My vision blurs at the edges. The pain’s no longer sharp; it's spreading like fire licked from a bottle. My ribs burn where the blade nicked me.
No. Not a nick. I know what a clean wound feels like.
This… This is something else.
“Matteo, not much further. Come on,” Milo snaps at me, because it’s becoming too hard to lift my feet to fucking walk.
We reach the dorm.
I collapse on the bed. Aoife’s eyes go wide with panic, but I can’t speak. I lean forward and throw up.
Once. Twice. The second time, it’s darker.
Metallic.
Fuck.
Aoife is kneeling in front of me, wiping my mouth with a towel, but my body’s shaking so hard I can barely hold myself still.
“Matteo? Talk to me.” I hear Milo from somewhere in the room.
But I can’t talk. My jaw is locked tight.
Milo’s eyes hit the spreading stain on my shirt, deep red blooming with something darker around the edge.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “That’s not just blood.”
“Move,” Leo shouts, and I hear the door shut again, Leo steps into my view, but it’s starting to blur, what the fuck did they give me? His eyes sweep over me in a second. “Shit. That blade was poisoned.”
I manage to lift my head, or at least I think I’ve lifted my head off my bed. I don’t even know what my body is doing. “Say that again?”
Leo’s already pulling gloves on, digging through the kit he brought. “The wound’s too small for how fast your symptoms are spreading. This wasn’t just a hit. It was meant to drop you where you stood.”
I laugh, bitter and short escapes me. “Well, it’s working.”
“You’re burning up,” Aoife whispers, brushing my hair off my forehead. Her hands tremble. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I‘m not showing anyone they’ve fucking won.”
Leo glances at her. “He wasn’t bleeding bad enough for anyone to notice, which means the blade was coated. Probably contact toxins. You absorb it as soon as you’re cut. That’s why he’s vomiting.”
“What do we do?” Marco asks.
“We try to counter it. Keep him breathing. Then we find out who the fuck did this. Number one on the list is the Irish.”
Leo rips the fabric of my shirt open. Aoife flinches when she sees the wound. It’s small. Too small for the damage it’s doing, but I can’t see what it’s doing to my skin, because I can’t lift my head to see.
“Hold him down,” Leo tells my brothers.
Hands slam onto my shoulders and legs. I roar as Leo presses gauze soaked in something cold directly onto the cut. My back arches off the bed. Everything burns. Fuck, everything is on fire, and taking me down in arches, at the moment.
Aoife grips my hand like she’s trying to pull me back from death.
I let her, but it’s not fucking working, this is pain I’ve never been through and never want to go through again.
Leo meets Marco’s eyes. “This wasn’t random. This was planned. This was the Irish, they wanted him to fall, and fall quietly. They know the fight is coming, they want him weak, and then he takes their locked away Princess. She’s the only reason they need to hurt him.”
I open my eyes as much as I can, and I see the rage in Marco’s jaw which tells me all I need to know.
