Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            I’m unsteady. Muddled. Off-balance. But it’s normal. Who wouldn’t be, next to someone like him, someone who’d carry them through? So I stretch on the tips of my toes, leaning into his touch, and I feel shaky.

            I feel ready.

            I feel happy.

            I feel light-headed, as though I’m made of glass, about to shatter into pieces. My limbs have never been this heavy, and I wish I could just drop to the ground.

            Yes, I think. I’ll just let myself do that.

            “Misery.” The mix of worry and fear in his voice is unexpected. “Why are you so—”

            Searing pain stabs throughout my body, and that’s when the world turns pitch-dark.





CHAPTER 20




                             Whoever did this will pay.

                Slowly.

                Painfully.





The next few hours are sheer, concentrated agony.

            The mere act of breathing is an ordeal. My stomach hurts like it’s about to digest itself, bruised from the inside out by a thousand wild creatures who are having way too much fun carving their name in its lining with a rusty knife. There are several moments—and then a single one, long, protracted—when I’m sure, just sure, that this is the end. No living being can sustain this level of torment, and I’m going to die.

            Which is just fine. Nothing can be worse than what I’m experiencing. I welcome the blissful release of nothingness and all that good shit, but just when I’m about to tip into the void, something pulls me back.

            First there’s someone—okay, Lowe, yes, Lowe—giving orders. Barking orders. Growling orders. Or perhaps not Lowe, because I’ve never seen him any way but in control. He sounds desperate, which makes me want to crawl out of my corner of pain and reassure him that it’ll be okay—maybe not me, but everything else.

            And yet, I’m unable to speak for eons. Many, many times I drift right up to the edge of consciousness, only to sink back into sweaty, suffocating darkness. And when I finally manage to drag my eyes open . . .

            “There she is.”

            Dr. Averill? I try to say, but my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth.

            I know him. The Collateral’s official physician. With diplomatic passage into Human territory, where he’d give me annual checkups to ensure that I remained healthy enough to . . . be killed if the alliance dissolved, I guess? His duties must have expanded, which is a shame, because he looks as ancient now as he did when I was ten. Except that there’s something weird about him. Is he experimenting with facial hair?

            “Little Misery Lark. It’s been a while.”

            “Not the mustache,” I slur, delirious, unable to keep my eyelids up.

            He clucks his tongue. “If you have the energy to question my appearance, maybe you don’t need this painkiller,” he mutters in the Tongue, ornery as always. I would beg my apologies, claw that syringe out of his hands and into my body, but the needle is already pushing into my arm.

            The burning quiets. There are voices, from inside the room or several miles away.

            “—her organism deals with the poison. She’ll gradually slip into a healing trance. She’ll look very still, and you’ll be worried that she’s dead. But it’s simply the Vampyre way.”

            “How long?” Lowe asks.

            “Several hours. Days, maybe. Don’t look at me like that, young man.”

            A few muttered curses. “What do I do?”

            “There’s nothing to do. It’s her body’s job to combat the infection now.”

            “But what do I do? For her?”

            Dr. Averill sighs. “Make her comfortable. At some point after she wakes up, she’ll need to feed—more than usual, in quantity and in frequency. Make sure that you have blood at her disposal, the fresher the better.”

            A long pause. I picture Lowe running a hand over his jaw. His worried gesture.