Page 28 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Not as far as I know,” I answered. Food I was sure about, and his assumption that she would not have drunk the water sounded plausible.

“That’s not good.” The doc wiped the skin around her wound with the antiseptic and the pungent odor curled the hairs inside my nostrils. “Bring her to me tomorrow. I’ll check her over. And make sure she drinks plenty tonight.”

“How long will it take to heal?” I was set on repaying her for the stitches. She had hurt herself because of me. And I needed her healthy, not cut up.

“A couple of weeks,” Zion said, collecting the glass shards scattered on the floor in a gray pillowcase he had removed from one of the two pillows on her bed. “Speaking from experience.”

The experience he had plenty of. He probably was the most often injured in the whole compound, and managed to healphysically perfectly each time, but his mind evaded the recovery process. And knowing it was partly due to my fault…

It had forced me to keep my distance.

I hovered at the head of the bed, monitoring the doc inspecting the damage. He threaded a disinfected needle and pierced her flesh to place the first stitch, pausing to pull the thread taut. “Stop breathing down my neck or do this yourselves,” he groused.

Zion tied up the pillowcase with the glass bits, hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans, and grinned. “This is so fun.”

Once again, he could not pause to pay attention to his own wounds. Taking a centering breath, I pinched the bridge of my nose. I had gotten no sleep last night, keeping watch over her, and then he had come into the equation. I did not want her to wake up alone, and yet she had. Zion had dragged me out into our training rings, where he circled me until my self-restraint had snapped and I held him in a chokehold until he tapped out with a drunk expression that haunted me for the rest of the day, preventing me from getting any rest whatsoever.

I rummaged in the doc’s box of med supplies, finding the necessities, and pointed to the open door. “Get lost.”

Zion’s smile widened. “Want to get lost with me?”

Shoving a bandage and a pack of gauze to his chest, I turned my back to him. “Do not bleed out.” Sometimes, it was too hard to just look at him.

And he could take care of his leg himself. Neither I nor the doc were doing it. For the life of me, I could not count how many times I had to stitch him up over the years.

“What do you mean,we cannot do anything?” I picked up a microchip we had snatched from the city. Smaller than my thumbnail, yet capable of hindering our operations and halting our supply chains.

A pile of them lay spread out on the silver tray on the large table in Sadira and Ryder’s workroom. Rolling the tiny electronic piece on my palm, I squinted from the reflections assaulting me. Everything was bright here, from the sky-blue upholstered chairs around the few tables dyed milky white to the birch-like floorboards.

How did they live in such a perpetual state of brightness? It hurt my eyes just to be here. The only spots to give me any reprieve were the electronic parts either sorted into neat piles on different silver trays or the black, rubber-coated wires coiled into loops Sadira was sorting out at the end of the table.

Clearly, no one here had migraines or knowledge of the symptoms.

“Can’t any of this”—I waved at the tech lying around—“help you figure it out?”

“Listen. I grew up in the city with, as you call it,this,around me.” Sadira took the microchip from me and inspected it in the blinding light falling—no, shouting its illumination—from the multiple light bulbs installed in the ceiling. “So when I tell you that we don’t have what it takes to work out these chips you’ve brought in, I mean it. Nelle is better than me in software, but even with her on this, we’ll likely need direct access to Ilasall’s systems to solve the problem.”

I rubbed between my eyes, hoping it would inspire my nerves to protest another headache creeping in. “So you are telling me all we can do is sit and wait?”

“Until someone from the Damia’s compound can figure this out, yes. Ryder has reached out to her and Conall, but so far neither Ardaton nor Coriattus seem to be updating their security systems, so yeah, we might have to sit tight for a while.” She shrugged and her shorts-clad, dark-skinned legs sparkled from the endless array of table lights. They were sure to fuel another migraine into lunging at me. “How is she, by the way? Seeing as you remain surprisingly alive.” Leaning back in her chair, Sadira hoisted her feet on the table, one ankle crossed over the other.

At least the dirty rubber soles of her boots gave me a target to focus on—a blotch of darkness in this room of scorching brightness—and that placated the frustration surging inside me for taking our conversation elsewhere.

Though Sadira was one the bunch of bastards who had somehow managed to worm their way into my personal bubble of friends, I could swear to the night sky of Kali’s and the blood Zion worshiped so dearly, some days, they made it a point to get to me.

“She’s giving them hell.” A head full of shoulder-length curls appeared in the entryway. He tucked a stray lock around his ear and perched himself on the corner of the center table. “I heard she managed to cut one and stab another within the first few minutes of waking up.”

“Ryder,” I said with lethal calm.

“Fine, fine, just bring her to dinner tonight.” Ryder inspected the silver tray full of microchips. “The girl has to eat sometime, and we’re all too curious not to know how she is planning to deal with you.”

“Nope, it’s going to be poison. Strangling someone the size of them is too complicated.” Sadira shook her head, and herebony braids swooshed around her. “The question is, which one is going down first?”

“Are we talking about Kali?” Jayla strode into the room, heading right to Ryder. “I say she’s going to get them in their sleep. She nearly succeeded when they were awake. If she bends over for thirty seconds and pretends to moan, she’ll have a perfect opportunity to slash their throats afterward.”

I arched my eyebrow. “Want to repeat that?”

They could taunt me as long as they desired—it ran off me like water—as it was not surprising given the level of gossip prevalent in our compound, but no one was allowed to insult Kali by insinuating she would have to sell herself to us. That was the limit of my patience.