Page 2 of Iridian

“Can you sit up?”

My lips refused to move.

Cold hands wrapped around my wrists. She pulled me to sit up the next second.

The room—her office, indeed—tilted in front of my eyes. My stomach raged, my insides threatening to come right out of me if the world didn’t stop spinning so fast soon.

“Breathe,”said Madeline, and if I could ever trust my own thoughts when she was around, I’d say she soundedconcernedfor a minute there. Concerned—about me.

Which was how I knew that I was hearing things.

But I breathed because I needed to make sense of the fact that I was here, at the mansion, and not in Silver Spring, in the Devil’s lair. I needed to make sense of the fact that Taland wasn’t with me, or that I wasn’t at the IDD Headquarters, or even locked in a cell, maybe in the Tomb.

The room steadied and my stomach no longer twisted so violently a few seconds in. Madeline, wearing one of her crisp red suits that was spelled to never hold a wrinkle—at least I was pretty sure of that—sat next to me, on the same couch on the right side of her office. Her hair wasn’t as perfectly combed as usual, her eyes were wide, her red lips parted, and for a moment there I thought maybe her hands were shaking, but it couldn’t be. This was Madeline Rogan, former director of the IDD. Her hands didn’t shake over anything.

“Can you understand what I’m saying?” she asked me, and I instinctively moved, bobbed my head up and down to say that I did.

She wasn’t relieved. “Do you know where you are?”

Again, that same movement, but it was getting easier on my neck.

My mouth opened to speak, but I realized my throat was too dry and there was pain everywhere on my body. Everywhere, but especially on my left thigh, where Hakim had stabbed me with that knife.

Chaos, chaos, I need to get Taland out of here, chaos?—

“Rosabel.”

Madeline’s voice rang in my ears. I blinked and even the pain took a step back to let me focus on her, this absurd fear I had of her initially stronger than everything else.

But…it was just Madeline.

And I was an adult now, was I not? I could remind myself of that as many times as I needed when I wasn’t operating on pure instinct—just Madeline.

“Where is he?” I said, even if my voice came out a mess, and my neck hurt, and my chest hurt, andeverything fucking hurt.

“You mean, the Tivoux boy?” Madeline’s arched brow revealed the wrinkles on her forehead.

“Yes, Grandmother. Taland—where is Taland?” Because we’d been in Silver Spring, in the Devil’s lair, and I’d brought him out of that ruined house. Radock had been there—I’d left Taland in his hands.

You can let go now. I got him—that had happened…right?

A deep sigh escaped Madeline’s lips, and she closed her eyes as if she were suddenly exhausted.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Rosabel?” she whispered.

A part of me wanted to start laughing and ask her,what the hell do you care?

But another bigger part of me knew that this was not important.Shewas not important.

So, I tried to move, tried to stand, tried to get the hell out of there. Except the sharp pain that came from every limb as well as my ribs stopped me. Pulled me back. Held me down as the shock froze me in place for a moment.

Fuck.

“I’m going to do a spell on you, heal you, and then we’re going to talk, you and I,” Madeline said.

“No, I—”have to go,I wanted to say, but she didn’t let me. The words were at the tip of her tongue. When she started chanting, red flames sprung on her hand, and extended to me instantly. It must have been a fourth-degree one because the effect was immediate.

My eyes closed involuntarily. A long breath left my lips and the warmth that spread through me from the magic was like falling on fucking clouds while the sun shone all over me.Warmed me to my bones. Relaxed my muscles and took my pain away. Some of it, maybe even half.

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