Page 53 of From London, With Love
“Consider it done, Your Grace,” said Miss Townsend.
Alexandra barely heard the words. All she could sense was movement behind her as Malloryn took charge.
Blood welled over her cupped hands as Sir Gideon gasped for breath. His dark eyes met her own, begging her for something she couldn’t understand. He tried to grab her arm, but the movement was beyond him.
“No! Don’t move.” What was she going to do? She pressed her hands firmer, trying to hold his blood inside him from sheer pressure.
“Let me see,” Malloryn said, kneeling at her side.
“I can’t let go. Ican’t.”
He caught her wrists, and their eyes met. “Trust me, Alexandra. Trust me. I need to see the wound.”
Slowly, she let him move her hands away. Blood welled in sluggish lumps. There was so much of it.
“He’s human,” she whispered.
A blue blood could survive a wound like this, but Sir Gideon had been vaccinated against the craving virus. They couldn’t even infect him now in order to save his life.
There was no emotion in Malloryn’s eyes.
Only the cold, sharp assessment she was afraid to take herself as he pressed his cravat to the bleeding. “His lung is pierced. He doesn’t have long.”
“Do something,” she begged. “Do something.Please.”
Malloryn glanced down. “Ican’tinfect him. My saliva may be able to heal some small components of this injury, but—”
All she heard was the “but.”
All the warmth in the world washed away from her.No. She had lost everything—the father she’d adored, the mother who’d died at her birth, her youth, her innocence, her privacy, even her own choices. Sir Gideon was the one secret little pleasure she’d ever cherished. Her rock in any storm. Never trying to take from her, but standing at her side, always, there to tell her she wasn’t alone when she faced difficult, terrible decisions.
She didn’t think she could continue to rule without him.
Not without losing all sense of hope.
“I can help him.” The tall, brooding man who always shadowed Miss Townsend pushed Malloryn out of the way. “The sac surrounding his lungs is filling with air and placing pressure on the lung itself. If we don’t relieve some of that pressure it will collapse his lung completely, and he won’t be able to breathe.” He eased the bloodied cravat out of the way. “The bullet’s still inside him, but it doesn’t appear to have hit anything vital in itself.”
Malloryn moved aside. “Will he survive, Obsidian?”
“Perhaps.”
Perhaps?“Just what sort of experience do you have, sir? Are you a surgeon?”
The man’s ghostly-pale eyes flickered to hers.Dhampir, Malloryn had told her once. An enemy who had defected to their side. And now Sir Gideon’s life lay in his hands.
“Usually I’m the one dealing such wounds,” he replied matter-of-factly. Tugging a small leather satchel from within his coat, he rolled it out, revealing an array of wicked-looking instruments. “But I wouldn’t have missed the heart if I’d taken that shot. Unless I meant to. Your Majesty, I think you should look away.”
Alexandra shook her head, but Malloryn was already bustling her away from Sir Gideon’s panting, wheezing body.
“Malloryn!” she gasped, trying to see over his shoulder.
“Here,” he whispered, drawing her into his arms and forcing her tear-stained face into his shoulder. “Don’t look,” he whispered, the palm of his hand cupping the base of her skull. “He will survive it, Alexandra. I swear he will. He won’t want to leave you. Just don’t look, and it will all be over soon.”
Chapter 14
Malloryn moved slowly around Sir Gideon’s bedchambers, picking up one of the man’s jackets—slung carelessly over a chair—before draping it over the queen’s shoulders.
She sat by the bed, holding one of Sir Gideon’s hands, her face pale and tearstained. Looking up in shock, she realized who the jacket belonged to, and then drew it close around her shoulders.
