Melhak coughed, blood flecking his teeth. “I don’t remember.” He glanced over at me, then Talis, blood-covered lips curving up into a macabre smile. “You’re too late anyway. He’s as good as dead.”
Rys snarled, clawed fingers wrapping around Melhak’s throat. “If he dies, so do you.”
Melhak sneered. “You think I care? I’ll be in a fae prison for the rest of my life for this.” He gasped for air as Rys’s hand tightened, then seemed to simply give up. “Do it. I’m never going to tell you.”
I caught the look in his eyes and I knew he meant it.
So did Rys.
“You fucking bastard!” I lurched off the sofa as Rys flicked his wrist to the side and snapped his neck.
He let Melhak’s body drop to the floor and hurried back to crouch in front of Talis. “Talis.” His voice was low, grumbly rough, laced with enough magic that I felt it. “Open your eyes.”
I held my breath, waiting for a reaction, for his eyelids to flutter,anything.
Nothing happened, not even a twitch of his fingers.
I turned to Lady Sarhin again. “Is there anything you can do?Please.”
“If I give him the wrong antidote, then it could kill him.” She put her hand on mine. “But if we do nothing, then he’ll die anyway. Rys,” she said, reaching into her bag. “As Talis’s alpha, do I have your permission to try and save him, knowing that I could also make things worse?”
His expression grim, Rys nodded. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
Dathal came to sit on the sofa beside me as Max appeared in the living room doorway. He cast a cursory glance at Melhak slumped on the floor, then focused on the scene in front of him. “How bad?”
“Poison,” Rys grunted.
Max scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Fuck.”
“Dathal,” Lady Sarhin said, sliding to the floor beside Talis. “Is it usual for the fae guard to poison their weapons?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
She nodded to herself. “We can rule out Blue Alhuirn—he isn’t showing the right symptoms for that.” She gently parted his lips and cursed softly. The inside of his mouth had a dark blue tinge to it.
“What?”
She looked up at me, and my stomach dropped at the pity in her eyes. “There are two poisons that turn the inside of your mouth that colour. Neither of them is easy to heal on a fae. I don’t know how they’ll affect a shifter.”
She rifled through her bag and produced a small black vial. “This will treat both but is less effective than the actual antidote. But I don’t want to risk getting it wrong.” Uncorking the vial, she tipped it into Talis’s mouth.
“What if he doesn’t swallow it?”
She smiled sadly. “He doesn’t need to. It’ll work anyway as soon as it touches infected skin.”
The whole room fell silent.
His colour didn’t improve.
He didn’t wake up.
I reached down and took his hand in mind, gasping at how cold he felt. Talis ran hot, like all shifters. I was used to running my hands over warm skin, not the cool clamminess I felt now. “Is it working?”
I knew the answer before she spoke.
“I don’t know if it’ll be enough. Even with his shifter healing…” She put a hand on my arm. “The poison’s been in his body a long time.”
Sasha and Syl joined us in the living room, and I heard Sasha’s soft cry at Lady Sarhin’s words.
