“I believe I can remove most of this scar tissue,” the witch observed. “But …” She swore softly. “Luna above, look at this.”
Bryce refused to look, but Hunt’s eyes slid to the screen behind her, where her bloody wound was on display. A muscle ticked in his jaw. It said enough about what was inside the wound.
“I don’t understand how you’re walking,” the witch murmured. “You said you weren’t taking painkillers to manage it?”
“Only during flare-ups,” Bryce whispered.
“Bryce …” The witch hesitated. “I’m going to need you to hold very still. And to breathe as deeply as you can.”
“Okay.” Her voice sounded small.
Hunt’s hand clasped hers. Bryce took a steadying breath—
Someone poured acid into her leg, and her skin was sizzling, bones melting away—
In and out, out and in, her breath sliced through her teeth. Oh gods, oh gods—
Hunt interlaced their fingers, squeezing.
It burned and burned and burned and burned—
“When I got to the alley that night,” he said above the rush of her frantic breathing, “you were bleeding everywhere. Yet you tried to protect him first. You wouldn’t let us get near until we showed you our badges and proved we were from the legion.”
She whimpered, her breathing unable to outrun the razor-sharp digging, digging, digging—
Hunt’s fingers stroked over her brow. “I thought to myself, There’s someone I want guarding my back. There’s a friend I’d like to have. I think I gave you such a hard time when we met up again because … because some part of me knew that, and was afraid of what it’d mean.”
She couldn’t stop the tears sliding down her face.
His eyes didn’t waver from hers. “I was there in the interrogation room, too.” His fingers drifted through her hair, gentle and calming. “I was there for all of it.”
The pain struck deep, and she couldn’t help the scream that worked its way out of her.
Hunt leaned forward, putting his cool brow against hers. “I’ve known who you were this whole time. I never forgot you.”
“I’m beginning extraction and stabilization of the venom,” the witch said. “It will worsen, but it’s almost over.”
Bryce couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond Hunt and his words and the pain in her leg, the scar across her very soul.
Hunt whispered, “You’ve got this. You’ve got this, Bryce.”
She didn’t. And the Hel that erupted in her leg had her arching against the restraints, her vocal cords straining as her screaming filled the room.
Hunt’s grip never wavered.
“It’s almost out,” the witch hissed, grunting with effort. “Hang on, Bryce.”
She did. To Hunt, to his hand, to that softness in his eyes, she held on. With all she had.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Sweetheart, I’ve got you.”
He’d never said it like that before—that word. It had always been mocking, teasing. She’d always found it just this side of annoying.
Not this time. Not when he held her hand and her gaze and everything she was. Riding out the pain with her.
“Breathe,” he ordered her. “You can do it. We can get through this.”
Get through it—together. Get through this mess of a life together. Through this mess of a world. Bryce sobbed, not entirely from pain this time.
And Hunt, as if he sensed it, too, leaned forward again. Brushed his mouth against hers.
Just a hint of a kiss—a feather-soft glancing of his lips over hers.
A star bloomed inside her at that kiss. A long-slumbering light began to fill her chest, her veins.
“Burning Solas,” the witch whispered, and the pain ceased.
Like a switch had been flipped, the pain was gone. It was startling enough that Bryce turned away from Hunt and peered at her body, the blood on it, the gaping wound. She might have fainted at the sight of a good six inches of her leg lying open were it not for the thing that the witch held between a set of pincers, as if it were indeed a worm.
“If my magic wasn’t stabilizing the venom like this, it’d be liquid,” the witch said, carefully moving the venom—a clear, wriggling worm with black flecks—toward a glass jar. It writhed, like a living thing.
The witch deposited it in the jar and shut the lid, magic humming. The poison instantly dissolved into a puddle within, but still vibrated. As if looking for a way out.