The Darkest Touch

Then...nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

KEELEY SCREAMED SO loudly even immortal eardrums probably burst. She flashed to Torin’s side. She wasn’t wearing gloves, but she pressed her fingers into his neck anyway. Skin-to-skin. At first, there was nothing. No beat to meet her. But then she felt it. A soft thump.

Too soft.

His damaged heart shuddered, his blood pouring out of his wound. The spear was helping to stem some of the flow, but if it was poisoned as Lucifer had said—and judging by Torin’s reaction, she was sure it was—it had to come out.

So, she jerked it out and tossed it aside.

“What can I do?”

Galen! She had forgotten he was here. “Your shirt!”

He pulled the material over his head and handed it to her. She pressed against Torin’s chest.

He didn’t even moan.

She looked to Hades, desperate. “What poison would Lucifer have used?”

Silent, he studied his cuticles.

“Hades, please. I’ll do anything you want. Just help me heal him.”

The dark lord faced her then and nodded. “It shall be just as you said. Anything I want.”

A second later, both Hades and Torin dematerialized.

Keeley pushed to shaky legs, and it was a struggle because guilt pressed so heavily against her shoulders. Had it not been for her, Hades would not have locked Torin away and Lucifer wouldn’t have been able to spear him. All my fault.

Was this the guilt Torin had been forced to live with during their association? No wonder he’d left her.

I have to forgive him, clear his ledger. For everything. Because I need him to forgive me, to clear my ledger.

She knew she could not have one without the other.

As she stood there, wondering if he would live or die, the hurt, pain, rejection, bitterness and anger she’d been harboring all this time—even in the face of his beautiful pleas—drained from her. Love for him filled her up.

“Keeley,” Galen said, drawing her gaze. His expression was agonized. “What else can I do?”

“Tell the other Lords what’s happened, that Torin will be returned just as soon as he’s well.” If he didn’t recover... She cleared her throat to dislodge the lump growing there. At Galen’s uneasy expression, she said, “Tell them the Red Queen sent you and that she’ll be very displeased if you’re harmed.”

He nodded, and she flashed him to the fortress.

Then she flashed to Hades. He’d taken Torin to a laboratory of sorts. Cauldrons boiled over and steamed, shelves were littered with vials of things she couldn’t identify, and overgrown shrubbery actually crawled up the walls—using legs.

Torin was strapped to a table, his mouth held open by a metal hook. Beside him, an older male with a humped back mixed different liquids together. She rushed to her warrior’s side, clutched his hands in hers.

The other man glowered at her. “I’m Hey You. This be my area. Who you be? What do you here?”

“I am the Red Queen, and I go wherever I desire.”

“It’s true.” Hades appeared at her side. “She does.” He removed the hook from Torin’s mouth—not a hook, after all, but a tube that had gone straight into his stomach.

Hey You limped over and, while Hades held Torin’s mouth open, poured the concoction he’d created down the warrior’s throat.

She watched Torin, waiting for a reaction. His skin remained pale, almost blue. His eyes closed. His form still. The wound in his chest, still open and leaking. “How long does it take to work?”

“All night,” Hey You said, now limping away.

She’d lived so long, time meant little to her, but an entire night suddenly seemed like an eternity.

She glanced at Hades, who was watching her intently. “You touched him. Skin-to-skin.”

“Anyone can, as long as they’re immune.”

“You are immune?”

A nod. “For a while.”

“What do you mean, for a while?”

“I ingested his blood.”

“His blood? His infected blood?”

Hades reached out, caressed her cheek, and because she owed him whatever he wanted, she had to stand there and tolerate it. But her expression must have reflected her dislike, because he frowned, dropped his hand.

“If he shares his blood with you,” Hades said, “you won’t sicken when he touches you. At least for a little while. Just long enough for his blood to travel through your veins. Takes about a day, maybe two, then you’ll need another dose.”

“But...you can’t be right. He’s shared his blood with me before, and still I sickened.”

Frown deepening, Hades pricked the end of one of Torin’s fingers and held it out to her.

She sucked the finger, and the blood, into her mouth, willing to try anything, however far-fetched. As an immortal, this type of thing wasn’t foreign to her.

“When did he share his blood before this?” Hades asked. “Why?”

“The last time we were here, before I contracted the wasting sickness.”

“Ah. The blood would have worked if you hadn’t been weakened already by the removal of your brimstone scars.”

“But my power returns with the removal of the scars.”

“Power, yes, because it’s of a spiritual nature. But your body had just been cut up to a large degree and drained. Even Torin has trouble fighting off the demon’s illnesses when he’s been physically injured.”