Page 80 of Crave Me

The action made her wince, her hand coming up to touch her sternum.

“Oh,” she breathed, massaging her breastbone. “I don’t…” She frowned. “I don’t remember anything.”

“What’s the last thing you do remember?” I asked, walking slowly toward her in the shower.

She shook her head. “Everything… everything feels fuzzy. But I think…” She touched her lips. “Was there orange juice?”

I squatted before her, my hands on her knees, and nodded. “I spiked your orange juice today. I wanted to make sure you ate something.” Because she kept skipping meals. And while I understood that she didn’tneedfood, some instinctual part of me wanted her to eat anyway.

She lifted her hands to rest them over mine, her fingertips cooler than they should be. But the color of her skin was right, her golden hue healthy and glowing.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her softly.

She shook her head again. “Confused.” Her eyes searched my face. “What happened?”

“Cara said you were tracking your magic when someone shot you.” I looked at her sternum. “There.”

“Shot by what?” she asked. “Something large?”

“No. A bullet.”

She stilled. “A bullet? As in… only one?”

“Yes.”

“But that… that shouldn’t…”

“That shouldn’t have been able to almost kill you?” I suggested, finishing the sentence for her. “Yes, I agree. But I had to use stardust to bring you back.”

“Stardust?” she repeated, her nose scrunching. “But how did you…?” She trailed off on a shiver, her skin cooling even more against my skin.

Her body was clearly still healing and reallocating energy as needed.

“I think your magic helped me,” I admitted, frowning. “It… it sort of appeared and then pooled into a pile of dust in my hand.” I squeezed her thighs. “So I wished for you to heal.”

She blinked at me. “You had to wish for me to heal?”

“Yes. You were bleeding out.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I would normally agree, but it’s what happened,” I told her, standing again. “Let’s finish this conversation in the bath. It’ll help keep you warm.” And her fingertips were beginning to feel like ice.

Rather than help her stand, I bent and scooped her up off the bench. She didn’t complain, just stared at me as I carried her over to the stairs that led to the whirling pool of warm water. The jets had turned on when the water had shut off.

Nyx still felt utterly weightless in my arms, her size and stature so much clearer to me now that I’d seen her in such a fragile state.

She’d always been smaller than me; I just hadn’t realized how much smaller until today.

However, I had no doubt she could handle my power.

So long as she wasn’t shot, anyway.

“Paxton thinks it might have been an enchanted bullet,” I told her as I sat on one of the benches with her in my lap. “They’re looking for the fragments to confirm.”

“An enchanted bullet,” she echoed, still studying me. “One that kept me from healing?”

I nodded. “That’s our best guess at the moment.”