9. Jasmine

9

JASMINE

I t wasn't working, Jasmine realized with a sickening lurch of dread.

She felt her heart sink, a leaden weight settling in her chest as she watched the scene unfold. She still hadn't looked directly at the prince, afraid of what she would see, but the tense silence and Bridget's pinched expression spoke loud and clear.

Was he dead?

Was his body so depleted that it had crossed the point of no return and couldn't pull itself out of stasis?

Bridget was being very careful. She wasn't filling the stasis chamber with water like Jasmine had imagined she would, turning it into a bathtub. Instead, she was dripping it over the prince, and she wasn't done even with the first bottle Julian had handed her.

When the doctor reached for the second water bottle, Jasmine bit her lower lip to refrain from telling her it wouldn't work like that. She needed to fill the thing so it would cover the prince, leaving only his nose exposed so he could breathe.

But what did she know?

Jasmine had no medical training and knew next to nothing about immortals, gods, or the Kra-ell. Their bodies probably worked very differently from humans, and Bridget had a lot of experience getting people out of stasis.

Closing her eyes for a long moment, Jasmine gave herself another pep talk about not being a chicken, and not wanting to draw attention to herself, she took in a slow, shallow breath.

She turned her head down so that when she opened her eyes, they would be trained straight on the prince, caught her lower lip between her teeth to stop herself from uttering any sound, and started counting.

One, two, three …

She opened her eyes, and a sob lodged in her throat.

Just as Julian had warned her, the prince was in a horrible state, but he didn't look like a zombie, ghost, or corpse.

Well, he did look a little like a corpse, but mostly, he looked like a victim of starvation, and Jasmine hoped that he hadn't been aware of any of it and hadn't suffered.

What surprised her the most was that his clothing was intact. She'd expected something like what she'd seen on mummies—deteriorating scraps of robing or nothing except a loincloth. Instead, the prince was wearing a uniform of some sort, and even though it had probably been form-fitting when he had entered the stasis chamber, it was now loose around his emaciated body, the dark gray fabric clinging to his protruding ribs.

How had it survived for seven thousand years?

If the Kra-ell had survived intact in their chambers, it shouldn't surprise her that their clothing also had. She hadn't looked into the other stasis chambers because they had been transported from the pod to the catacombs locked, but it made sense. The only reason the twins' bodies were in such a horrid state was that they had consumed themselves to keep alive.

When Bridget reached the prince's face, she dripped a few drops on his forehead, eyelids, lips, and cheeks and then repeated the process with infinite patience and care.

Jasmine longed to spread the moisture with her fingers, to see the prince's skin turn pink, but she wouldn't have done that even if she wasn't such a coward. His skin was so fragile that it would probably disintegrate when touched, which was why Bridget was going so slowly.

But wasn't he supposed to be showing some signs of life already?

Jasmine was about to shift her gaze to Kian and check his expression to see if he was worried when a barely-there twitch of the prince's eyelids froze her in place.

She sucked in a breath, and so did everyone else, which meant that she hadn't imagined it.

And there it was again. A flicker of movement, so subtle and fleeting that it could have easily been missed if she wasn't so focused on the prince's face.

A twitch of an eyelid, a flutter of lashes against a sunken cheek.

And then, with a hoarse, rasping gasp, the prince's eyes opened, a sliver of shocking blue amidst the ruin of his face.

For a long moment, he just stared, his gaze unfocused and glassy as he blinked once, twice, but then the haze seemed to clear, and awareness shone from those incredible eyes as he looked straight at her, his gaze locking on to hers with an intensity that stole her breath away.

It was just as she had dreamt it. Hers was the first face he saw when he opened his eyes.

A rush of emotion washed over Jasmine, a tidal wave of joy, relief, and awe at the sight of him alive and awake. It was a miracle, a gift from the Mother of All Life.

The prince's lips parted, a soft, rasping sound escaping his throat as he tried to speak, but the effort was too much, his weakened body failing him, and his eyes fluttered closed once more.

"He's alive," Julian murmured.

"Of course, he is," Bridget said.

"Shouldn't we put an IV in him and feed him intravenously?" Julian asked.

She shook her head. "We don't know if he is more god than Kra-ell or the other way around. He might need blood to survive."

Blood?

Ella hadn't mentioned anything about blood.

Were the Kra-ell vampires?