Chapter Text
16
YVESWICH GENERAL HOSPITAL
YVESWICH, STATE OF KER
When she came back out a few minutes later, he was standing in the exact same spot—right in front of the door, his muscled arms crossed over his broad chest, looking for all the world like a bouncer ready to throw any threat through the wall. Gods, was he a menace.
“Better?” he asked her. She nodded.
He uncrossed his arms, the action drawing her attention to the item he clutched in his hand.
“Is that a key card?”
He motioned toward the healthcare supply room; the locked door marked with a sign strictly prohibiting public access.
Loren winced. “Did you steal a key card?” She half-whispered, half-shouted.
“Tell me something, sweetheart.” His voice was a low purr. He was walking next to her, his height towering over as he leaned to reach her ear. “What about me strikes you as someone who abides by the law?”
“Not a thing,” she admitted, containing a scoff.
“Exactly.” He swiped the card. The security system beeped, the red light turning green. Darien pushed the door open, holding it for her as she walked in. He followed closely behind her, his presence so charged she felt her skin prickle as if the air were electric with a thunderstorm.
The lights buzzed awake in rows as the sensors picked up on their presence. The place was cold and sterile, most of the furnishing made of metal. It was a good thing a simple key card was the only layer of security they had to get through; without Tanner Atlas and his impressive hacking skills, they would’ve been in a pickle.
Darien sauntered through the room as if he owned it. “Have a seat.” His bass voice echoed. When he saw her glancing around in search of a chair that didn’t exist, he clarified, “On the table.”
She planted her palms on the cold surface and hopped up as Darien began sifting through drawers and cupboards, grabbing everything he needed.
Recent events seemed to be shoving her dangerously close to hysterics, because she nearly busted out laughing when he put on a pair of blue nitrile gloves over the ones she knew he couldn’t remove. His hands were so big, they barely fit.
He must have sensed her amusement, because he looked over his shoulder at her.
“It’s the best I can do,” he said, the second glove snapping against his wrist. At least one of them maintained enough sanity to have cleanliness on the mind. That bodysuit of his was mucked up with so much dirt and gore, she shuddered at the thought of what she’d see crawling under a microscope.
She swung her feet and glanced around the room as he prepared everything, feeling safer than she had all day, simply from being in the same vicinity as him.
Darien rounded the table, standing behind her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to the edge of the table and closer to him.
“This is going to sting,” he warned as he worked on parting her tangled hair into two sections that draped over her shoulders. The strands tugged on the blisters and scabs, opening a few of them up.
She tensed, containing a hiss, and Darien noticed it.
“Let me know if I hurt you, okay?”
Loren nodded, shoulders tense as she took a deep breath.
She flattened her hands against the tabletop and braced for more pain.
“Are there any painkillers in here?” By the looks of the neatly stocked shelves and cupboards, this place had to be loaded with them.
“Shit, that reminds me,” he muttered, still working on the matted strands. Every movement was exceptionally careful, especially for someone as dangerous as him. “I was on my way to the nurse’s station when this absolutely beautiful blonde decided to bump into me and jumbled my thoughts.” A smile started to peak through her pained features at the same time as a blush tinged her cheeks. “She distracted me so badly, I completely forgot what I was doing.”
“She sounds pretty great,” she replied, cheering her tone.
It was so empty and quiet in the room, the conversation felt more intimate than it actually was.
Darien drew in a hiss through his teeth, his focus returning to her back. “Fuck me, Loren, did your suit melt off or something?”
Indeed, her back was exposed from shoulder blades to waist.
She dropped her shoulders. An answer was not even required.
“Why were you going to the nurse’s station?” she asked him instead.
It took him a moment to respond, as if he were realizing he’d already said too much. Metal clinked as he began opening tubes and bottles and setting out tools. Liquid glugged, and it took all her strength not to cry out as he touched something wet to her back and began cleaning her wounds.
Finally, he admitted, “Painkillers.”
Her brow furrowed. “Painkillers? Who for? Yourself?” She turned her head to the side, trying to peer at his expression. “Darien? Did you hurt yourself?” Was that the reason he and Roman were here? When he still didn’t answer, she tried to turn around and look at him—
“Face forward,” he said, stilling her with a hand gripping her waist, his fingers wrapping around her left side. Her stomach did a backflip—but swiftly dropped through her feet when he confessed, “I broke my hand again.”
Panic burned through her body like acid. Only then did she realize that he was mostly using his left hand. Even when he’d pinned Malakai against the wall, it wasn’t his right hand he’d used.
“How did you break it?” she persisted, clinging to the feel of the heat lingering on her side fromhis touch. Even with two pairs of gloves and her bodysuit separating his skin from hers, it’d felt amazing to be touched by him.
Darien hesitated for a beat before saying, “I used it too much.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“You used it too much,” she repeated with a quiet scoff. She swallowed the dryness in her mouth, his lie forcing her to forget how happy she was to see him and instead remember how hurt she’d felt last night, when they’d gotten into that argument, when she’d discovered the horrible truth he’d kept from her. “I’m going to have trouble trusting you again if you keep lying, Darien. You already didn’t tell me about your bargain—”
“I got into a fight with Donovan, and he broke it.”
“Donovan?” she spluttered. “He… broke your hand?” The bruises she’d noticed on Darien’s face… Gods, Don had done that to him—
The ripping of gauze and tape was the only sound for several long seconds, apart from the frantic drumming of her heartbeat.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I know he frightens you,” Darien said. “And because I’m the fighter. I’m supposed to be able to protect you.” Of course he would find a way to shift blame onto himself. A beat of silence as he carefully spread a thin layer of antibiotic ointment across the blistered flesh, his touch soothing. “And I don’t know if I’d be able to protect you from him, if he ever decided to target you.” He flattened the first strip of gauze across her back, followed by several more. They clung to her like garments with static cling, and he taped them down on unbroken skin. “But I’d die trying.”
Several moments of silence went by as he finished tending to her.
I don’t want you to die, she thought. Her own voice sounding weak and heartbroken in her head.
Instead, she whispered into the quiet room, “I don’t want you to lie to me anymore.”
She didn’t need to be a hellseher to sense the sudden tension rolling off him. Darien’s movements took a halt.
“I don’t lie to you.”
“Withholding the truth when it’s something that important is just as bad.” She hated how her words trembled on their way out.
As much as she trusted Darien, a part of her was afraid there was more he was keeping from her. Maybe not anything that could hurt her, but something that could hurt him—another truth as bad as his bargain.
“So we’re back to this?” Darien said, his voice hard. He taped the last piece of gauze down and began cleaning up.
“We never got the chance to finish. We never go the chance to really talk.” She peered over her shoulder at him as he moved about, putting things back in their rightful places. “I said things—Things I didn’t mean to…” She admitted. “And you stomped out.”
He set the stuff back in its place and turned to face her, removing the gloves and dumping them and the blood-stained gauze into a nearby trash bin.
He stood there, watching her. She could hear the words that were replaying in Darien’s head; the words she had said in the heat of the moment. She could tell by the way he was looking at her, angry and hurt at the same time.
I hate you.
“You have all the right to be upset,” Darien began.
“Yes, I do,” she agreed. “But this is not what it is about. I’m…” Her voice cracked with the next words. Her eyes stung with unshed tears. “I don’t want you to die, Darien. Not for me. Not for—”
He cut her off by striding back to her, his hands going to her cheeks, cradling her face with a tenderness that always disarmed her.
“Same goes for me. I don’t want you to die. And when the Widow told me, I didn’t know what I could do to—” He stopped himself short, dropping his gaze, letting out a long, heavy exhale.
Loren’s hands wrapped around his wrists, her head tilting slightly to the side, trying to find his blue eyes.
“Why did you do it?” She whispered. It was not a question she expected an answer to. It was more like a plea, a statement for him to understand the pain caused by a bargain she hadn’t known anything about for weeks.
He dropped his hands from her face. Loren released his wrists, immediately missing the warmth and safety provided whenever they were connected physically, even by the touch of her fingertips on his covered skin.
“You know why.” He stared at her, the intensity of his dark, piercing gaze too much to bear.
She blinked away the tears.
“I know how you feel about me, but that’s not enough to—”
“It is for me, Loren. I told you: I was in the dark before you came along. And I refuse to go back after you’re gone, whenever that is.”
“I’m the reason why you’re destroying yourself, then. The reason why you can’t even have a proper night’s sleep. The reason why you’re constantly worried, the reason why—”
Darien opened his mouth to retaliate, but Loren raised a hand and continued.
“The reason why you started taking Venom. The reason why you’re addicted to it now.”
At the mention of it, Darien stiffened, his shoulders tensing again.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice cracking again, “don’t think I don’t know about that. Ivy told me.”
His left hand curled into a fist. “I’m going to get off it—”
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be using.”
“Loren, it was my choice. Don’t you even dare blame yourself for this, or anything else, for that matter. I’m a fucking adult. I make my own choices. And all this thinking about me destroying myself because of you…” he chuckled and shook his head before turning his features into hard ones. “Get that out of your head, right now,” he touched his temple repeatedly with a gloved finger. “You’re the reason why I wake up every morning and don’t feel completely miserable. And about Venom, I’ll get off it, I swear. That’s just a minor problem right now, but I’ll solve it. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Don’t make it be for me this time,” she blurted, hating herself when she saw him wince again. But she stayed on her course of action and whispered, “Make it be for you.”
He stared at her, his mouth a firm line. She stared back, willing the tears not to fall.
“Nice little homecoming we’ve got going on, hey?” he said with a pained scoff. “We’ve barelybeen together for thirty minutes, I’m about to have a Surge, and look at you—you’re about to start crying.”
She looked away from him, staring down at her filthy boots. She needed to do better forherself, too. Better for him, to help him.
But more importantly, she had to find a way to change the direction things were going before it became irreversible.
Taking a deep breath, she straightened and looked him in the eye.
“There has to be a way to break it. Or reverse it.”
Darien frowned for a few seconds before he understood what she was talking about. Back to the bargain.
“I don’t want to reverse it.”
“Darien, I refuse to let—!”
“Loren,” he said, firm voice but also gentle. Enough to make her fall silent, her jaw clenched, hands gripping the table until her knuckles turned white. “Look,” he dropped his head after a second, as if searching for the right words. “We’ll talk about this. I promise. But this isn’t the time or place. If you give me the chance, we’ll talk as soon as we’re back in Angelthene, when we’re safe and we have real privacy. Okay?”
She didn’t answer right away. The seconds that passed in between she spent them looking into his eyes, trying to find a spark of hope in them. But there was… only love. Hopeless, aching love.
She nodded, then. A small gesture that felt heavier than it should have. She was heartbroken. And worse, she knew he was, too.
He gave her a moment, then leaned in, lowering his head as his fingers brushed her chin.
“Hey,” he whispered, so sweet it could have given her butterflies despite the destruction raging outside.
He tilted her face up, their foreheads almost touching. His fingers traced the line of her jaw, then slid back to cradle her face.
She couldn’t hold back anymore. She leaned in and kissed him, slow and purposeful at first, then desperate, letting the need and fear and everything else crash through her.
Darien kissed her back, hands cupping her face, then sliding to the back of her head. He tilted it gently, deepening the kiss, savoring her, reclaiming what he thought he’d lost in the darkness of those tunnels.
Loren’s hand flattened against his chest, pressing hard, trying to grip the fabric of his suit to keep him close. Her other arm wrapped around his side, anchoring herself to him.
And when it was over, a sobbed escaped her mouth, and her arms went around his neck, her face sinking in the crook of his neck.
He was careful when he hugged her, his hand holding her head against his shoulder, his other arm wrapping around her lower back, below the line of her injuries.
He held her. They held each other. For a minute. Maybe two. Maybe more.
He brushed his stubbled chin against her hair, leaving a ghost of a kiss near her ear.
“Are you ready to get out of here?” Darien asked, voice low and rough, edged but still soft with her.
She lifted her head and she saw that his eyes had gone fully black, like pools of ink under the lights.
Another Surge. And with that newly broken hand of his, he couldn’t even use fighting as an outlet. Not that it was an option right now, given everything that was going on.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Just one more thing,” he added, his thumb trailing down her cheek. Even with the Surge burning in his eyes and the tension of their argument still hanging between them, he managed to speak softly to her. “With all this shit going on outside,” He nodded toward the door—at the city crumbling beyond these walls. “I want you with me at all times. You go where I go. Understand?”
She nodded.
“I won’t leave your side.”
With a kiss to her forehead, he offered his hand. She took it, slid off the table, and together they stepped outside.