Rise Up
The pain was the first thing to register, even before I managed to open my eyes. Every inch of me felt like I’d been hit by a car. My muscles ached without movement as I remained lying down, and my head only throbbed harder as bright lights poured into my eyes. I pressed them shut again just as fingers combed through my hair, cleaning the stray strands from my face.
Despite the pain of enduring the brightness, I forced my eyes back open, finding a gentle amber gaze staring back at me.
“Hey, Princess.”
The walls were starch white, along with the sheets and furniture. Everything was so suspiciously sterile. I tried lifting my hand to his, but something spiny shifted in my arm, making me wince. I looked down, seeing a needle shoved into my vein. Blinking through the grogginess, reality seeped back in as I took in my sights more clearly. There were monitors and machines all around me. I was in a hospital room.
“What…” My throat was raw, making me cough on my dry vocal chords. “What-what happened?”
A head of blonde hair appeared on my other side, and I nearly gave myself whiplash as I turned to face them.
Wrong.
It was all wrong.
It was the wrong shade.
Carly brushed her butterscotch bangs out of her eyes. “How are you feeling?”
NO.
Tears whelmed up inside me as my chest caved in. Reese sat beside me, but I still didn’t feel that warmth. I didn’t feel his warmth. I didn’t feel him. I felt empty.
“Where is he?”
The two just glanced at one another, uneasy.
“Where is he?” No one answered, and I suddenly ripped the IV from my arm.
“Sweetie…” Carly tried coaxing me back down, but I slapped her hands away, wrestling out of the hospital bed.
I fell over the guardrails, attempting to land on my feet, but I was too weak. My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the linoleum floor. Reese and Carly immediately came to my sides, but all I could do was scream at them to get away from me as I coiled into myself and wept. Hands took hold of my shoulders, and I batted at them, only to be pried off the floor and swept into someone’s arms.
Worn black and white leather pressed against my cheek. With the inhale of cigarette smoke and cologne, I didn’t need to look up to know who it was.
Val.
He was carrying me, back to bed I was sure. I just clung to him, and he only held me closer. It wasn’t until I looked over his shoulder that I realized he’d carried me someplace else entirely. He turned the corner of the hall, where we passed a large sign that read Critical Care Unit.
Someone said something to him about visiting hours, but they didn’t push further as he whispered something back.
And it hit me.
It was barely detectable, that flicker of warmth in my chest, but it was there. Val turned, letting me face a large sliding glass door. It was closed, but the curtains inside weren’t drawn.
A warm kiss pressed to my temple. “He’ll pull through,” Val murmured.
There were wires and tubes and so many machines. His throat was wrapped in layers and layers of gauze and bandages, but he was alive. Blaine was alive.
“Though, he’ll have one hell of a scar,” his brother added. Indeed it would, considering it had been the same blade that had marred them both before. “It might do him some good. He was a little too pretty before.”
Amid my tears, I laughed. Actually laughed.
It took me two whole minutes to discover my bed had been implemented by the Spanish Inquisition. That much I knew for sure. The damn thing was one of those stupid “smart beds” that adjusted itself every time you shifted, and it only got harder and harder, pressing up into all the wrong spots. I never had back pain before, but after an hour of laying in it, I was only in more agony. Plus, when Val returned me to my room, the nurse wasn’t particularly pleased to see that I’d taken out my IV. And after what I did, giving up nearly all my energy, I apparently didn’t have enough to help me heal any faster. With the bruises staining my arm, it felt like someone jammed a pencil into my veins instead of a needle when the nurse reinserted the IV.
Thankfully, the hospital outside of the ICU didn’t have set visiting hours, so Carly and Reese stayed by my bedside while Val continued to make his rounds, leaving every half hour to check on Blaine. He assured me since angels were forbidden from being seen by humans, my father wouldn’t be able to even enter the hospital. And no one was stupid enough to think they’d be able to waltz into a heavily watched care unit and kill a patient without being caught, including a Reaper or even a crazy Irishman. But it didn’t hurt to keep an eye out.
“I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, Doll Face,” affirmed Val at the top of the hour. “Any requests from the vending machines?”
“Anything with caffeine,” said Carly.
“Anything edible,” I added.
Reese just shook his head.
The Dark Mage bowed, giving me a wink upon departure. I wanted to plead with him to stay, if only just to save me from the awkwardness that always ensued when he left. Carly and Reese would just sit there, attempting to make small talk, but it was painfully obvious. They were trying to say anything else except the one thing they really wanted to. Why had I done it?
Apparently, I’d been unconscious for over five hours before I woke up in the hospital. And during that time, Blaine’s own recovery was rather touch-and-go. Because of this, Val continued slicing the rune on my ring finger so that I wasn’t bound to the mating bond, just in case things with his brother took a turn for the worst. And this was something he’d made a point of explaining to Reese and Carly.
Which begged the big question: If I knew my life wasn’t tethered with his, why didn’t I let Blaine die? Or better yet, why would I risk my own life in a pathetic attempt to save his? If he was gone, half my problems would have disappeared in an instant. My hex would be null and void, Raelynd would have no further use of me if I didn’t have a mate, and I would no longer be the next Princess of Hell.
How could I explain that Blaine wasn’t as awful as everyone thought, or that he hadn’t intentionally killed me? How could I explain that I saw a part of myself in him? He didn’t have a choice in what he had become, same as me, and we’d both been abandoned and brutalized by the people who claimed to love us. How could I explain everything without sounding incredibly naïve or brainwashed?
I couldn’t.
So I didn’t.
I just lay there in the unbearable bed, pretending not to notice the uncomfortable glances and awkward pauses in conversation as everyone tried to find something else to talk about.
Reese rubbed an aggravated hand against the dressing bandaged on the side of his neck.
“It still hurts?” I asked.
He nodded. “The damn thing won’t stop burning.”
“I thought you guys were supposed to heal, like, superfast,” said Carly.
That very fact had been clearly bothering him since I’d awoken. All his other injuries had already healed hours ago, almost immediately after he regained his lost energy. He started peeling off the tape that secured the dressing and headed into the bathroom.
“Should you be doing that?” Carly asked. “I mean, it was pretty nasty when you came here; looked like someone literally set your skin on fire. It probably just needs a little more time.”
“What the hell…?”
Carly and I both stole worried glances at one another, and she immediately helped me out of bed as we hurried to the bathroom. Reese had pulled the entire bandage off, and not a millimeter of his skin was still scorched. But that wasn’t what any of us were focusing on. In place of the once burned flesh rested a perfectly polished tattoo…of a snake wrapped around two crossed swords, appearing to consume a flame.
“Dare I ask why you’re all in here?” drawled Val, appearing in the bathroom doorway. One look at Reese’s neck, and his eyes went as wide as our own. “Holy shit. What the hell happened to you?”
Reese’s hand fell away from the mark as he staggered back from the mirror. “I’ve been hexed.”