"Six days. Maybe seven if we're lucky. Her organs are failing. The blood gave her time but not enough. There's too much internal damage."
Six days.
The words echo in my mind. Each repetition is another twist of the knife.
Six fucking days?
"Hey." Rhianelle's voice pulls me back. "Where did you go just then?"
"Nowhere." I lift her hand to my lips, kissing each knuckle. "I'm right here."
She can't hear them and I won't let her see it on my face. I stand and reach for the pitcher on the bedside table.
"You should drink something." I pour the water with my back to her, giving myself one breath to put it away.
She takes the cup and drinks slowly. The cough catches her mid-swallow. I take the cup from her hands before she spills it and ease her back against the pillows, one hand steady between her shoulder blades until it passes.
Her eyes are already drifting closed again. The effort of talking has exhausted her. "Stay with me?"
"Always."
Her fingers squeeze mine. "Promise?"
"I promise."
She falls asleep still holding my hand. Her breathing evens out into the shallow rhythm of healing sleep. I pull a chair close, never releasing her fingers. They're warmer now than they were. The blood transfusion is working, at least that much.
I sit and watch her sleep. Memorizing every detail. Her scent, the faint freckles across her cheeks that you can only see when she's this pale.
Six days?
The healers are wrong. They have to be wrong.
Rhianelle's pulse beats faintly against my thumb. I lean forward, pressing my forehead to our joined hands. What kind of gods would grant her back to me only to measure out her life in days?
They must be laughing somewhere at their vicious joke.
Outside the window, the sun continues its journey across the sky. But in this small room, time has stopped. It has narrowedto the space between her breaths. I have six days with the one I love.
And then she'll be gone.
The rage comes up so fast it blinds me. I grip the bedframe and hold it there, breathing through my teeth.
Rhianelle cannot die. She simply cannot.
The word echoes in me like a vow. A defiance hurled at the heavens.
But if the gods are cruel enough to take her anyway—
I'll find a way to follow her into whatever darkness waits. Because a world without her isn't a world worth existing in.
27
Chapter 26 Svenn
I stay with Rhianelle through the quiet hours.
The candles in the corners melt lower, wax pooling at their bases. I match her inhalations, shallow as they are. I count them like prayer beads. Each one is a small rebellion against the sentence spoken just beyond that curtain.
