Page 74 of Bought for Blood

After that there’s darkness. Then his voice very close, saying my name. Then something at my mouth, and swallowing, and being told to stay.

Oh, my God.

He drank too much, and I was gone. I’m sitting up in his bed, so something brought me back, and my mouth remembers swallowing. I don’t know what it swallowed.

My wolf lifts her head.

She’s calm. In spite of everything, she’s calm. She stretches out along the inside of me and settles down again, easy, warm, unbothered about last night.

We nearly died. Why aren’t you upset?

Silence.

I reach for the glamour to see what’s left of me. It comes up thin. I get it over the back of my hand, and the hand goes vague against the sheet. I hold it for one breath and most of another before it slips.

Nine, in the corridor outside the library.

“You’re awake.”

He’s in the chair by the books with no lamp lit, and I have no idea how long he’s been sitting there watching me put it together in the dark.

“How long?” My voice comes out in pieces.

“Long enough that Marthe has been up here four times.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“No.” He gets up. “It doesn’t.”

He pours water from the jug on the side table and gives it to me. He doesn’t hold it to my mouth. He puts it into my hands, keeps his fingers under mine until he’s sure I’ve got it, then takes them away.

Then he sits down on the edge of the bed.

The water is cold and tastes of the stone jug. I drink the whole glass. He refills it without being asked. I get through half of that before my arms start shaking.

His left sleeve is turned back. There’s a mark across the inside of his wrist, dark, closing, torn rather than cut.

“That was there last night,” I say. “I asked you about it.”

“You did.”

“You told me not to talk.”

“You couldn’t get the words out.”

“I’m getting them out now.”

He looks at his own wrist. Then he pulls the sleeve down over it.

“I lost control,” he says. “I took more than I should have. I knew I had, and I went on taking it, and you stopped being able to hold your head up. It won’t happen again.”

“You lost control.” I put the glass down on the nightstand. “Good to know you can.”

“I’ve had better achievements.”

“I wasn’t congratulating you.”

“No.” His fingers curl once against his knee, then go still. “I know.”