Page 98 of A Fearless Heart
Bond and Jem exchanged looks, and without saying a word, both started to move to flank Cady.
“Stop that,” Gabe ordered them. “It’s her house, and she has every right to be in the kitchen or wherever else she wants. Besides, where would she go?”
Cady was too furious to notice how her heart was thudding in her chest. “Yes, it is my house! Oh, and perhaps you’d explain whatlevel of trustyou think I have in you now!”
Rook groaned, shaking his head.
“My lady,” Judith said, putting her hands out in a placating way. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“It looks like a man I trusted has been lying to me and that everyone else in the house is aware of it,” she said, the words bitter on her tongue.
Judith closed her mouth, and raised her hands wider in a gesture of giving up.
Gabe walked toward Cady, moving fast. He got his hands on her shoulders just as she started to turn away, aiming for the door. “Cady, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of, not from me. Or anyone here.”
“Then tell me what you are!” she demanded, feeling her chest contract. “And why you’re talking about Trevor!”
“I work for a…a group of… Look, we’re on the right side.”
“The right side of what?”
“Of…everything. We keep the country safe from threats. Usually that means people, foreign agents, and plots to destroy this or that utterly vital thing. This time it’s a person who’s using poison…”
“You said Trevor’s name!”
“I didn’t mean he’s the killer,” Gabe said tightly.
“Oh, really? Because that’s what it sounded like!”
“You need to breathe, sweetheart. You’ll feel better if you can calm down.”
“Don’ttellme that! Everyone says I’m too worried and I get excited over nothing, but this isn’t nothing! It’sreal.”
“Yes, it’s real. But you fighting us now isn’t going to help anyone.”
A high keening sound burst out of Cady. She wasn’t even aware of making it—it was just as if the ball of pain that was always sitting in her chest suddenly burst.
Gabe stepped back, as if the mere sound had driven him away. “Cady, stop and breathe. Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”
“I don’t care! I don’t c—” She choked on the word, her breathing uneven, no longer in time with her heart. “I—”
She tried to inhale, and couldn’t. Black spots started to edge into her vision, and the voices around her became a babble. Gabe was saying something to her, but she couldn’t make it out, and didn’t want to.
Her heart was pounding, and she could hear nothing but the blood rushing through her body. Something was very, very wrong and it was all his fault. Cady was going to die at last. After all this, all the days and weeks and months of hiding from everything that might get her, she finally went out into the world, and the world was going to kill her.
As she thrashed against the arms attempting to grab her, Cady saw Judith clearly. She was holding something in her hand—a cloth? It was soaked in something pungent. Judith mouthed the wordsorryand clapped it over Cady’s face.
She gasped, choking, and the black spots in her vision expanded, each dot growing and growing into a great dark flower. They covered everything and the rushing sound of blood became a wind that swept her away to nowhere, nowhere at all.
Chapter 33
Gabe held Cady tight. Judith’squick thinking with the sedative-soaked cloth sent Cady into unconsciousness, interrupting the spiral of her irregular breathing and her panic-induced violent reactions.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Judith said softly, once he’d lowered Cady’s limp body to the floor of the kitchen. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Her attacks ain’t always like that, are they?” Jem asked.
“No. This was worse.” Gabe pushed the dark hair out of Cady’s face. The color in her cheeks was too hectically red, and he didn’t like the sound in her throat as she wheezed in and out. But at least she was breathing.
