13. Leia

Chapter 13

Nic rested over me, still inside me, bearing his weight on his forearms, and I grinned up at him before opening my mouth to tell him I loved him.

But the sound that emerged wasn't a litany of love. Instead, I screamed as pain ripped through me suddenly, searing me with molten heat and tearing through the fibers of my muscles.

Nic jerked back, withdrawing from me, his eyes wide, face tense. "Leia?"

I couldn't answer him. I thrashed under another intense wave of pain, curling my hands into tight fists as I grasped the sheets below me. I screamed again, the sound inhuman. This was even worse than the pain when Sebastian had bitten me.

"Leia, Leia, it's the venom. It's all right. You'll be all right." Nic's eyebrows were drawn down and pain flashed in his eyes. He touched my shoulder, and I screamed again.

He flinched and drew away before yanking his pants on and jogged to the door of his room.

"Baldwin," he called, and the volume of his shout was like a piledriver pounding my brain to mush. "Baldwin, tell Aimée I need her."

Leaving the door slightly open, he returned to me and reached for my hand then returned his hand to his side. "It's the venom," he said again, and I winced.

"Too loud," I ground out, and my own voice boomed around the room, seeming to amplify in the small space. "Too loud."

Nic knelt by the bed so he could look me in the eye, his hand touching my hair—the only part of me that didn't feel like it had caught fire.

I was burning from the inside out. "Dying," I croaked out, my tongue thick in my mouth, my gums cracking and bleeding.

But Nic shook his head, sadness still lingering in his eyes. "No, sweetheart, you're not dying. You're turning. It's the venom."

"Nic?" Aimée bustled into the room, and I shrieked at the noise. My scream rang through my head and I closed my eyes, trying not to lose myself as everything inside me seemed to fragment.

But I needed to know what they were doing. I just barely cracked my eyes open and peered through my lashes.

Nic grabbed his sister's arm and pulled her close, bending to whisper in her ear.

But I could still hear every fucking word he said. "She's turning, Aimée."

"Oh!" Aimée clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh, shit! You did it."

She grabbed Nic's hands and started jumping up and down, each thud against the floor like a bomb going off in my brain.

My fucking brain was going to be mush, Jell-O oozing out of my ears.

Aimée glanced at me and hissed an excited whisper at Nic. "You really did it? You have an eternal mate?"

Although his gaze was worried, he couldn't hide a small, satisfied smile. "Yes."

"Okay." Aimée looked at me again. "What can I do?"

Nic shook his head. "I don't know. But she's in so much pain, I don't know what to do."

"Book of Gray?"

"In the library." Nic jerked his head toward the door like Aimée wouldn't know where the library was, that he hadn't hidden it somewhere behind one of the doors in his room.

"I'll grab it." Aimée left the room and squealed all the way down the hallway. Then she raced back into the room, almost screeching to a stop as she halted from vampire speed, the pages of the Book of Gray ruffling as she flipped it open.

"Did you not read this part?" She looked at her brother accusingly, and I twisted on the bed as more pain wracked my body. "You need to help her. Look at her."

The whispers became more vehement.

"Well, what helped you? I don't know how this part goes or feels. I wasn't turned—I was born, remember?" Nic sounded urgent.

"What makes you think I remember my turning?"

Usually, I would have laughed at Aimée's snappy tone but everything hurt. There was no laughing. Only the tears that crept from the corners of my eyes.

"Orgasms?" Aimée glanced at the book.

"What the fuck, Aimée? Do you think Leia wants an orgasm right now?" Nic gestured at me, and I did nearly laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but my body almost ripped in two, and I screamed again instead.

Still, Aimée's whisper reached my ears. "That's what it fucking says in the fucking book, Nicky."

I groaned. Neither one of them was coming anywhere near me. Orgasms weren't a thing right now, as far as I was concerned. I was dying. And this was all Nic's fault, anyway. Kinda felt like orgasms got me here.

I burned like I was already on my way to Hell.

I squeezed my eyes closed and forced myself to recede in my head. I needed the screaming to stop. Who the hell was screaming again?

"She's quiet now, at least?" Aimée's questioning whisper permeated the fog in my head.

"Yeah." Concern radiated from Nic.

It vibrated in the air around me.

"But she's still in pain," he said. "I can feel it."

"You know what sometimes helps me with pain?" Something rustled, the sound piercing as Aimée shifted her position.

"No more fucking talk of orgasms, Aimée." Nic scrubbed his hand over his cheeks—the rasp of stubble gave it away.

I took mental stock of the room. The screaming had stopped, but I ached all over. Even my eyelids ached. I didn't want to move them. Was I still dying?

"A bath, Nicky. Every girl needs a bath when she's sore."

"I can draw Leia a bath." The fabric of Nic's pants crinkled as he stood, and his footsteps shushed across the thick carpet as he walked toward the bathroom.

The faucets squeaked a little when he turned them on. How did they bear this? All the noise, all the time. I opened my mouth to ask Aimée but only a hiss emerged from my dry throat.

"Nicky!" Aimée forgot herself and yelled her brother's name. "Nicky, I think she might be hungry as well."

"Really? Already?" I cracked an eye open as Nic popped his head around the bathroom door. "Isn't that a bit early?"

Aimée walked toward him and lowered her voice further but I could still hear them. My body seemed to drift. Waves of pain interspersed with bone-deep fatigue.

"I don't remember much about being turned, but I do remember intense hunger," Aimée said.

Hunger? My stomach didn't grumble, and I had no cravings…

Suddenly, Nic was at my side. "Would you like a bath, Leia? Aimée thinks it might help with the pain."

I opened my mouth, but even that movement hurt as my jaw ached and my skin seemed to stretch beyond what it was capable of.

As if he'd read something in my gaze, Nic bent and lifted me against him. My muscles all tightened in protest and a strange gurgle emerged from my throat.

"I've got you," Nic murmured. "I've got you."

"You think you can get her through this, Nicky?" Aimée's words sent horror spiraling through me. No one had mentioned any possibility of not getting through.

"Yes." Nic's reply brooked no argument. Like there was no other way.

I turned my face against him, inhaling his spicy scent like it was some sort of anesthetic as he walked carefully across his room.

He lowered me straight into the bath and I hissed as my skin touched the water. But as it lapped around me, and the scents of lavender and chamomile surrounded me, I began to relax.

"Any better?" Nic narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at me, like he was trying to gauge my pain levels.

"Nicky?" Aimée knocked on the door. "Can I get anything to help you?"

He didn't move from by my side, helping to hold me up in the water. It felt like if he let me go, I might submerge and never see the surface again.

"Uh, maybe blood?" Nic sounded uncertain so very rarely that it took me a while to recognize the tone.

"Any particular type?"

"O negative," he said without hesitation. "Purest blood, universal donor, most likely to be easy on her stomach, don't you think?"

If Aimée heard the question directed at her, she didn't reply. Perhaps she'd already left on her mission.

Blood. I turned the word over in my head. I'd never in my life thought blood would become my food. I didn't exactly believe it now, even. Blood was… Life. Not food. The idea used to nauseate me, but now I felt nothing.

Perhaps that was how vampires did it, drank so much blood. They simply didn't care.

Aimée knocked on the door again, and the sound pounded a little less loudly through my head. She entered the room brandishing Nic's favorite mug.

"Here you go, Nicky. I think I warmed it correctly." She shuddered delicately. "I don't know how you survive on this stuff."

He raised an eyebrow. "Yet I do." Then he lifted the mug to his lips and sipped. "This is great. Just right." He adjusted his hold on me so he could bring the mug to my lips. "Drink, Leia," he urged. "It should help."

The coppery tang of the blood stirred my interest, and for the first time, my stomach ached with emptiness rather than mere pain I couldn't identify.

"Ready?" Nic looked at me and I nodded.

Actually answering seemed too much work. I could barely function at all. Maybe the blood would help that.

He tilted the mug and I parted my lips, allowing the warm liquid to trickle into my mouth. It was thick and cloying, and I swallowed hard before it went slowly down my throat.

"There you go," Nic murmured. "You'll feel better soon."

Gradually, he encouraged me to take more but always the smallest of sips.

"Just go steady."

I relaxed into the gentle sound of his voice and against his strong hold. "I love you."

He tensed a little and surprise vibrated from him. "I love you, too." He nuzzled against my hair. "It's good that you're feeling better."

I smiled. Yeah, I was feeling better. The blood must have worked.

"Is blood the cure for all ills, then?" I turned to look at him and he grinned at me.

He began to reply but I didn't hear him because a noise like a freight train started in my ears and my stomach bubbled and roiled, and then Nic was covered in red. It poured from my mouth and dripped from his face and hair, and he started yelling but I couldn't hear him because the noise wouldn't stop.

Each of my muscles tightened and released, out of my control. The water in the bath splashed and frothed like someone was boiling it.

Nic's face blurred before me, but I was aware of him lifting me from the tub and laying me on the floor. The tiles were cool beneath my skin but still my body thrashed and moved without permission. My jaw tensed and my teeth pressed hard together. Strained and muffled noises emerged from me.

"Aimée! Help!" This time when Nic bellowed for his sister, I heard exactly what he said. "Leia's seizing—she's rejecting the change."

Then my eyes closed and I didn't hear anything else.

Trapped. I was trapped in a pain that had rushed back to claim my body, and it was worse. Everything burned. Maybe I was melting away. My lungs wouldn't inflate. I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't fucking breathe.

My limbs had disappeared. I was floating in a big ball of agony and I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, I couldn't shout.

I couldn't even see.

It was dark… So dark.

Then it wasn't. A pinprick of light floated from the edge of nowhere toward me, growing bigger until it wasn't simply light.

"Mom?" I gasped her name as she materialized in front of me, and the black surrounding us became my gardens at home. Only, not my gardens. Not the ones Nic had created for me, anyway. They were the gardens of my childhood. The ones Mom had tended and nurtured.

She looked at me, mischief in her eyes, and she laughed before darting away, in the direction of the swing and the high hedges.

I knew this game. Listening to the sound of her giggles, I turned away and covered my eyes as I began to count. I wriggled my toes in the soft, damp grass, and I inhaled the scents that awoke all my memories of happiness.

Perhaps I had died. Maybe this was Heaven. Heaven with my mom. What else could it be?

I laughed and stopped. That wasn't my laugh. I pulled my hands from my face and wriggled my small fingers then looked at my little, bare feet. Wait. How old was I?

"Mom?" I called. "Mommy?"

Her laugh floated to me on the light breeze. "Marco," she called back.

"Polo." I took off running, sheer joy flooding my whole being. I was a child again, looking for Mom in our garden. I had a do-over.

I glanced in the direction of the house as I ran and almost stumbled. It was in perfect condition. Near gleaming, in fact. And our old maid was somewhere around. She was humming, just as she always had.

"Marco," I shouted again, but I spluttered the end of the word as more blood surged up my throat and my muscles tensed.

I crashed to the floor as waves of pain seized me. I tried to call for my mom but my jaw wouldn't move and sounds only gurgled from me. The darkness crept back in at the edges of my vision, and I tried to fill my fists with blades of grass—anything to anchor me to this place, this time, this happiness.

I wanted to be back here. I wanted my mom again.

I didn't want to leave.

The blackness closed in and the smell of antiseptic filled my nose. I retched. This smell held no good memories, and neither did the quiet murmuring of the nurses as they comforted my dad. I didn't want to open my eyes.

But I did.

Mom lay still—too still—in the hospital bed, and Dad clutched her hand like he could bring her back through sheer force of will alone. And I simply watched her, my eyes on her chest like any moment it might move again as she drew another breath.

But it wasn't going to. My rational mind knew that, but the rest of me held onto hope. I almost didn't dare look at Dad. I'd made that mistake before. I'd seen the exact moment he gave up, the second he surrendered the best of himself to follow Mom wherever she'd gone.

I'd seen the shell of the man left behind.

And I couldn't bear witness to any of that again.

Except, like it was destined and I'd never be able to change it, my gaze tracked across the room to Dad, sitting in the chair by the bed, the nurse's hand on his shoulder, and his eyes met mine.

There.

That was it. That split second glance where his eyes changed and never returned to the dad I'd always known. In that moment, my hero became the weight I'd carry until his death.

I lost them both that day.

I turned away from him. I couldn't watch anymore. And I couldn't watch Mom either.

They were both gone. They'd both left me on the same day, and I'd fought to survive every day after that.

As the muscle-twisting pain started to creep into my body again, I steeled against it. No. I wouldn't end my days like this, trapped in too much pain and my memories. This wasn't it for me.

I'd survived. I'd forged my own fucking path and dragged Dad down it with me. I'd created our life, and I'd made my choices. Damn if I'd let anyone take that life from me.

I wasn't ready.

As I dug deep in myself for the resolve and the will to survive, I pushed back against the pain.

This wasn't my end.