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“Who uses the black and gray wheel?” Loren asked, her teeth clacking so hard, he could barely understand her. Desperate to help her, he tightened his arms around her, holding her close. She leaned back against him, hanging onto his sleeves.

“People with shadow and death magic,” Roark replied.

“People like me,” Darien said with a smirk as he rested his chin on the top of Loren’s head. “Right?”

“Do you have black magic?” Roark asked him.

“Sure do.”

“Is it possible to activate both wheels at the same time?” Loren asked her dad.

“It is,” Roark said, sounding curious as to why she was asking. “You don’t want black or gray, though, Loren. That’s the opposite of what you have. Your aura is light and healing. If we were to activate the black, chances are…” His eyes darted Darien’s way, and he hesitated a moment before settling with, “Well, let’s just say I don’t think it would be good.” He pressed one more button, and the chamber whirred to life.

Inside, the lights flicked on, and tiny spheres of magic every shade of the rainbow winked into existence, flitting about like fireflies. Droplets of water began to vibrate through the air, running from ceiling to floor and floor to ceiling.

“All jewelry off,” Roark instructed.

Darien shifted Loren’s hair to one shoulder and unclasped her necklaces—the talisman and the solar amulet. He slid them inside his jacket pocket for safekeeping. She took off her charm bracelet herself, and he tucked that away, too.

“You got any gloves?” he asked Roark.

“Gloves? What for?”

“She has conduit tattoos.”

Loren held out her hands, showing Roark the sun and moon inked on her palms. He made no comment, showed zero surprise.

“One minute.” He left, heading to the same room where he’d found the bathing suit, and returned a moment later with a pair of wrist-length white satin gloves. He gave them to Loren, and she put them on.

Darien pushed the door open and held it for her as she walked in, her bare feet splashing in two inches of bath-warm water scented with citrus oil. The chamber looked the same as the one in Yveswich, complete with a floating glass tabletop in the center.

“Do you need me to lift you up there?” he called as she judged the height of the tabletop.

“No, I think I’m good,” she said. She planted her hands on the glass and pulled herself up.

As soon as she was on and lying flat on her back, her hair tumbling over the edge of the thick glass, Darien shut the door.

He watched her through the window the whole time she received her treatment. Seeing his girl lying there like that, her eyes shut and her body still, brought back so many bad fucking memories. His throat tightened as if a hand were squeezing it, and his heart started to pound as he recalled one of the last times he was with her, in a chamber just like this one—banging a fist on the table and screaming for her to come back to him.

‘Go, Bandit—please!’he’d bellowed as his heart cracked in his chest.‘Bring her home!’

‘WAKE. THE. FUCK. UUUUUPPPPPPPPP!’

His eyes shuttered. He drew a deep, calming inhale.

“You warm?” Roark asked.

Darien tore his eyes off Loren to find Roark observing him. “Venom withdrawals, actually,” he said. It probably wasn’t the right thing to admit to your girlfriend’s father, especially when you wanted to one day marry said girlfriend, but it sort of just slipped out.

“Does Loren know?” Roark asked, his gaze lifting to the beads of sweat Darien could feel prickling across his forehead. He couldn’t wait until these symptoms were behind him and he felt like himself again.

“I talked to her yesterday. We stopped by her workplace and she picked up a tonic that’s supposed to help people like…me.” They’d had barely enough time to swing by Mordred and Penelope’s before heading to Erasmus’s townhouse, but she’d insisted on making the stop. He’d already taken a dose, but Loren said it would be about three days before he was back to new.

“She’s excellent with natural healing,” Roark said. “She’ll have you back to new quicker than if you were fighting it on your own, with less chance of relapse, too.”

Darien didn’t reply. He just kept watching Loren, his breaths thinning out as those bad memories once again resurfaced?—

“What day are you on?”