore!”
He grasped my upper arms and drew me to arm’s length, where he could look into my eyes. “There’s no other way.”
“But poison!” I protested.
A crooked smile curled onto his lips. “Svana is quite adept at drawing poison, as well. She’ll take good care of you.”
“But we must hurry,” Svana spoke up as she lifted her nostrils. “You smell very bad. I will have a hard time extracting the pestilence from you, and more so if we do not act quickly.”
Cassian moved me back to the rock and gently set me down. “You will be fine. I promise you, and have any of my promises led you astray?”
“There’s a first time for everything!” I answered before a yelp interrupted my protests.
Svana once again curled her body around me and raised her head so we were face to face. She bared her long, pristine-white fangs at me. “This will only hurt for a moment.”
“What will hurt-ah!”
Svana snapped at me so quickly that I could barely follow the movement. She buried her fangs deep into my neck, so deep that my whole body reverberated with the intrusion. Her body proved to be a useful binding, as she tightened herself around me and pinned me into place.
Then I felt it. The vacuum of her powerful jaws as they extracted the nethral poison from my body. Something squished out of the border of the puncture wounds and ran down my side. I dropped my gaze to the rock and watched two thin lines of the black liquid pool on the stone. The darkness flowed together and wriggled about, like something thrashing against life and death.
Skafti dove into the action. He held one of the scales between his powerful teeth, and he struck the scale against the black blood like flint to stone. The nethral juice shuddered, and some of it vanished, only to be replaced by more of what Svana extracted. The process repeated itself, shrinking the scale even as the thin lines grew thinner.
The eventful night, the long ride, and now this extraction were too much for me. I lost consciousness.
Chapter 15
The next thing I knew was a gentle rocking motion underneath me. The scent of hay tickled my nostrils, and flickering sunlight stabbed my eyes. My eyelids felt incredibly heavy, but I managed to pry them open.
The world was a blur for a few seconds before all came into focus. That all included fields in front of me, and a long road ahead of me. I sat perpendicular in the saddle with my side against Cassian’s chest and my legs pressed against his left leg. One of his arms was draped around my back, and the other stretched across my lap, and both held onto the reins.
He stared straight ahead as I shifted, and didn’t turn his attention away when he spoke. “How are you feeling?”
I stretched my neck and winced. “Like a vampire got a hold of me.” That’s when I noticed the horizon. The sun was setting. My time was almost up. I sat up and looked down at myself before I whipped my head up to my fellow rider. “Did it work?”
He smiled down at me. “Completely.”
My heart settled into a rhythm that didn’t involve the tango, but I still clutched my hand over it. “Thank God…” I paused and looked over my position. A faint blush accented my cheeks, and I squirmed in my seat. “I think I can sit up on my own.”
There was a twinkle in his bright blue eyes. “You would like to sit with your legs stretched out?”
My face drooped, and I hunkered down in my seat. “On second thought, I’m perfectly comfortable.” A thought struck me, and my eyes flickered up to him. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m quite comfortable, and the view has been very pleasurable.”
My faint blush became a raging forest fire. I turned my face away and looked out over Niveus’s head. Something afar caught my attention, and I sat up to get a better look. “What’s that?”
“The village of Fenovilla.”
