Page 118 of Demon's Bane

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Rhett

Joan is still breathing.

Long past midnight, in the darkness and silence of the infirmary, I make myself concentrate on that fact above all else.

Joan is still breathing.

She’s tucked into the bed Allison had brought down for her, chest rising and falling softly. Gone is the horrid black blood she kept coughing up, the ragged, wrenching sounds of her drowning in it, the pained cries that slipped out when she—

Breathing. She’s breathing.

Over and over, I beat back the images that won’t stop replaying themselves behind my eyelids, reminding myself again.

My mate is alive, and she will wake.

She will.

It’s been more than a day since I brought her here, more than a day since Allie and Vayla and a black-haired human witch they sent someone back through the Veil to fetch—whose name I can’t remember, but who looks familiar, somehow—saved her. That she still sleeps is expected, they’ve told me.

She’s resting. Healing. Her body recovering from whatever the fuck it was the wielder did to her.

In the tangle of my thoughts, those are the ones tinged with red. They’re wreathed in violence, with the need to go, do, find, to seek the vengeance that will bring some bare measure of—

Joan is breathing. She’s alive.

For a long while, there are no thoughts at all. There’s only the steady rhythm of her breath and the determined beat of her heart where I rest my fingers lightly against her wrist.

The tempo of her life becomes my own, the only thing holding me here, anchored.

“Rhett.”

A quiet voice at the chamber door draws my attention, and when I snap back to the world larger than the pulse of my mate’s life and the depth of my regret and fury, I turn to find the queen standing there.

The room we’re in is just off the side of the witch’s workshop the queen keeps with Vayla. Behind Allison, through the open door, the first light of dawn shines in through the large wall of windows cut into the side of the mountain.

“Can I come in?”

A stiff nod is all I’m able to manage, and she enters the room slowly to hover near Joan’s bedside. Silence stretches long between us, and I keep my eyes on Joan’s face, watching for any twitch, any tiny sign she’s there, that she’ll wake.

“You should get some sleep,” the queen says, resting an uncertain hand on my shoulder.

“I’ll stay here.”

The response is gruff, almost rude, but manners are so far beyond my capacity right now I can’t make myself care.

Allison withdraws her hand and walks around the end of the bed to sink into the chair opposite me. Again, we fall silent, both our gazes fixed on Joan’s still form.

“She’s going to be alright,” Allison says, though from the tremble in her voice, I’m not sure if she’s trying to convince me or herself.

I’m not capable of providing any answer to that, so I merely nod again.

Some of my own emotions are echoed back to me on the queen’s face. Worry, fear, guilt. All etched into deep lines on her forehead and deep shadows under her eyes, like she hasn’t gotten any sleep in the last day, either.

“She’s the one who convinced me to step away from the coven, you know?” Allison says quietly, meeting my eyes and offering a tentative, shaky smile. “I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to go to college if she hadn’t convinced me I’d be better off making my way in the mundane world than staying around the coven hall and always feeling like I was on the outside looking in.”

Her expression goes distant for a moment with some memory before she gives her head a shake. “My mom wasn’t impressed. Uh, Esme, I mean, the coven’s High Priestess.”