Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3) (24 page)

I turned to Cabe, searching for confirmation in his expression. His face was closer than I had expected, and his eyes dropped to my lips as I stared at him. The arm across my middle grew tense, drawing me closer.

“If you’re moving, so are we,” Cabe confirmed, his voice rough.

“B-but—”

“I’m going to stay and look after Silas,” Quillan interrupted my nervous protestation.

“When did you all decide this?” I asked, turning away from Cabe to stare at Quillan. I had expected some of them to follow me, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly and seemingly without discussion.

Quillan shrugged. “Just now.”

I pulled away from Cabe and launched across Noah to throw my arms around Quillan’s neck. “Thank you!”

A laugh bubbled from him and I released him to do the same to Noah, planting a kiss on his cheek. He grinned, but quickly tried to smother the smile, and it prompted me to kiss his cheek again. The smile broke free, transforming his whole demeanour: just like his glare, his smile was a powerful force, and I knew that my own smile grew in response. It felt almost wrong, to be this happy. It had been such a long time since I had smiled so much that it made my cheeks ache. Cabe pulled me back as the limousine turned a corner, and I settled against him.

“You should drop me off at the hospital and get your stuff and Tariq while I’m in there,” I said to them, my mind drifting off to thoughts of Silas.

Just like that, the brief happiness dissipated, leaving a horrible, hollow ache in my stomach. The others agreed, and ten minutes later the limousine stopped at the Maple Falls hospital. Quillan got out with me and the silent giants followed as he led me to Silas’s room, carefully bypassing the nurse’s desk at the start of the ward.

I entered the room with my heart lodged in my throat, and the sight of Silas almost broke me into two. He was covered from head-to-toe in bandages and hooked up to several machines. His heartbeat was a pitiful, sluggish imitation of the irregular kick inside my chest that I was used to. I swallowed, pulling away from the others to approach his bedside.

“Block the door,” I whispered. “Don’t let anyone in.”

To my surprise, Hans and Andrei were the ones to do my bidding, moving to stand right up against the door, their fronts turned so that they could still keep an eye on me. I nodded to them and then turned back to Silas, carefully unwrapping the bandages from my hands. I set the wraps aside and placed my palms over his chest, closing my eyes tightly against the image of him. It was weak of me, but I didn’t want to examine him too closely. I didn’t want to see the evidence of him having changed in any way. He
was
different, though. Of course he was. I had caught the brief impression a trimmed beard shading his squared jaw before I looked away. It tipped the wildness hinted in his usual appearance into something course and intimidating. The nurses had obviously cleaned him up, but I wasn’t sure that any amount of soap could wash away the truth of what had been done to him. It devastated me, and the valcrick spluttered into being, trembling in my arms and begging to be let out after so long. I held it back, needing to draw upon the right emotion so that I didn’t harm Silas any more than he was already harmed.

Quillan must have sensed my turmoil, for he moved behind me, setting his hands on my shoulders and leaning down to whisper in my ear. “Want me to tell a joke?”

A reluctant laugh spilled out, but I kept my eyes closed. “Okay.”

“Do you want to know why all Zevghéri are genetically superior in some way or another? Why they look more physically appealing than their human counterparts?”

“Why?” I asked, keeping my hands steady on Silas’s chest.

“Because if you
know
you have a pair or an Atmá out there destined to be with you forever, you won’t bother going to the gym. You’ll just sit on your ass all day long watching football and eating Doritos or streaming Sandra Bullock movies and eating Doritos, depending on your proclivities. Imagine if Zevs put on calories like normal people. It would be horrific.”

I burst out laughing, my hands trembling against the bandaged chest beneath me, and I could
feel
that Quillan was pleased. His heartbeat flipped against mine, a small, happy flutter to take my mind off the task before me.

“You should never try your hand at comedy,” I informed him, still putting off the inevitable. “You have a really weird sense of humour.”

Quillan’s hands slipped from my shoulders and down my arms, skimming my forearms to finally rest over my own hands. “No,” he said. “I’ll stick with what I do best.”

His chest settled against my back and I couldn’t help but lean into him, tipping my head a little to bask in the warmth he provided.

“You used to pull away from me,” he whispered against the back of my head, “but now you always lean into me. It’s… it’s clouding up my head. I can’t think straight when you do it.”

“Because you’re not used to it?” I wondered out loud.

I shouldn’t have been used to it either, but everything was different now. I couldn’t hold back from my pairs even if I tried. I was aware that I wouldn’t survive in this world without them, and not just because our lives were tied together. It was because they had redefined me as a person, and without them, I would be nothing more than a single miserable heartbeat attempting to draw breath beneath a sea of remembered pain, imagined terror, and dreadful premonition.
With
them, however, I was going to redefine that past into a lesson in pain, fight that terror into the ground, and raise a garrison to march into that horrible future.

“Because I’m not used to it,” he finally echoed, though it didn’t sound like a confirmation. It sounded more like a question.

I didn’t wait for him to elaborate, because I was aware that time was dragging on, and the comfort provided by his body hovering over mine had finally brought enough peace to my mind for me to release the valcrick. How he had known that it would work, I had no idea, but I whispered my thanks to him as I closed my eyes and settled into the feeling. I drank up the sensations brought on by Quillan and pushed them into my valcrick, urging the little web of light onward. Quillan made a pleased humming sort of sound, and I figured that he was being given the sensations as well, so I didn’t open my eyes to check that it was working.

He nudged closer, fixing me between himself and the side of the hospital bed as his hands curled around my wrists. I could feel Silas’s heartbeat better all of a sudden: the uneven beat having kicked its way into my chest with a ferocity that left me gasping, even though the body beneath my hands remained as still as a corpse. I started to grow weaker, the healing that Silas required rapidly drinking from my energy reserves, but Quillan was there to prop me up as I began to slump, and by the time my eyes flickered open, the colour had returned to Silas’s sleeping face. My hands slid from his chest and Quillan caught me before I melted to the ground, my limbs feeling oddly boneless. He pulled me into his arms and turned for the door, leaving me to grapple with the sensation of being pulled away from the dancing sound of Silas’s heart.

It felt like mine was being left behind.

Quillan stopped by the door and I realised that Hans and Andrei were both too shocked to move, their astounded eyes flickering from me to Silas, and back again.

“You healed him,” Andrei said, shock dripping from his words.

“She did,” Quillan answered for me. “And now we need to get her back to the car before someone figures out what happened and who did it.”

They hastened to get out of our way and I caught them sneaking a last glance at Silas before moving to follow us back through the hallways of the ward. By the time we piled back into the limousine, I was fighting to remain conscious. I didn’t know whose lap I was bundled into, but I clung to them and surrendered to the darkness as the limousine began to move. I didn’t wake up until it stopped again.

“Let’s take her past Weston so that he doesn’t send up a search party or anything stupid,” Noah grumbled, the voice rumbling right through my body. He was clearly the one carrying me.

I tried to pry my eyes open, but barely succeeded before I was falling under again. It must have been a while later that I heard someone’s voice declaring that Weston had gone back to Seattle, but it only seemed like minutes had passed, and then I was being tucked between the silky sheets of a bed that smelled of Cabe.

“Do you want to change clothes, little ghost?” The whisper sent a chill of familiarity down my spine, and I finally managed to peel my eyes open.

I stared at the two people standing beside the bed, my mouth falling open as I struggled to sit up.

“Y-you remember!” I gasped, fighting a wave of dizziness to keep them in my sights.

Cabe chuckled quietly and Noah’s face transformed into another breathtaking smile. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes again and I quickly shook my head to chase them away. I had cried enough already.

“I remember you threatening to go against your bond,” Cabe said, fixing me with a dark look.

“And I remember you saying you needed space,” Noah added, even more solemnly. “I’m sorry you were pressured into forming the bond.”

“I wasn’t!” My voice was louder than I had intended, and it bounced off the walls, assaulting my ears.

I winced, and Cabe smothered another laugh. “Calm down, pretty girl. You aren’t going to wound our delicate feelings. We’re going to win you over in no time.”

Noah made a guttural, indignant sound, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Might take a while.”

I could sense the pain and guilt that emanated from him as I entertained a brief image of him and Amber together… and then I wasn’t so sure that the stinging pain didn’t also belong to me. I swung my aching legs to the side of the bed and noticed that there were several bags in the middle of the room. I tried to stand, intending to hobble over to them, but Noah pushed me back down and went to rummage through them himself. He came back with a pair of shorts and a long-sleeved sweater made out of deliciously soft, downy material. There was a pair of underwear bunched up in the sweater, along with a pair of knee-length socks, and I smiled a little. Even though Noah had apparently hated me for the past several months, he had still noticed what I wore to bed.

“Tariq’s already been settled in. We gave him Miro’s room. We’ll leave and let you change,” he said awkwardly.

“Okay,” I mumbled. “Thanks. I’m… I’m glad you remember.” I was mumbling into my lap, feeling inexplicably shy as I buried my hands between the folds of the sweater in my lap. “I wasn’t pressured into forming the bond. I was ready for it.”

They were both smiling as they left the room and I allowed myself the luxury of feeling as though I was finally,
finally
, moving forward instead of backwards.

I woke up with a start, knowing somehow that I wasn’t alone anymore. It took me a moment to recognise the irregular pattern of something battering against my chest before I shot out of bed, my hand curling around the base of my neck as though I needed to block the passage off in case my heart decided to leap through my mouth.

“Silas!” I cried out hoarsely.

I could feel his heartbeat, but I couldn’t see him. A dark, humourless chuckle floated to me from the other side of the room and I turned to the shadows, pushing away my fear at the sound.

“Forming the bond with the other two has made you even stronger,” he said.

I tripped over the sheets in my haste to escape the bed and move toward him. I eventually found him sitting in a chair lodged beside the wardrobe, his legs parted and his hands draped over his thighs, his black eyes glittering at me. His face was chillingly blank: a stone mask that I was all too familiar with.

He wasn’t himself.

And he was
here
, instead of roaming the countryside hoping to provoke someone into a fight.

I was sure that didn’t bode well for me.

“Silas—”

“Don’t,” he cut across me, his tone barely above a whisper, but razor-sharp. “You think you can block Weston from your mind? Well you
can’t
. That barrier in your head protecting you from him all this time has been
me
. You fused our damn heads together when you made yourself my Atmá, but it won’t work anymore. Weston weakened me too much, and you aren’t clinging to my mind anymore.” He tapped against his temple and then dropped his arm again, lifting himself from the chair and stalking toward me. He hovered over me, the fury vibrating off him and sending cold fingers of caution to wrap around my neck. “Do you realise what that means?”

I bristled, squaring my shoulders and refusing to be intimidated, even though I had to hide my hands behind my back to mask the way they trembled. “It means I make my own decisions and I couldn’t let you suffer any more! I should have done it sooner… I should never have waited so long—”

He slapped a hand over my mouth, cutting me off again. “I’m not going to thank you,” he whispered.