Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
I follow the group through the castle.
We pass the kitchens, then head down a stairway to a dark room beneath the castle. We must be in the infirmary. There are shelves filled with small jars and pots along the walls, and a workstation littered with books and herbs and glinting metal tools against one wall.
There are a couple of cots, and Callum gently places Ryan onto one of them. He kneels down beside him and presses against the wound in his side. Blood spills between his fingers.
Ryan’s breathing is raspy, each shuddering breath sounding like it could be his last. Callum looks like he’s in pain.
There’s a strange scent in the air, and the walls close in on me as I recognize it. It smells like death. The pain and the grief and the inevitability of what will come hangs like a shroud over us, and reminds me too much of those hours I spent with my mother before the end.
My heart pounds against my ribs. I don’t know what to do.
Becky, grasping onto Ryan’s hand on the other side of the bed, starts to cry. It’s as if she has realized what is going to happen too.
“Ghealach
!” curses Callum. “Why isn’t he healing? He shouldn’t be bleeding this much. Where the fuck is-?”
The door opens, and Blake enters. Despite the obvious animosity Callum holds for the male, some of the tension seems to leave his shoulders.
It’s strange-the power seems to shift in the room, too. Even though Callum is the more muscular of the two males, he seems smaller, somehow, as Blake stalks forward.
“What took you so long?” says Callum.
“Magnus took a little persuading.” Blake kneels beside Callum, and Becky growls as he lifts up one of Ryan’s closed eyelids. “Make that noise at me again and I’ll rip out your tongue.”
Becky looks as if she’s about to launch herself over the cot at him, but Callum raises a blood-slicked hand.
“It’s alright, Becky,” he says. “Blake’s our healer here at Castle Madadh-allaidh.”
I distinctly recall Callum referring to the castle’s healer in a derogatory manner on the way here. Now I know why.
Blake is not what I expected of a healer. He is nothing like the fusty old men who worked for the High Priest and did little to ease my mother’s suffering.
I watch as he unbuttons the cuffs of his sleeves, then rolls them up-revealing corded forearms, and a nasty scar just beneath his elbow.
“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, thinking back to that horrible book of experiments I found in my chambers. “I thought Wolves healed quickly.”
Candles flicker in the infirmary, and the light dances across Blake’s chiseled features. “Come on, you know the answer to that, little rabbit.”
“Why should I?”
Blake clucks his tongue. “So, you’ve wandered into a den of Wolves with no idea what weakens us? That’s not very smart, is it?”
“Now’s not the time, Blake,” growls Callum.
“I expect stupidity from him,” Blake continues. “You. . . no. Small and fragile things cannot afford to be stupid. They’re too easy to break.”
If Callum didn’t have both his hands pressing into Ryan’s side, I think he would have broken Blake. He certainly looks like he wants to-his jawline is hard.
Yet, oddly, beneath the thinly veiled threat, it feels almost as if Blake is trying to give me a piece of advice.
His eyes are glinting as if he’s challenging me to find the answer.
I think back to that book again. There was an experiment that declared a substance that affected a wolf’s ability to heal, and, in large doses, was deadly.
Dread fills me.
“Wolfsbane,” I say.
“Good girl,” says Blake.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Wolfsbane.
The air is sucked out of the infirmary. Callum tenses, and a cry tears from Becky’s lips.
In the book I read, it didn’t seem like there was a cure.
“Can you fix him?” The plea in Callum’s voice breaks something inside me.
“Perhaps.” Blake walks over to his workstation, and selects a pipette.
He takes a sample of Ryan’s blood and holds it up to the torch flickering on the wall.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Identifying the strain.”
Callum’s gaze seeks mine. I can see he is lost, floating away, and looking for something to hold onto. Even though we barely know each other, he wants it to be me.
I know that feeling. I felt like I was drowning when my mother was dying. I wanted to grab onto someone, anyone-my father, my brother, the ladies-in-waiting-so that my head would remain above the water. Only, they always remained out of reach.
I will not remain out of Callum’s reach.
My gaze flits back to Blake. “Can he be cured?”
“There’s only one person in the Northlands who knows the antidote,” says Blake.
“You?”
His lips curve into a smile. He goes back to the workstation and starts mixing something in a beaker.
“Keep pressure on the wound,” he tells Callum.
When Blake returns, he tips back Ryan’s head and pours the liquid into his mouth. Ryan chokes.
I step closer, peering over Becky’s head. “That’s the antidote?”
“Yes.”
“What is it made of?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” His tone is light, but I have the distinct feeling that this is not an empty threat. “Keep hold of him.”
“I am holding him,” growls Callum. “Fix him.”
“How does it work?” I ask.
Ryan’s eyes jolt open. His back arches off the cot, and his shoulders bend in an unnatural way. He screams.
Blake clamps his hand over Ryan’s mouth, forcing him to swallow the liquid that he’s trying to spit out.
“Is that necessary?” snaps Callum.
“Get off him!” shrieks Becky. “You’re hurting him. Stop it!”