That night I dreamed of him again.
I dreamt that Cassius was carrying me back to Mystreuce after I had been shot by the arrow. He carried me back into his bedroom and laid me down on his bed. Then, he reached his fingers inside of my chest and pulled out the arrow tip and tossed it to the floor. I felt the warm, wet gush of blood gurgle out of my chest and soak the blankets that I was lying on. His voice again told me that I would be okay, and I opened my eyes to see him.
When I looked at him, I saw Cassius licking my blood from his fingers. When my eyelids flung open, I sat straight up in my bed. It was a night like this one, which made me wish I weren’t alone in this room. My chest was throbbing, likely from all of the training that I had done with Cassius, but also because my heart was pounding furiously against my ribcage. I raised my knees up against my chest and lowered my head against them. Never in my life had I had such unapologetically conflicted feelings. I was scared to be with Cassius, and I was terrified to be without him.
I got up from the bed to search out some water for my parched throat, and I wondered what time it was. I still hadn’t gotten used to not having clocks or natural light to help me keep track of time. When I walked out into the common area of the fae quarters in search of a water pitcher, Cassius was standing in the entrance to the corridor.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise. I may not have known what time it was exactly, but it had to have been in the middle of the night. And I knew, despite all the vampire books I had read, that Cassius did indeed sleep at night.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He looked exhausted, and the dark-purple circles under his eyes stood against his pale skin like graffiti on a blank, white wall.
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” I said as I walked toward him. As soon as I was standing in front of him, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my head against his chest. For a moment, he held perfectly still, and I felt him stop breathing.
I didn’t care if anyone was watching, or if I shouldn’t be doing it. I just wanted to hold him. I felt his arms slowly wrap around me and pull me into him as he exhaled and started to breathe again. I listened to the barely audible, slow beat of his heart. It made me think about all the things in the world that were so quiet you could barely hear them, but yet they still existed; like maybe the sound of butterfly wings, or the sizzle of rain when it hit the hot pavement on the city streets.
“I had a nightmare,” I whispered without lifting my head up.
“What was it about?”
“You. I dreamed that you were tasting my blood,” I said.
I felt Cassius start to pull away, but I didn’t let him. I held on to his waist and kept my ear pressed firmly against his chest as his heart started to beat faster.
Cassius sighed and leaned his chin against the top of my head as he spoke. “That isn’t necessarily a dream,” he said. “I’m part vampire. I can’t help what I am. And I have wanted to taste your blood, so badly in fact, that I have dreams about what it would taste like. I can barely sleep anymore because you invade every part of me, even when I’m not awake.”
“It doesn’t scare me,” I said.
“What doesn’t?”
“You.”
“It should.” Cassius's voice sounded sad and angry at the same time.
“Sen told me how you brought me here, that you were soaked in my blood, and that any other vampire would have likely killed me on the spot. She told me how hard it was for you. You’re not going to hurt me, Cassius. I know you won’t.”
“You don’t know how close I was to doing exactly that,” he said as I felt his breath dust the top of my hair. “You don’t know how close you were to death at my hands. I very nearly lost control. I felt like every vein in my body was going to rupture if I didn’t drink from you. You should be scared of me, and if you were smart, you should try to stay as far away from me as possible because I have tried to stay away from you, and I can’t.”
His heart was racing now, and it sounded like the tiny patter of running paws against my ear.
“What happened after you gave me to Sen?” I asked. I needed to know; I needed to know the answer to this one question more than I needed to know anything else. “Did you put your fingers to your lips after you put me down?”
“No.”
“You could have,” I said in a whisper that was so close to being a cry, not for myself, but for the thought of what torment Cassius endured. “No one would have even known if you did.”
“I would have known,” he said quietly as he clenched onto me.
We stood there in the quiet, empty space together, holding each other as if we couldn’t let go. Cassius heard a rustle down the hallway from one of the fae stirring and getting out of bed.
“I have to go,” he said as he let go of me and gently unwrapped my arms from around him.
“I want to come with you,” I said.
“You can’t, it’s too dangerous. You’re safer here with the fae.”
“Cassius, I don’t care. I want to come with you. Please.” I looked at him with a longing in my eyes that was pulling me apart, and then he took my hand as we walked silently down the hall.
We managed to get back to Cassius’s bedroom unnoticed. The morning would be a different story, but we would deal with it then. Neither of us could sleep, and neither of us wanted to try to lay in bed next to each other for fear that sleep would be the least of the things bedeviling us. Instead, we sat on large floor cushions in front of the warm fireplace with our arms and legs intertwined. The flames danced in the stone hearth, and every so often, an ember would burst and crackle, sending a scattering of smaller embers up into the air around it. I thought about what it would be like to be fire, to be something so powerful and violently dangerous, but to be rendered so helpless while trapped inside a stone box. That reminded me of Quinn, and I immediately felt guilty for not having thought of him earlier.
“What happened when you spoke to Athan about Quinn’s release?” I asked, hopeful that maybe this time Cassius was able to twist his half-brother’s arm in some way.
Honestly, Athan was a fool not to be afraid of what Cassius could do to him if he had the mindset to truly overthrow him.
“Quinn will be back here in the morning,” he answered.
“Really? You managed to get him to change his mind?”
“Yes.”
“How did you do it?” I asked, hoping that Athan didn’t have an even tighter upper-hand over Cassius now.
“I made a trade,” he said.
It bothered me how his answers were frequently so lacking in elaboration, leaving me to wonder about all the details, like what he had traded for Quinn’s safe return to his home. But I was content with the knowledge that Quinn would be returned, so I didn’t push for more.
“Thank you,” I said as I leaned against him, “for getting him back.”
We must have both fallen asleep in each other’s arms by the fire, for at least a little while, because the noise in the hallway woke us up. It was the sound of one of Cassius’s men arguing with one of Athan’s men about being let in to speak with Cassius. We both stood up, and Cassius motioned for me to go into his closet to wait since there was no way I would be able to make it out of his bedroom unseen. Once I was safely hidden, he went to go open the door.
“What is all this about?” Cassius bellowed in the intimidating tone that he was good at summoning on a moment’s notice.
One of Dregon’s henchmen who had been at the opera house stood, looking over the shoulder of the fae who was guarding Cassius’s door.
“I was sent to tell you that your slave was returned and is within the fae quarters now,” the man said as he glared at the fae who was blocking his way. “You might want to start teaching your slaves some manners.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” Cassius replied sarcastically. “Now leave.”
I could hardly keep myself from bursting out of the closet once I heard that Quinn was here. As soon as I heard the bedroom door close, I ran out.
“We have to go see him,” I said excitedly. I started to head straight for the door, but Cassius reached for my wrist to stop me.
“Mara,” he said with an empathetic look. “You should be prepared for the condition that Quinn is likely to be in.”
“What do you mean?”
“Athan is a cruel man, and Dregon is even worse. I expect that Quinn has received a great deal of mistreatment at their hands.”
I felt the tears start to well in my eyes. “But he’s alive?”
“Yes, he’s alive.”
That’s all I needed to know.
I hadn’t ever seen Sen cry before. When Cassius and I walked into the fae quarters, she was fetching some hot rags and bandages from the common area and looked up to see us come in. Her delicate face was tear-streaked and wrenched with a painful expression.
“Sen?” I asked, afraid to hear that something awful had happened. “Is Quinn…”
“He’s resting,” she answered with a cracking voice, “in his room.” Then she looked at Cassius. “Thank you. If you hadn’t have gotten him sent home, he wouldn’t have lasted another night.”
Cassius nodded in response to her gratitude and then followed me toward Quinn’s bedroom.
When I reached the open door, I froze in the middle of the doorway and put my hand over my mouth to keep myself from making any sound as I cried. “It doesn’t even look like him,” I whispered to Cassius as I tried hard to choke back my tears.
“He’ll be okay,” Cassius said gently. “His sister will take good care of him.” He waited in the doorway as I went inside to sit down next to Quinn’s bed.
Quinn’s eyes were so bruised and swollen that he couldn’t have opened them if he tried. He was propped onto his side because his back was so covered with open and bloodied gashes that he couldn’t lay down on it. Deep-black bruises covered more of his skin than not, and from the looks of the oddly protruding lumps on his chest and face, he had several broken bones. I leaned forward over his face and placed a tender kiss on his cracked and bloodied lips. Quinn stirred and made a small groan.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to steady my shaking voice. “It’s me, I’m here with you, and you’re okay.”
Quinn tried to lift his hand, but it only made it less than a centimeter into the air before it fell against his mattress again. I reached for his palm and wrapped my fingers around his. The shackles Athan’s men had put on him must have been made of iron because his wrists were burned so deeply that the bone was exposed. I was afraid that he wouldn’t make it, even now that he was here and under Sen’s watchful care.
Sen came back to the room with a bowl of steaming water, some rags, and a few metal tools that looked like they were going to hurt—a lot. I heard Cassius tell her that he would return later to check on all of us. She thanked him again and then came in to set down her supplies on the table. The two of us both looked at each other and tried not to break down into sobs. Then, Sen wiped her eyes and tightened her jaw.
“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” she said to me. “You might want to wait outside.”
“I’ll stay,” I said as I tried to collect myself and gather a stronger constitution before she began whatever measures she had to do in order to help repair him. Quinn had been there for me, and I wasn’t about to let him down.
I scooted over to let Sen near him so that she could get to work. The first thing she did was reach for Quinn’s hand that I wasn’t holding. The bone in his wrist was jutting out, and I could see the splintering pieces of it digging into the surrounding, burned flesh. Sen reached for something that looked like a silver, metal clamp and opened it as wide as it would go before holding it just around his wrist. When she closed the clamp, it pushed the bone back into place with a sickening snap that made me feel as though I would pass out.
Quinn’s scream shot out and into the hallway. Sen opened the clamp again and lifted it away from his wrist. It was hard to see if the bone had been set due to all the blood flooding the area, but it didn’t seem to be protruding out anymore, so Sen was satisfied with the job she had done. She opened a glass jar that contained one of the tinctures she made and poured the frothy, white liquid onto the open gash. As Quinn made the sound of muffled cries just before he lost consciousness, I laid my head down near his and pressed my lips softly to his forehead.
Sen spent hours doing all that she could to mend him, and I spent hours with my head perfectly still as I listened to him breathe while he slept.