Lucian.
His arms were bleeding where I’d scratched him, and an enormous, gaping hole of sorrow opened up in my chest. When he leaned down to touch my face, I gasped out broken sobs as I clung to him like I’d never let him go.
“What happened, pet? Tell me.”
“She did it,” I whispered. “She killed him.”
“IT HURTS,” SHE CRIED. “IThurts everywhere.”
I pulled her against me in the bathtub, cradling her in my arms as she shivered. “I know.”
Her body didn’t stop shaking while I bathed her, regardless of how warm the water was. At that moment, she was like a child, completely helpless and dependent on me for guidance and care.
That reality lanced through my heart and poured acid into old wounds. I wanted to shake her for being so reckless. I wanted to do the same to Luna when she’d told me what she allowed Gypsy to take. But there wasn’t any use in letting my anger control the situation. It was done, and now all we could do was weather the storm.
I removed Gypsy from the bath and set her on the counter while I toweled her off and brushed her hair. It was difficult to dress her when her limbs were so heavy, and she was tired, but I managed to get her into one of my soft cotton tee shirts before I tucked her into bed. It didn’t last long. Before I could even get myself dressed, she was crawling across the tile floor in the bedroom, clinging to the surface like it was her savior.
“Noooo,” she whined when I tried to pick her up again. “It’s so hot. So hot.”
Her body couldn’t regulate temperature, but I had to trust that she knew what she needed while the plant eliminated itself from her system. Accepting this, I laid down beside her on the cool tile, waiting out the worst of her tremors as fresh tears slid down her cheeks.
“Please don’t tell our secret,” she begged.
Her cognitive state of mind had improved, and that was a good sign, even if she wasn’t capable of recognizing it. I knew the moment she’d told me about Birdie, she regretted it. But she couldn’t know that I’d already suspected it from the beginning. From everything I’d uncovered so far, it was evident that Birdie was prone to mental breaks, particularly concerning her rage. Gypsy had been protecting her little sister for her entire life, and even in the depths of her worst pain, she still tried.
My fingers traced the lines of her arm as I whispered into the darkness. “I won’t tell.”
I shouldn’t have said it. It was the one thing that would guarantee Gypsy would stay here and fulfill her obligations. I needed her to stay. But even worse, I was beginning to understand that I wanted it more.
Her hand slid across the tile and reached for me, falling just short as she rolled onto her side and her gaze came to rest on my face. “I always heard the devil was beautiful.”
I smiled into the shadows, reaching out to find her fingers. She wrapped her pinky beneath mine, and we laid in the stillness, staring at each other on the cold tile floor for hours. When the sun came up, Gypsy’s breathing grew even, and her body settled into a state of exhaustion so deep, I knew the worst had passed.
I carried her back to bed, and she was too far gone to feel restless or scared anymore. But it didn’t stop me from wrapping my arm around her and pulling her against me anyway.
“Hi.”
Gypsy’s meek voice drew my attention to the doorway of my home office, where she was currently standing. The hem of my tee shirt brushed against her thighs, highlighting the sun-kissed skin of her mile-long legs. After the scare last night, I wanted more than anything to wrap those legs around my face and punish her with my tongue, but that wasn’t what she needed right now.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted her.
She wrung her hands together. “I bet you’re really mad at me, huh?”
I set aside the document I’d been reading and gave her my full attention. “You put yourself at risk last night. You specifically went against my rule, and you acted with no thought or regard to me, yourself, or even your sister. So, am I mad, Gypsy? No. I’m disappointed in you.”
She bowed her head and curled her toes into the carpet. “That sounds like something a parent would say.”
“That’s because it is,” I murmured.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” She looked up at me with soft eyes. “I honestly… things got out of control. Luna told me it was a medicinal tea. She didn’t say that was going to happen. And when she drank it, she was fine, so I thought I would be too.”
“Luna was fine because she drinks it often. Her body is acclimated to it, but yours isn’t. Taking something like that without knowing what it is, you could have…” I choked down the words I didn’t want to say. “Things could have ended much differently. You were lucky.”
Gypsy’s shoulders hunched forward. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Obviously, I’m never going to see her again.”
I found that difficult to believe. As mad as Gypsy was, she felt a connection to Luna because of their heritage. I had a feeling she would see her again, and I could only hope she’d learned her lesson, but regardless, I wasn’t about to let her forget it anytime soon.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.