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“I don’t know. The eggs for breakfast and one of those rolls. A cookie you left in the room.” I closed my eyes.

“I didn’t leave any cookies in the room,” Kaden said.

“Kaden, we don’t have any cookies in the house,” Luisca said, her voice urgent.

Kaden was yelling something at me.

“Huh?” I asked.

He pulled my mouth open and smelled my breath, and then pried open my eyelids.

“What are you doing?” I asked as soon as he let go.

“What’s wrong?” Luisca asked.

“Someone’s given her diaxa,” Kaden said, picking me up out of my chair.

“Bring her to the top of the river feed. I’ll meet you there,” Tiber yelled as Kaden ran with me in his arms.

“What are you doing? What’s diaxa?” I asked, laying my head on his shoulder.

“It’s poison.”

I didn’t have time to panic before there was a splashing noise and the cold stole all my thoughts.

“Close your mouth,” he said, right before I was dunked in icy mountain water.

I shuddered as I looked around at the river he was submerging me in. If I’d been about to fall asleep before, this was certainly waking me up a bit.

Tiber was beside us not even a minute later, wading into the river current with a bottle he had uncorked in his hand.

“Billie, this is important,” Kaden said. “You need to swallow every drop of what Tiber gives you. It’s an antidote for what you were given.”

Tiber held my mouth open as he dumped the contents of his vial. It tasted like a mixture of spoiled milk, with slimy bits of rotten egg. It was the foulest thing I’d ever tasted, and it was my will to live alone that kept it down. Tiber’s hand over my mouth didn’t hurt, as if he were going to refuse to allow me to spit it up.

He lifted his palm off slowly.

“She swallowed it,” Kaden said.

Tiber checked my eyes. “You caught it early. She’ll be okay. She might be tired for a day or so, but she’ll be okay.”

“Herrick,” Kaden said. The way he spoke the name was icier than the water I was in. “She said the cookies were in the room.”

“I’m on it,” Tiber said, leaving briskly.

“I’m very cold,”I said.

“Another few minutes to make sure.”

“I thought I couldn’t die because we’re mated.”

“It’s hard to kill you, but there’s always exceptions to everything.”

My teeth started chattering, and he turned and headed back to the shore.

People were gathering in the courtyard as we came back, peppering the air with questions as Kaden walked me back to the house.

“What happened? We saw you running with her.”