Scorpius was suddenly standing beside the doctor with a dagger pressed to her throat. “Fix her or die.”
The doctor’s eyes widened with fear.
Arabella tried to say something, but all that came out was a low whimper of pain.
Shock was wearing off, and she was starting to feel her injury. She’d only have a few more minutes before she was screaming in agony.
I clenched my fists.
“Stop it.” Luka pulled Scorpius away from the incompetent doctor.
Cherry blossoms formed a whirlwind.
“Don’t you know who Aran is?” Luka asked Scorpius, and I realized it was the first time he’d ever looked one of us in the eyes as he spoke. He looked at the three of us like we were pathetic. “She’s the Queen of the Fae Realm.”
We stared back.
Scorpius stabbed the trembling doctor in the thigh and asked, “So?”
The incompetent doctor fell to the ground, screaming.
Luka swore and dragged his hands roughly through his messy dark hair. “Aran can’t die without someone ripping out her heart and eating it.”
A faint memory of Aran lying in a marble hall explaining fae succession played at the edge of my mind, but I was too stressed to remember it clearly.
“Are you sure?” Corvus sounded unconvinced.
The doctor whimpered, and everyone ignored her.
“Of course he is,” John said, darkness glittering around him. “She used to complain about it constantly back at Elite Academy. You’d know that if you ever bothered to listen to her.”
Violence ratcheted up.
Tensions sizzled.
The stabbed doctor staggered to her feet and limped through the door that led to the back room of the medical building.
The five of us were locked in a staring contest. Darkness expanded around Luka, and flames leaped higher off Corvus’s shoulders.
Another doctor burst through the same door, holding vials of different-colored substances. He hurried to the bed and leaned over Arabella as he brought one to her lips.
The tension broke as everyone whirled toward him.
“What the fuck are you giving her?” Corvus snarled as Luka asked, “What is that?”
Scorpius lunged forward with his knife drawn.
I grabbed my fellow Protector by his neck and yanked him back.
The colorful vials clattered in the doctor’s shaking hand. “I-I-It’s for p-pain and w-will help her s-s-sleep and heal,” he stuttered.
John ripped the glass from his fingers and sniffed it.
He tipped it back and wet his lips, licked at the substance, then nodded and said, “He’s not lying.”
“Then what the fuck are you waiting for?” Corvus bellowed at the doctor. “Administer it now, she’s clearly in pain!”
Luka snapped, “But do it gently.”
I raised my eyebrows because the quiet twin didn’t talk to anyone besides John and Arabella; now he was fighting with Corvus and addressing a doctor.
The doctor reached for John’s hands, but the twin pulled the vial out of his reach and pressed it to Arabella’s gray lips.
Immediately she stopped squirming and whimpering.
Her eyes closed.
A few minutes later, the doctor pushed a clipboard with hastily sprawled instructions into John’s hands and told him to administer her drugs as he ran out of the room.
Pussy.
“You sure she’ll heal?” I whispered as my knees gave out at the edge of her cot.
“Yes.” John didn’t look away from her.
Gradually, my mates and Luka knelt along the bed as our collective panic and aggression decreased until there was nothing but silence and Arabella’s strained breaths.
I bowed my head and swore on the ancient House of Malum—on the crest of a fire-breathing dragon, on the tender feeling that had engulfed me when I’d held her against my chest—that she would find shelter with me.
My Revered would find peace in my arms.
It didn’t matter that we were champions in the middle of a war. It didn’t matter that I was a soulless creature who had hurt her in the past.
Arabella would find sanctuary with me.
Forever.
Bang. The doors to the medical barracks flung open, and dozens of gore-coated soldiers stumbled in.
Doctors swarmed like mosquitos.
The battle was over.
Quiet was replaced by groans of pain as men and women collapsed onto cots. A man was carried in screaming.
White floors turned red, and doctors slipped as they hurried to patients.
Arabella slept through the chaos.
I prayed.
“Oh my sun god, is she okay?” Sadie screeched as she fell to her knees beside my Revered’s bed.