Page 33 of Blood Currents
Keane
I woke slowly, the hazeof sleep giving way to sharper awareness than I’d felt in months.The world felt…organized again, like someone had straightened the chaotic shelves in my mind.
Marigold sat curled in the chair beside my bed, her posture rigid with Scout perched on her shoulder like a skeletal sentinel.His tiny claws dug into the fabric of her sweater, and his skull tilted incrementally toward the door every few seconds—hypervigilant in a way only a familiar could be.
On the nightstand, Wisp lay curled with her silvery tail wrapped neatly around her body.Her portal-marked fur shimmered faintly as if threads of starlight ran just under her skin.The fact that she’d stayed—within arm’s reach of me—meant the corruption’s hold was loosening.Familiars wouldn’t stay where magic felt unsafe, no matter how much loyalty they bore.
“Mari?”My voice came out quieter than I intended.
Scout’s head snapped toward me, clicking once—a sharp, alert sound.Marigold’s eyes opened immediately at the signal.She hadn’t really been asleep.
“You’re awake,” she said softly.“How do you feel?”
The deflection.Always focusing on me to avoid answering for herself.I recognized it immediately because it had been my favorite trick for years.
“Clearer,” I admitted.“More myself than I’ve been in a long time.But that’s not what I asked.”
She shifted, and Scout adjusted to her movement, his bony tail tapping against her collarbone in an unconscious rhythm.His gaze kept flicking toward her face, like he could sense what she wasn’t saying.
“No,” I said gently.“You’re not fine.”
For a moment, her mask faltered.The muscles in her jaw twitched.Her hands—resting neatly on her thighs—shook just faintly before she pressed them flat again, a studied motion of control.
“The healing is working,” she said instead.“Your magic is stabilizing.The corruption—”
“Mari.”I sat up carefully, forcing my body to cooperate.“Look at me.”
She did, reluctantly.And in her eyes I saw it all—layers of hurt, the hollow ache of someone who’d just lost something important even while clinging to everything else that mattered.
“What happened?”
Her laugh was short and sharp, like glass breaking.Scout clicked faster, his head canting as if he could scold her for bottling it up.
“You mean besides watching you almost die?”she said bitterly.“Besides spending days wondering if you’d wake up sane?”
“Someone hurt you,” I said, because her pain wasn’t just about me.“Recently.”
She looked down, focusing on Scout as he began to tap a slow rhythm against her shoulder—three beats, pause, three beats.A ritual.Comfort disguised as habit.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Something cracked in her then—her shoulders slumping, breath hitching.“I heard about the dinner,” she whispered.“What Elio said.”
My chest went cold.“What dinner?”
“The Lightford dinner.Your uncle was there.And Elio…” She swallowed hard.“He played their perfect heir.Said you were unstable.Dangerous.”Her voice broke on the last word, and I hated how well I understood her pain.
I cataloged the tension in her posture, the way she clung to order even as it unraveled.It was like watching someone try to tape glass back together—not because they thought it would hold but because it was the only thing they could do with shaking hands.
“Mari—”
“I trusted him,” she said, quieter now.“Even when I felt him pulling away, I believed it meant something.And then I find out that while we’ve been saving you… while I’ve been…” Her throat closed around the words.“He stood there and said all of that.”
I shifted, patting the bed beside me.“Come here.”
She hesitated but then sat, Scout scrambling down to perch in her lap.Wisp lifted her head, her glowing eyes following Marigold with quiet curiosity and tail flicking once before curling back around her body.
