Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Deacon

T he peal of Sarah’s scream enraged me as she fell to the floor. I was on my knees next to her without a second thought. “Are you hurt?”

She started to hyperventilate. “Jac—he’s—oh god!”

I shook her by her shoulders. “ Are you hurt ?” I demanded, my heart slamming against my ribcage at the thought of anything happening to her.

She shook her head, her panic filled eyes on Jac. “No, I’m fine, but Jac—”

I shouted, “Get the door,” before I hoisted Jac up in my arms.

His eyes were lifeless, and his sheen was gone. Gram held the door open for us. I muttered to Jac, “Stay with me,” and ran onto Sovereign . “Ode!” I yelled for the doctor.

But the infirmary was empty. I laid Jac onto the examination table and Sarah ran in, as I rifled through Ode’s equipment on the hunt for anything to save my best friend.

Tears filled her eyes. “What do we do?”

“Go get Wave!” I ordered. “She should be on Allegiant !”

Father’s voice shouted outside for Ode, but it was Treg who came in. “Ode went into town for supplies.” Then he saw Jac’s prone body on the table, along with the bone knife still protruding from his chest. “Hells, who did this?”

“Predict, she stabbed him. I’m afraid to remove the—”

Treg pulled the bone knife out and a spurt of blood followed it.

“The fuck!” I shouted at him.

Treg’s eyes grew round with horror. “I don’t know—I panicked—I don’t know Ladrian anatomy—hells!”

Blood poured from Jac’s chest and onto the floor.

“Put pressure on the wound,” I said as I hunted for anything that could help stave off the flow of Jac’s life source.

I was relieved to see Sarah return with Wave, but as soon as the historian saw his blood, she fainted.

I told Sarah, “Help my father find Ode!”

She whirled back around and almost ran into the doctor on her way out of the infirmary.

Ode came barging in and yelled, “Out of the way, Treg!” as she pushed past him and replaced his gelatinous hands with her own to maintain pressure on the wound. Jac’s chest made a sucking sound during the exchange, as he breathed his own blood.

“Deacon, you stay, everyone else, out !” Ode ordered.

But Sarah wanted to stay. I saw desperation and worry in her eyes. Instead, she and Treg dragged Wave’s unconscious body from the doorway, allowing it to close.

I turned to Ode, my jaw clenched as I tried to maintain my own composure. “How can I help?”

“Keep pressure here,” she said, indicating where her own hands were. “I have a lot of work to do to save Jac.”

I held my hands exactly where hers had been and the seconds ticked by like days. My hands were covered in his blood up to my wrists. “If you die on me, I am never talking to you again.”

In response, Jac coughed blood before his body went completely slack. I felt no heartbeat and his blood stopped pouring.

“Ode!” I shouted in a panic.

“There is no need to yell, Deacon.” She turned around with a jet injector and pressed it to Jac’s temple. “I am right here, and my infirmary is not that big. All it will do is rattle me, and I am rattled enough right now.”

I nodded in understanding, then I felt a heartbeat beneath my hand again and the blood flowed freely once more. A good sign and a bad one. “How do we stop the bleeding?”

“That depends. Who stabbed him?”

“Predict. She meant to stab Sarah. I don’t know what’s going on, but why does that matter?”

Ode frowned as she searched her cabinets. “Because if it was some street fight, I wouldn’t be worried about poison on the blade. But conduits are educated and if we stop his body from purging a poison, that might be what kills him.”

“Fuck!” I roared.

“I wish we had one of his relatives on board—better chance for a blood match—"

“Take mine,” I insisted.

“We don’t know if—”

“We do,” I nodded. “In the war, we had to know our matches. We’re both ospine-A-R. Do it.”

“Not until we know if he was poisoned.” She grabbed another device I didn’t know or recognize and said, “Move your hands.”

Reluctantly, I did, and she plunged it into his stab wound. Lights flashed on the readout, reflecting in my best friend’s blood. I couldn’t believe I could lose him like that—murdered by a conduit.

Not only that—Predict had been my family’s trusted advisor for years. Why did she try to attack Sarah? How did Jac know she was going to? I needed answers. Maybe Gram knows something. As soon as I thought that, I wanted to ask him, but I would not leave Jac’s side. Not ever. Not until I knew he was going to be okay. He had to be okay.

Over the hours Ode and I worked to save his life, one question rang loudest of all in my mind: Why did he knock Sarah aside and take the knife in her place? It went beyond loyalty or the heat of the moment. Jac was a fierce fighter—it made no sense for him to be taken down by a conduit like Predict.

It was sloppy of him, and Jac is never sloppy. He had to have been distracted. But what had taken him off his guard?

It felt like weeks had passed since Ode had begun her work. By the time she had finally sewn him up and connected us with her tubing so we could transfuse my blood, I started to have hope he might make it.

Exhaustion started to hit harder than I had expected. After staying awake for so many hours to get Sarah acclimated and set my plan in motion, I had been awake for far too long. Before Jac had burst into my father’s home, I was almost asleep from the droning conversation between my father and Silence.

I fell asleep at Jac’s side, still tubed to him.

“You still snore like a dreck,” a deep voice rasped.

I blinked and looked around the room, unsure how long I had been out. Next to me, Jac sleepily smirked. “Hey you.”

“Hey.” Relief flowed through me, which was quicky replaced with a spurt of anger. “The fuck, Jac?”

He laughed, then held his chest like it hurt to laugh. “Ooo, that sucks.”

“Take it easy. I’ll call for Ode—”

“No, wait,” he objected before I could summon the doctor, still sounding and looking very weak. “Just wait a minute.”

“What is it?” I asked.

He winced. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head in confusion. “What could you possibly have to be sorry for, Jac?” He’d saved Sarah’s life and had almost lost his own.

“I should have been faster with Predict. Sarah’s okay, right?”

I nodded. “She is fine. You saved her.”

He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Why were you there at all?” I asked. “How did you know what Predict was up to? Why did you save Sarah? You are faster than some conduit—so how did she get the upper hand? I’m confused.”

Jac cleared his throat. “Gram said the conduits—the ones Justice murdered—they’ve gone rogue, formed a gang. They’re trying to run Halla and get back their former power.”

“Rogue conduits?”

He nodded but stilled quickly after he winced. “Yeah. They built a temple and murdered all the old conduits, the ones who had died before them.”

“Why would they—”

“Power,” he coughed, “I’ve always told you, people will do stupid shit for power. You’ve never believed me.”

I frowned. “I believe you, Jac. I just don’t think power is as big of a deal as you think it is.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “People kill for power. You saw it with the Bateens and Justice specifically. How many of your friends and family will have to die, before you understand that people,” he coughed harder, “without power will do anything to get it and people with it will do anything to get more? You have just enough power to be satisfied, but most people are not like you!”

He hacked, so I quickly got him water with herbs.

Maybe he’s right , I thought as he drank. When he was breathing normally again, I asked, “What does any of this have to do with Sarah?”

“Some conduit myth is about a special conduit who is coming to save Halla. They’re afraid of this special conduit, Deacon. They’re going to want to kill Sarah, if they figure out that she’s one, too.”

“Special how?”

“I don’t know. But Sarah is a human and a conduit, and that make her pretty damned special to me.”

A sinking sensation took me over. “That’s why you barged into my father’s house? You knew Predict would kill her for being the special conduit?”

“After I put two and two together, yeah. It took me an embarrassingly long time to do that, though, and that’s why I wasn’t there faster. I should have been faster,” he grimaced and balled his fists.

“Ode says you’re going to be alright, Jac. Calm down—”

“Calm down?” he nearly yelled. “Sarah almost died!”

“ That’s what you’re mad about? Not the fact that you got stabbed?”

He scoffed and looked away.

“Jac, what is it about Sarah?” I narrowed my gaze on him. “Why did you take the knife meant for her?”

He sighed and said, “You might as well finish what Predict started.”

I shook my head in confusion. “What? Why?”

He looked away. “Because I don’t want you to hate me when I tell you the truth.”

“I never could.”

“Something tells me you might find a way,” he said sardonically. Then, he looked me in the eye once again. “I care for Sarah.”

“Of course, she’s a wonderful person.”

“No,” he insisted, and took my hand in his, staring into my eyes. “I care for Sarah. In a way that I shouldn’t.”

His truth hit me hard, making me sit down again. How could I blame him for caring about her, since I’d sent him to look after her on Earth? At first, I didn’t know what to say and had no thoughts. But a moment later, I had all the thoughts at once.

I organized them into a response and exhaled a deep breath. “After you have healed and the dust of Halla has settled, I will make an official offer of antagony, so we can settle this like the respectable Ladrians we are.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I am not lying.”

“I’m not respectable.”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Whatever you are, I respect you, Jac. We will duel, and whoever comes out the winner can have Sarah.”

He shook his head. “I think she would object to such an antagony.”

“I did not mean it as though she was a prize to be won. I only meant, whoever is left can pursue her.”

“She would have hated to hear you say that about her, but that’s not how I meant it,” Jac said. “What I mean is, she wouldn’t want either of us to die in a combat for her. She’s not that kind of person. She would hate the winner for that.”

I rubbed my fingers across my forehead. “Then, how do we move forward?”

Cautiously, Jac asked, “What if we were to share her?”

My frown furrowed painfully into my face. “How…how would that work, exactly?”

“I’m not sure. It is pointless to fight each other, leaving one of us dead and the other one with her disdain for eternity, when we could share her instead.” His shoulder lifted in a slight shrug. “I think…all three of us could be happy. If I’m being honest with you…I had the time of my life with her during the pomp and my only regret is that it doesn’t happen every day.”

I sat back in my chair and thought about the pomp. It had been great fun to share her then. Why wouldn’t it be fun to share her going forward? “ You don’t think the singular nature of the pomp added something to your fun with her?” I asked Jac.

“That had nothing to do with any of it. It was being with Sarah and sharing her with you — not Kapok —that I enjoyed. I’ve thought about it every second since it happened. I know what I want, Deacon.”

The door opened and Ode walked in, interrupting our interesting conversation. “You were supposed to call me when the patient woke up.”

“He distracted me,” I muttered, his unconventional suggestion still tumbling through my brain.

She smirked and removed our connecting tubing, before examining Jac. “How are you feeling?”

“Like someone stabbed me in the heart.”

“That’s because someone did.” She used another jet injector, this time on his chest. I watched as his body reknitted that hole so it was gone. “But your wounds are healing well and there was no poison on the bone knife. I expect you to be on your feet within the hour or less. You’ll be sore for a few days, though, so no lifting weights, no running around and taking bone knives to the heart.”

Jac chuckled, then winced. “Thank you, Ode.”

She shook her head then pointed to me. “Thank Deacon. He’s the one who got you here, got you help, and gave you his blood to save you. He even cleaned you up.”

Jac smiled and shifted his gaze to mine. “You did all that?”

“Had nothing better to do,” I teased.

She rolled her eyes and gave me a pointed look. “You two should stop hanging around each other so much. You’re starting to sound like Jac.”

“There are much worse things in the world, Ode,” I said. “Almost had one of them today.”

She nodded and smiled. “Rest, Jac. I’ll check on you in a while.” She left us alone again, but this time, she left the door open.

I gave him an amused grin. “Must think you’re on the mend, if she’s leaving the door open for people to see you.”

He smirked. “Yeah. If I was gonna die, she wouldn’t let anyone see her failure.”

I nodded in agreement, then sobered, wanting to revisit our interrupted discussion. “Were you serious about sharing Sarah? Or was that the massive blood loss talking?”

“I was serious. And let’s face it, if I’m healed, I would totally kick your ass in an antagony, so you should take me up on the offer.”

I laughed hard. “Is that right?”

He grinned and shrugged, before he winced again. “That shot Ode gave me is working, but now my wound itches when I move.”

“She’s a great doctor. You are lucky to have her.”

“And I’m lucky to have you , Deacon. Thank you for saving my life.”

“Of course.” I paused for a moment, then added, “And thank you for saving Sarah’s.”

“Always.” He sighed. “Is Predict dead?”

“She has been born to the ether, yes,” I assured him of her fate. “My father did it.”

“Good. She needs to begin again.”

“Agreed.” As we quietly sat there, I thought about his proposal some more. “Do you believe we could make this work? The three of us?”

“It used to be done all the time in the old days.”

“I know, but—”

“So, why couldn’t we?” Jac said, before I could come up with any feasible argument. “It’s not like you and I haven’t been…intimate.”

My skin prickled pleasantly at the thoughts of times gone past. “You mean, when you and I shared furs?”

He smirked too arrogantly, and the heated look in his eyes made my body hum. “It’s been a long time, I know, but so much of it came back into focus during the pomp. The way we used to be, the things you and I did…it was…it meant a lot to me, Deacon.”

“To me, as well,” I admitted truthfully. “But we aren’t boys anymore. We don’t, I mean, we haven’t…in so long.”

Jac carefully sat up to face me, his legs draped over the side of the exam table. There was perverse misconduct in his eyes when they met mine. “How long has it been since you were with a man?”

I laughed and dodged his gaze. “A long time. You?”

“Probably not as long as you,” Jac openly shared. “And he definitely wasn’t as long as you.”

I laughed again, but felt embarrassed or proud, I wasn’t sure which. I stood between his legs and stared into his ghost. “You have always been a troublemaker, Jacaranda Cozz.”

“Want some trouble?” I had rarely ever seen Jac nervous, but I saw it then. He reached out for the side of my face. “I’d be more than happy to give it to you.”

I leaned into his palm as he pulled me close to his mouth. He bit my bottom lip as Ladrians do, before I turned it into a hot, deep kiss, like the humans do.