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Right now, the prognosis wasn’t good.

Sloan’s eyes widened and he growled, “Don’t you bloody dare!”

An arrow stabbed through my shoulder. It didn’t take a genius to figure out Eros packed enough serum to be annoying. And when my speed slowed, it was just another nail in the coffin. Agony throbbed where the arrow impaled my shoulder, and when Eros twisted it, a wail escaped my throat. Sloan struggled to free himself, and rivers of blood poured down his body in his haste.

We were fucked.

35

Simon Says, Freeze

EVERYTHING SLOWED TOa complete stand-still, and the pain faded from my body as if it never existed. Eros was mid-step, on his way back over to Sloan, whose face expressed intense anguish. It was evident now that he’d been poisoned on top of being slashed and cut an inch from death. We were working on borrowed time.

Eros never intended to let Sloan live. He only wanted to give the impression that he’d leave it at cuts and stabs, but I smelled the putrid scent of fatal poison from the Hunter’s body. Thanks to the last time Eros was an absolute bastard to deal with, we now carried an ample supply of the antidote to Sleeping Death, and I could save the Brit if that was the poison the Dark Fae chose.

My luck these days would mean it likely wasn’t, but a girl could dream.

Still, if I didn’t do something quickly, Sloan would be lost the way I nearly had been. That was when everything paused like this was a video game and not real life.

It didn’t make sense at first as the world around me paused, in a perpetual state of shit on a stick. The air didn’t move. The clouds didn’t glide. Even sound was gone. It was like being caught inside a still-frame overlooking a violent battle scene. Like someone had screamed out “Simon says, freeze!” and the world went ahead and listened.

I blinked and moved inside of the magical hold, but I realized quickly that I wasn’t bound like I had been before everything stopped.

But why?

Eros injected me with the same serum as before. I shouldn’t be able to move so quickly. Everyone else was, for all intents and purposes, frozen in time. But I moved. For some reason, I moved without effort and made my way over to Sloan.

I didn’t question anything as I stabbed the reverse serum into my companion and doused his open, once-bleeding wounds with all the potions and tonics I carried in my jacket. After, I worked swiftly to inject the antidotes I had on me, hoping one would work if time decided to start again.

Or whatever the fuck this whole weird frozen event was.

Then I stole whatever I could find in Sloan’s pockets and repeated my first-aid treatment in hopes he’d heal quicker. It probably didn’t work that way, but no one said it didn’t. So, whatever. I’d do everything I could to keep the gorgeous Hunter alive. It may seem a waste or amateurish to bet all on black the way I was, but a second ago, we were practically dead already.

Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t squander the miracle this was. I’d do anything and everything to put us at the best advantage for when my luck ran out. I didn’t ponder why I could do all this, or how with my hand alone I broke through the magic wrapped around my companion. I didn’t even wonder why it all somehow worked out perfectly in my favor when it shouldn’t.

Instead, I took advantage of the stand-still time and threw Sloan over my shoulder. You know, only after I stabbed an arrow through Eros’s chest, right where his heart was. Though, I couldn’t be confident he even had a heart anymore. With all that nonsense finished, I got the hell out of dodge with the unmoving, somewhat rigid Hunter slung over my shoulder.