?So I take my free hand and bring it up to my mouth. Cutting a short line to allow my blood to bead before I put it to her mouth.
?Everything feels so robotic. My brain is not functioning, my thoughts are going too fast and yet I hear none of them at all, and my body is moving on its own accord.
?I smear the bloody cut over her lips like Hanna Waterstone had done to her on the first day of classes. She hadn’t even slipped her tongue out to lick the water mage’s blood, and she doesn’t do it now either. So I push my wrist into her mouth until her lips are forced open and I meet her teeth.
?I can feel the sharpness of her fangs and I wrap my hand holding her head into her hair to position her head. I sink her fangs into my wrist and hold her there. Shewilldrink my blood. The stubborn fucking poison drop is not allowed to waste myblood when I have let no one else ever drink it. She is not allowed to be a brat right now.
?I sink her fangs deeper as my blood fills her mouth and then spills out. Tightening my hold on her hair as I hunch over to whisper in her ear.
?“You are not allowed to die now,” I force. “Not when I need answers for how you lied to Varian and the Mage Board and how you used blue flame and a fractured blood art and how you areher. I need to know if everything Esmirra said about you is true. You are not allowed to die yet. So drink my fucking blood, Mavyn.”
?I tip her head back and will it down her throat. Taking control with my own blood art and forcing it into her.
?Her pale face that had gone white with a death mask gains its color back and her mouth twitches.
?Yes.
?Her jaw clamps onto my wrist and her hands wrap around my forearm. Then I feel her suck and my blood flies through my veins into her mouth. Her throat works as she swallows and a pressure I didn’t know I had within me releases.
?I pull her into me with her back propped against my spread knees. Tucking her head under my own so she doesn’t get the onslaught from the rain, and I pull my hand from her hair to wrap under her arms. Drawing her closer to me as she drinks. As my blood slides down her delicate throat. Keeping her alive.
?She’s alive.
?She’s alive.
?She’s alive.
?Good girl.
?Exhaustion tugs at my bones and weighs harder as she continues drinking. I can’t even feel her venom in my veins. She’s about to pass the amount you should stop at to keep the health of the other person, but I can’t even care because she is alive and that is all that matters.
?I saved her.
?Someone calls my name behind me but I can’t turn around. I can’t do anything, and then everything goes black.
. . .
Thorne – Novam 11
Callahan looks pitiful. Begging to let Esmirra help him into the poison drop’s mind so he can try to wake her up. It’s already been sixty-two days since she went comatose. Since she drank from me until I was nearly dead myself. Since we all learned she is not a vampire.
?I trace the pads of my fingertips over the mark still visible on my right wrist. I had expected the mark to disappear after a week, but when three weeks passed and it was still just as stark I sought out Castiel. He had said her mark was only now just disappearing and she had drank from him four months ago.
?I had asked Esmirra about it and she said it was normal for Mavyllora. Which is something I’m still processing. The girl Esmirra had started talking about five years ago right before my first year at the university was someone I unfortunately used to dream about.
?She said the girl was indescribable. A blood art she hasn’t seen since before the War of Gods and a talent and strength that matched it. She said this girl was sharp and deadly, but could be soft in a way I have yet to see. Esmirra said Mavyllora was a wonder, with long dark hair the same black as the night sky between stars and eyes that held so much within.
?Emirra must have hit her head.
?Even Varian has said he thinks she doesn’t have a soul with how empty her eyes are.
?Callahan shakes his head and looks at the bone witch. I had thought she was the last one alive until that day on the eastern field. As of now she might be. They must be speaking in their minds.
?I trace the mark again and watch her. Her dark hair with the ends dark blue and soft pink flared around her shoulders. Eyes shut and unmoving. Needles stuck in her hands, connected to tubes that are giving her nutrients, fluids, and blood to sustain her. A dome of soft green hovering over her head that keeps her internal organs working.
?She can’t even breathe on her own.
?Maybe it wasn’t worth keeping her alive. If she’s basically brain dead.
