“What’s happening?” Thalia groaned. The hairs along the backs of her arms stood on end, causing needle-like pricks to echo in their wake.
“Your body is in the process of trying to change,” Keegan said gently.
Thalia tried shaking her head, but her neck refused to work. “I don’t—”
A deep stabbing flared in her stomach, cutting off her words. Thalia cried out, her body arching.
Her muscles spasmed, pain racking her system, before she collapsed onto the mattress.
“Cass,” Thalia whimpered.
“I know,” Cassius murmured, his face so pained it was though he were experiencing the burning in her body instead of her. “But this is the only way.”
Thalia’s eyes blurred as another wave of agony swept through her. The chains tightened around her wrists.
“Your body is trying to fight the Vampyr bite,” Cassius said, his voice near guttural. “It will fight it until it works its way out of your system.”
Thalia’s limbs trembled as her organs turned over in her abdomen.
“Make it stop,” Thalia cried, twisting in the chains.
“We can’t,” Cassius gasped. Hands pressed into her legs, and she cried out once more. The grip felt as though daggers were slicing into her shins, each press against her heated skin cutting deep into the muscle. “You have to fight the pain.”
Thalia shook her head, the muscles in her neck straining. Her throat tightened, closing until she choked.
She screamed as wave after wave racked her body. She was a practice dummy, the Vampyr’s bite spearing arrow after arrow into her swollen flesh.
She was being flayed from the inside out. Her organs were being taken out and roasted on a spit before being shoved back into place, still flaming.
Her tears burned the sides of her face as they fell—each nerve ending frayed at the edges, making her whole body spasm and tighten.
Then, through the pain, something dangerous hit her tongue.
An insatiable hunger that had her arching off the bed, the chains the only thing keeping her in place.
“I’m so hungry,” Thalia sobbed, that desire intensifying as she somehow managed to focus on Cassius.
His brows were narrowed, his jaw clenched tight enough to snap. “I know.”
“I need it,” she got out.
She didn’t know what she needed. Only that her senses were being overwhelmed with the sharp tang of blood—her own blood.
Her head jerked, eyes landing on Keegan, who held her legs down. Her eyes went straight to the pulse fluttering in his throat. “I need it,” she got out again, her mouth nearly salivating.
Then another wave hit her and she closed her eyes, biting through her tongue as she cried. Each bone in her body snapped in half before being glued back together in jagged spikes.
“Maybe we should let her feed.” Keegan’s tentative voice broke through the wave of pain.
“No,” Cassius growled out. “I can’t.”
“If it saves her, we should.” Keegan’s voice sharpened.
“She will never forgive me,” Cassius snapped back. “And she was bitten by Sybil. If she turns, then she’ll become one of them too.”
“Cassius, she is dying! The pain is killing her!” Keegan yelled.
Dying? Was that what was happening to her? Her insides felt as though they’d been lit on fire, sizzling and peeling until everything in her was stripped away, leaving only a bloody pulp in its wake.
