Page 103 of Queen of Diamonds

“You have the antidote?” I croaked. Where was it? He had to have it.

“I will.”

It wasn’t here?

“How long?”

“Working on it.”

I ran my hand over her hair, watching her chest rise and fall, too fast, too shallow, but it moved. “Stay with me,” I breathed.

Time was a blur as I held her in my arms. Kyan and Knight were talking. About what, I didn’t know.

We had to get her a cure—had to get away.

That’s all that mattered.

It felt like I blinked, and the engine had stopped. The sweet and woody scent of pear grove was right there. Knight was in the back with me. His hand brushed her cheek, and I felt him in the bond. A storm held at bay by a thread as if he was about to crack.

Like I had.

“Where’s… Kyan?”

He was gone.

But he knew these poisons. He was the only one who could fix her.

“He’ll be back.”

Right. He’d just left. Going into a pharmacy, he’d said…

“He can… he can fix her?” I asked, voice hoarse.

“They’re not over-the-counter meds. We’ll have to cut and run the moment he’s out. I’m sorting another ride now. Ace will have our plates.”

That meant… I shook my head like I was trying to dislodge a fly. She was in my arms. My fingers had found the pulse on her wrist and it wasn’t letting go.

Kyan was… he was robbing a pharmacy?

The image caught up to me. He’d been tugging a gun out, digging out a balaclava from the glove compartment.

“Why doesn’t he… have the antidote?” I thought he would. Wouldn’t he have brought it?

“Most of his drugs are back in the warehouse. It’s not safe.”

Okay. Right. There was no choice. It wasn’t like the antidote was simple, but we had a plan. It would work—even when her pulse was so weak, breathing coming short and sharp.

It was wrong. All so wrong. I remember the first moment I’d seen her, as she looked up at me from that bench in her father’s garden.

I’d come to give her a choice, but I was forgetting why. She was the piece around which the world orbited, the most beautiful woman in the world, and I didn’t know why I couldn’t just claim her now.

But I’d learned why.

I’d learned why in the beauty of the smile I saw the first time when I’d earned it. The way the galaxy seemed to glitter in her eyes when she was filled with wonder. The heart stopping sound of her laugh, which I’d heard just briefly once more, up in Kyan’s room when he’d taken her from me just days ago.

She made the world full of life and colour in a way it had never been before.

And I’d been stupid enough to believe it was all a lie. To believe that woman I’d fallen for, wasn’t real.

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