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“Yeah, fuck, if you hadn’t been here…” Nyx said, emotion welling in his eyes.

“I was, babe, and everything is well now,” I reassured him, walking to him and tucking him into my side.

“You might feel okay right now, but that infection would have taken a toll. You need to rest up for a couple of days, Kai,” Ariana informed him. “You should be fine from then on, but if anything strange crops up, let me know right away.”

“Understood,” he told her easily. Far too easily for him.

But her mind was clearly elsewhere, on the Celestial issue of it all, for her to notice that he was actually giving in so unlike him. “Head back to the Academy,” she told us, looking at us each in turn.

And then, without another word, she did that aggravating thing of teleporting out when things got too real or serious for her in any way.

“This is bad. She can’t go it alone,” I grunted.

“She won’t be,” Kai told me.

I cocked an eyebrow. “What? You heard her and she just took the test as well.”

He smirked at me. “And I made a copy.”

Despite everything, a rumbling chuckle escaped me. “Of course you did.”

16

~Nyx~

It turned out that Kai hadn’t been given much of a choice on the resting up front.

The after-effects of that brutal infectionhadtaken its toll on him.

It had kept him down for the last couple of days in a flu-like state.

I eased onto his bed on the raised platform near mine, where he was sprawled, the black sheets pushed down to his boxers, exposing his chest that was slick with sweat, just like his forehead.

“Here,” I said, holding out the mug in my hand.

His glazed eyes met mine wearily. “Strong coffee?” he asked hopefully.

“Tea with healing herbs from the Infirmary.”

He screwed up his face. “Pass.”

“I added extra honey this time to sweeten it. It tastes much better.”

“I need spelled caffeine.”

“You don’t. Then you’ll be buzzing and restless while your body needs to take it easy—and your mind for that matter.”

He grumbled, but sat up against his pillows, then took the mug and had a couple of sips. “It does taste better than the last couple of times.”

I smiled. “There you go.”

The door to our dorm room opened, and then Vorzyr walked on in, wearing his white henley and maroon leather pants, with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He winked at me, then shut the door behind him and strode over to us. “How’s the patient? Still being a difficult shit?”

“Wanting coffee, but drinking his tea nonetheless.”

“Good to hear,” he said, stroking my hair, before looking Kai over in that studious way full of concern that he had been employing for the last couple of days that Kai had fallen sick. He’d come in here checking on him, and we’d even taken to alternating our care of Kai.

He reached out and pressed his hand to Kai’s forehead. I’d come to discover that one of a dragon’s lesser known abilities was to determine the temperature of a being, and being able to tell whether that temperature was in the range of good health for their specific species.