A moment later, the air is filled with magick.
Warm and slow and powerful, coming in great waves from the earth beneath the manor, the stone of the walls, the very air around us.
“What are you—”
“I work best in silence,” Soleil says through gritted teeth, eyes closed now, body taut and straining with the force of the power she’s drawing forth.
The power she’s sending straight into Seren.
It might go on for minutes, or maybe hours, whatever strange ritual Soleil is lost in. Beyond an occasional quiet hum or a grunt of something that sounds almost like pain, she’s still and silent, though sweat beads on her brow and her muscles begin to tremble the longer it goes on.
My panic doesn’t ebb until I watch the color around Seren’s lips recede, watch some of the pink return to her cheeks. Her breathing grows deeper. Her heartbeat stronger. A small tendril of her familiar magick even rises in the air, the storm-rich scent of it a complement to Soleil’s pulsing earth and copper fanning out in waves around them both.
Soleil lets out a long breath and swipes a hand over her damp brow, finally breaking her silence. “I think that should do it.”
“What did you do to her?”
The sane half of me recognizes she just saved my mate, but that half isn’t in charge right now. The other half—the one still run ragged and half-crazed by everything that’s happened over the last hour—only saw Seren’s violent reaction to the potion, felt the impossible waves of magick flowing into her prone body.
“I kept my sister alive,” Soleil snaps at me. “And if you think that was bad, then I’m glad you’ve never had to witness someone dying because their lungs are being eaten from the inside out.”
I flinch, but Soleil isn’t done.
“Never mind the fact that she’s not even supposed tobehere, that she hates me, that I probably just landed myself in so much—”
Soleil’s words cut off abruptly, and I don’t miss the flash of tears in her eyes before she turns away. Her shoulders rise and fall once, twice, on deep, steadying inhales.
When she turns back around, her face is stone. Carefully blank, all emotion shoved aside.
“Stay here,” she commands. “And be quiet. I need to go run some interference and make sure nobody else comes poking around to see what’s going on.”
With that, she leaves, and even if she wasn’t in such a hurry to get out of here, I don’t think I could have formulated a single question I want to ask.
I’ve got plenty of them, all clamoring to stand in the forefront of my mind.
The confirmation of who Soleil is to Seren. The looming threat of whoever lurks on the other side of those doors. The magick I just witnessed and what it means for Seren.
But it doesn’t matter right now.
Whatever the nature of Seren’s relationship with her sister or with the coven, regardless of the trouble she might be in by coming here, it was worth it.
My mate is breathing easier on the table in front of me. I adjust the cloak beneath her head, wishing I had another so I could drape it over her and ward off the chill that permeates the cellar.
And then I wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Though it’s likely only minutes passing, each one feels like hours. They feel like days, months, and I count each of Seren’s breaths, press my fingers to the inside of her wrist to mark the beat of her heart, my only sign that time is still—somehow—passing.
Soleil comes back to check on her patient, listening with some strange piece of metal that she places in various spots on Seren’s chest, connected to a long tube split into two ends that she sticks into her ears. Satisfied with whatever she hears, she also leaves a pitcher of water and a glass on the table beside the one where Seren is lying.
“She’s going to need that when she wakes up.”
Soleil leaves again after administering another, smaller dose of what she gave Seren earlier. The potion goes down easier this time, and it might just be my overwrought nerves showing me what I need to see, but I imagine I can see Seren’s breathing grow deeper, her color brighter.
Silence settles over the cellar, and from where I keep my vigil, I close my eyes and concentrate on other sounds. Sounds I can hear now that the beating of my heart isn’t quite so frantic.
