Page 28 of Midnight Queen

One more time.

My hands grip the fabric of his shirt as I force myself to bring more air into my lungs. Eyes still squeezed shut, we repeat this until the buzzing in my ears vanishes and the pressure in my chest fades.

Despite all the things I’ve been put through over the years, I’ve never experienced a panic attack before, but it seems there’s a first for everything. And I’m here to put on record that it fucking sucks.

Not until my heart returns to a normal beat do I pry my eyes open. A large part of me thinks I’ll still be locked in the ominous room with the red lights, but I’m proved wrong when I’m met with the warm light of a bedside lamp. A very familiar lamp.

My eyes dart around the room—a room I hated when I first arrived here, but now I’m so thankful to be back inside it. Everything is where I left it and that fills me with an immense amount of comfort. The makeup I’d carefully applied for my date with Silas is still littered across the dresser across the room. The shoe box that contained the new shoes Della had purchased for the occasion still sits open, tissue paper falling out the sides. The towel I’d forgotten to hang up is lying in the middle of the room on the hardwood floor.

Normal. Everything looks normal. The only thing that appears out of place are the two strangers standing beside my bed with worried looks on their faces. Both wear scrubs and their hands are covered in sterile gloves.

Closing my eyes again, I bury my head in his shoulder. “Silas,” I breathe out, my voice raspy from the screaming.

“I’m right here,” he assures me softly. “I’m right here with you, Quincey. You’re home and you’re safe. No one can hurt you here—no one willeverhurt you again.”

Even though I believe every word he says, tears fall down my face, dropping into the fabric of the blood-stained shirt he still wears. “Who are they?” I ask.

“They’re here to tend to your wounds,” Silas explains. “The... cuts.” I swear it sounds like he chokes on the word. “They require stitches.”

On its own accord, my head begins to shake back and forth. “No, I don’t want anyone else to touch me. Please, no more,” I beg him. Anyone’s touch but his sounds repulsive. Silas’s is the only one I trust to not hurt me right now.

“The knife wounds are too deep to heal correctly on their own, Miss Page,” one of them tries to reason. “The stitches will help keep the scarring to a minimum.”

The other one adds, “You are also severely dehydrated and more than likely in need of some antibiotics and a blood transfusion to get your platelets up. We were trying to place an IV, but you pulled it out when you woke up.”

I understand what they’re saying and the nurse side of me knows that they’re right. I know what I need, but the idea of them coming near me makes my chest constrict again.

“Please let them help you,” Silas pleads. “I can help you in many ways, but this isn’t one of them. I can’t stop your bleeding, Quincey, but they can. Please let them.”

Please. When men like Silas Laurent say please, you have to listen and mark the goddamn date, because like a comet, it happens rarely.

“Don’t leave me.” The only way I’ll be able to let them come near me is if he’s here with me.

“Never,” he vows instantly. “Never again, my love.”

With his backagainst the headboard and my back against his hard chest, Silas held me as they placed stitch after stitch in my skin. Not once while they tied forty stitches in total, did his hand stop creating a soothing path down my arm. Not even when the movement got in the way of the doctor did he stop. Silas simply expected the doctor to work around it and eventually he found a way.

I stayed there on his lap until the last drops of the IV fluid and blood had entered my veins, and familiar waterproof bandages had been placed over the fresh stitches. They’d carefully examined my wrists, and I’d vaguely heard the wordsnerve damage, but in all honesty, I wasn’t actively listening to what anyone was saying.

I was lost in my own thoughts, repeating the events of the last twenty-four hours in my head. Like one does, I played out different scenarios and wondered if there could have been a different outcome. Like, had we not decided to go on our first date, and I hadn’t been preoccupied with getting ready, Ira wouldn’t have been attacked because I would have been in the room with him, reading by his bedside. Or what if I’d run the other way instead of to Ira’s room, maybe I could have hidden from Gideon long enough for Silas to show up and save us. That one was a pointless thought, because I know, no matter how the equation changed, I always would have gone to Ira first. Regardless of my own safety, I never could have left him behind. Even knowing now what would happen to me if I entered his room, I would have made the same decision.

Ira’s only wish was that I was there for him when he died. It wasn’t how we thought he’d leave this world, but I was still there holding his blood-soaked hand, just like I promised I would be.

When the doctors were done, Silas didn’t move to show them the way out, he’d simply nodded his head in a silent dismissal. They left a bottle of pain reliever on the nightstand and quietly left the room.

I’m not sure how much longer we’d stayed like that, but at some point, he’d asked if I’d like to take a bath and my response was immediate. There was nothing else I wanted more than to wipe it all away, to remove the dirt and blood from my skin.

And now, as I sit here in the claw-foot bathtub, with my knees pulled to my chest and my head resting on them, I’m learning it’s not going to be that easy to wash it all away. It doesn’t matter how many bubbles fill the warm water or how long I sit here, I’m not sure I will ever get rid of thebadthat clings to my skin. It’s penetrated my pores and infected my blood stream. It’s a part of me now.

Silas entering the bathroom has me finally looking away from the steady drip of the faucet I’d been fixating on since he left.

It’s still covered in blood and torn in places, but the simple black Henley he wears makes my lips twitch. So do the black jeans he wears. “I didn’t know you owned anything but black suits.” Since the day I met him, he’s worn only a three-piece suit. Even when he’s home, working alone in his office, he donned a suit and black diamond cuff links. “I’m a little disappointed I had to go to these extreme lengths to see you in a pair of jeans, Laurent,” I tease, because that’s what’s normal for us.

I tease him or I push his buttons and then he makes that dark, scowly look that I love. That’snormal. And I really want normal right now, but much to my disappointment, that somber look doesn’t leave his face when he looks at me.

“I brought you some sweats and a shirt to change into. Or I can find you a robe—I’ll have to call Della. I’m not quite sure where she keeps things like that,” he rambles. Silas Laurent doesn’t ramble and sitting here watching it happen before me is like an out-of-body experience. He is the most sure of himself person I’ve ever met and right now, my poor king looks like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “I also took the dirty sheets off your bed. Again, I’m not sure where the clean linens are, but Della will—”

No longer able to stand it, I cut him off. “Silas,” I plead. “Please, just stop. Don’t worry about the bedding or clothes. That doesn’t matter right now.”

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