Page 30 of Faerie Fate
“Tavi!”
Mike crouched beside me and pushed the hair away from my face. A round of murmurs filtered through the roaring in my ears and I blinked at him, the edges of my vision blurry now. My head spun and when I tried to speak, another hacking cough curved me inward.
“Step aside, Michael, please.”
Nurse Julie filled up the remainder of my vision.
This…thiswas so much worse than before. A marked difference from the general malaise. I’d gone downhill.
“Tavi, you have to listen to me.” Fingers snapped in front of my face. “What are you feeling now?”
“She was sick before,” Bronwen offered.
“Her nurse at the fae hospital told me it was a bloodborne thing,” Mike added. “From a zombie bite?”
There was a pause, and then Bronwen’s agreement. “We used necromancy to raise a witch from the dead and Tavi got bit. Infected. But this is new! She’s never looked this way before.”
I couldn’t answer for myself. I couldn’t do much, a prisoner inside my body; the only constant was the pain of the mate bond. I sweated, trembling, trapped.
“She was doing better. Some kind of witch spell that wasn’t exactly a cure but got her in fighting shape.”
I’d never heard Bronwen so panicked. And I had no way to assure her that I’d be okay. Hell, would I be?
The chills bowed me into a pretzel and I shook so hard I dropped Mike’s hand.
Julie slid an arm around me and helped me into a seated position. I barely felt her through another wave of pain. My skin went tight, my internal organs shivering like I’d been electrocuted.
“What changed?” Julie mused, snapping her fingers to track my eyes. “What happened to her in the last— Oh.”
She pressed her free hand against my forehead and a distant ripple of her magic filtered through my system.
The wound on my neck gave a pulse and my eyes rolled back in my head. I wished her magic was strong enough to heal me. To help me feel like I wasn’t on the edge of death.
Death would be kinder than suffering through this.
Several voices spoke at once and blurred. Julie’s mouth moved but my heart thundered in my ears. What was she saying? The unfocused vision gave me three of her, three sets of lips moving, and me unable to read any of them.
She moved her hand down to my neck and the pain tripled. Holyfuck.
I wasn’t going to make it past this. And I didn’t want to.
At once, the exhaustion was a comfort rather than something to fight against. If I just gave in?—
My lungs expanded with air forced into my body. Julie was breathing for me. Her magic forced me to stay tethered to the moment and to her.
“The magic of the mate bond has had some kind of alchemical reaction with the zombie curse,” she said. Her voice was clear. “Tavi is in real danger.”
“So what can we do?” Bronwen stood close enough for me to hear her but not see her.
They’d be fine without me. The thought was small, quiet in my head, and grew steadily until a kernel of peace filled myheart. They were strong enough to make it through whatever would come their way.
Noren was here. I tried to reach out for the direwolf I knew was close but my arm refused to move.
“She’ll need either her mother’s or Queen Laina’s witch powers to help push back the curse. It will only be a temporary fix but that’s what we’re looking at right now, to save her life,” Julie said.
Mike sighed. “My mother is unconscious in the hospital.”
Could I actually die with Mike upset with me? With him looking at me differently, treating me differently?
