"What did she say?"
The fever was cresting, and her vision was beginning to blur again. The curse gripped her body and tightened around her like a vine. The pain was in her blood and her bones and the place behind her sternum where the pull had lived for weeks. Except the pull was gone now. In its place was a fire that burned from the inside out.
She heard herself cry out. Distantly, the way you heard sounds underwater. But she could feel Anatole lean over her, felt his mouth against her forehead, and heard the rumble of his voice.
"I'm here. I love you. I will always love you," he said.
She held onto his voice. Let it become the rope, the anchor, the thing she clung to while the fever tried to tear her loose from her own body. The pain filled every space the love had occupied, as if the curse was burning out the neural pathways that connected her to him and replacing them with nothing.
“I love you too. I will always love you.”
ANATOLE
BY MIDNIGHT, THE FEVERhad taken her speech.
Anatole sat beside the bed, Jeanne's hand in both of his, and he watched the woman he loved fight a war he couldn't join. Her body burned. The blankets were soaked through with sweat that smelled wrong, the honeysuckle corrupted to something chemical and bitter that made his wolf pace in agonized circles. Her breathing was shallow, rapid, the breathing of a body running out of reserves.
Gris came at first light. The old cook took one look at the cabin, at Jeanne's flushed face and Anatole's gray one, and he set down the tray he was carrying without a word. Tea. Broth. The simple provisions of a man who had kept watch over dying brides before and knew that the living needed tending too.
"How long has she been like this?" Gris asked.
"The fever started within minutes and it’s gotten progressively worse."
"Faster than the others."
"The others went in alone. The mirror showed us both. Whatever it did to her, it did more of it. Or maybe it’s because she’s human."
He looked down at Jeanne's face. The flush had deepened, two spots of hectic color on her cheekbones, the rest of her skin paper-white.
Gris poured tea and set it beside Anatole's hand. "Drink."
"I'm not—"
"Drink. You'll be no good to her if you collapse from dehydration, and she's going to need you conscious for what's coming."
Anatole drank. The bitter tea cut through the fog of adrenaline and fear, anchoring him in his body, in the cabin, in the present moment. Jeanne's hand was hot in his. Her pulse was fast but steady, the rhythm of a heart working overtime to keep pace with a fever that wanted to outrun it.
When Gris left, Anatole sat in the silence and and watched the morning light strengthen across the cabin walls. The ship moved beneath them, the Barbe-Bleue sailing south on a wind that didn't care his omega was dying.
He should do something. He could sail back to Morvenna and beg for mercy. Or rush to the nearest port to search for a healer. But the logical part of him stopped him. Nothing would help, certainly not Morvenna.
The morning passed. Jeanne drifted in and out of consciousness, her eyes opening sometimes to fix on his face with a focus that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than the fever. In those moments she would squeeze his hand, and the pressure was a message he translated asI'm still fighting.
Luc came at noon. He stood in the doorway and reported the ship's status with clipped efficiency. “The wind is holding steady. The crew is restless, but functional. The wolves on the lower deck had been moved to the upper berths because Jeanne's changing scent was causing distress.”
Anatole just grunted.
"How is she?" Luc asked.
"Still alive."
"That's something."
"It's not enough."
Luc left. The afternoon wore on. The sun tracked across the cabin, throwing long shadows, and Jeanne's fever climbed, and her scent grew worse..
At dusk, she opened her eyes.
