My stomach tightens at that thought.
It’s over an hour before I’m allowed in his room where he’s still not awake. There’s no one but Torin in the room when I slowly walk in. Kit leaps from my shoulder and onto the bed as she makes anxious noises at Torin.
“He’s just resting after surgery,” I assure her, but my mind is spinning out of control. The doctor who talked to me after he was out of surgery was explicitly clear about how serious many of his wounds are. He talked about his grave condition and how Torin’s magic is likely the only thing keeping him alive. It basically summarized to: they did what they could, but it’s in Torin’s hands now.
But then why is he not healing?
“Come on, Torin. You’re a stubborn man; show it,” I say, grabbing a chair and dragging it over to the bed. “How are you going to fuck your way through the city as the god of love if you don’t?”
I’m well aware that what I’m spouting is shit, but I’m too afraid and too obstinate to admit that. My hand is shaking so much that I can’t grab Torin’s. I just want to touch his hand and I can’t even do that.
Sitting here, it occurs to me that if this is how we end up after facing that horseman once… how the hell are we ever going to get rid of the man for good? If he attacked again right now, there would be nothing we could do without Torin. And my magic is out of control and so damn temperamental that I’m not even sure what I could do.
I force my hand under Torin’s as I close my eyes. “Thank you… thank you for saving my life. I feel like if he’d kept me inside that Door, I was never going to come back.”
I set my head on the bed, my shaking hand under his, and lie like that for a long time. Long after the adrenaline from the fight has left me. Long after that ball of tightness in my stomach has disappeared.
Now I just feel… hopeless.
When the nurse comes in, I draw back to give her space. She smiles at me and tells me I’m not in the way, but I still feel awkward about it and scoot back. Once she’s gone, I push mysleeve up and observe the way the black ink is trailing up my wrist, stretching across my forearm. Slowly, I reach down and pull my shoe off before staring at my sock for a long moment. Then I take a deep breath and slide the sock down to look at the blackness that is dyeing the tips of my toes.
I pull the sock back on and quickly cram my foot in my shoe when Mickey walks in. He comes over and slouches down in the chair next to me.
“You alright?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
He gazes at Torin before glancing over at me. “You really like this guy, don’t you?”
“I don’t know how to like people.”
“You’re such a liar,” he says as he closes his eyes. “Fourteen dead, but one hundred and two unconscious. Most have no visible wounds, no reason they shouldn’t be awake, but still… it’s almost like they’re in a coma.”
“It was like he… took their souls,” I say.
“Yep.”
“Are they going to die?”
Mickey shrugs. “I really don’t know the answer to that. Just… it would’ve been more if it weren’t for you and Torin. Way more… it might not have ever stopped until the whole world…”
We fall silent while we think about what a real possibility that was… and what a real possibility it still is.
“This whole thing was a shit show. I could barely help,” I confess.
“It’s not that you could barely help. Your magic is eventually what drove him away, but it’s like… how do mere humans fight against something like that? Humans and a god who lost all his power…” Mickey pauses. “Riley… what was beyond that Door?”
I think about how to answer this, because when I was dragged through that Door, Kit wasn’t with me, so I couldn’t see what was beyond it. “There was a man.”
“What’d he look like?” Mickey asks as Kit jumps onto his lap. He trails his finger over her forehead while he stares down at her. She leans into his touch, enjoying the scratches.
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”
“Do you think maybe it’s because Kit was on this side of the Door and you were on the other?” he asks as my vision suddenly goes dark.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
