“Deep breaths,” the witch said, tapping the air bubbles from the needle.
A chair scraped, and then a warm, calloused hand wrapped around Bryce’s.
Hunt’s eyes locked on hers. “Deep breath, Bryce.”
She sucked one in. The needle sank into her thigh, its prick drawing tears. She squeezed Hunt’s hand hard enough to feel bones grinding. He didn’t so much as flinch.
The pain swiftly faded, numbness tingling over her leg. Deep inside it.
“Do you feel this?” the witch asked.
“Feel what?”
“Good,” the witch declared. “I’m starting now. I can put up a little curtain if you—”
“No,” Bryce gritted out. “Just do it.”
No delays. No waiting.
She saw the witch lift the scalpel, and then a slight, firm pressure pushed against her leg. Bryce shook again, blasting a breath through her clenched teeth.
“Steady now,” the witch said. “I’m cutting through the scar tissue.”
Hunt’s dark eyes held hers, and she forced herself to think of him instead of her leg. He had been there that night. In the alley.
The memory surfaced, the fog of pain and terror and grief clearing slightly. Strong, warm hands gripping her. Just as he held her hand now. A voice speaking to her. Then utter stillness, as if his voice had been a bell. And then those strong, warm hands on her thigh, holding her as she sobbed and screamed.
I’ve got you, he’d said over and over. I’ve got you.
“I believe I can remove most of this scar tissue,” the witch observed. “But …” She swore softly. “Luna above, look at this.”
Bryce refused to look, but Hunt’s eyes slid to the screen behind her, where her bloody wound was on display. A muscle ticked in his jaw. It said enough about what was inside the wound.
“I don’t understand how you’re walking,” the witch murmured. “You said you weren’t taking painkillers to manage it?”
“Only during flare-ups,” Bryce whispered.
“Bryce …” The witch hesitated. “I’m going to need you to hold very still. And to breathe as deeply as you can.”
“Okay.” Her voice sounded small.
Hunt’s hand clasped hers. Bryce took a steadying breath—
Someone poured acid into her leg, and her skin was sizzling, bones melting away—
In and out, out and in, her breath sliced through her teeth. Oh gods, oh gods—
Hunt interlaced their fingers, squeezing.
It burned and burned and burned and burned—
“When I got to the alley that night,” he said above the rush of her frantic breathing, “you were bleeding everywhere. Yet you tried to protect him first. You wouldn’t let us get near until we showed you our badges and proved we were from the legion.”
She whimpered, her breathing unable to outrun the razor-sharp digging, digging, digging—
Hunt’s fingers stroked over her brow. “I thought to myself, There’s someone I want guarding my back. There’s a friend I’d like to have. I think I gave you such a hard time when we met up again because … because some part of me knew that, and was afraid of what it’d mean.”
She couldn’t stop the tears sliding down her face.
His eyes didn’t waver from hers. “I was there in the interrogation room, too.” His fingers drifted through her hair, gentle and calming. “I was there for all of it.”
The pain struck deep, and she couldn’t help the scream that worked its way out of her.
Hunt leaned forward, putting his cool brow against hers. “I’ve known who you were this whole time. I never forgot you.”
“I’m beginning extraction and stabilization of the venom,” the witch said. “It will worsen, but it’s almost over.”
Bryce couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond Hunt and his words and the pain in her leg, the scar across her very soul.
Hunt whispered, “You’ve got this. You’ve got this, Bryce.”
She didn’t. And the Hel that erupted in her leg had her arching against the restraints, her vocal cords straining as her screaming filled the room.
Hunt’s grip never wavered.
“It’s almost out,” the witch hissed, grunting with effort. “Hang on, Bryce.”
She did. To Hunt, to his hand, to that softness in his eyes, she held on. With all she had.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Sweetheart, I’ve got you.”
He’d never said it like that before—that word. It had always been mocking, teasing. She’d always found it just this side of annoying.
Not this time. Not when he held her hand and her gaze and everything she was. Riding out the pain with her.
“Breathe,” he ordered her. “You can do it. We can get through this.”
Get through it—together. Get through this mess of a life together. Through this mess of a world. Bryce sobbed, not entirely from pain this time.
And Hunt, as if he sensed it, too, leaned forward again. Brushed his mouth against hers.
Just a hint of a kiss—a feather-soft glancing of his lips over hers.
A star bloomed inside her at that kiss. A long-slumbering light began to fill her chest, her veins.
“Burning Solas,” the witch whispered, and the pain ceased.
Like a switch had been flipped, the pain was gone. It was startling enough that Bryce turned away from Hunt and peered at her body, the blood on it, the gaping wound. She might have fainted at the sight of a good six inches of her leg lying open were it not for the thing that the witch held between a set of pincers, as if it were indeed a worm.
“If my magic wasn’t stabilizing the venom like this, it’d be liquid,” the witch said, carefully moving the venom—a clear, wriggling worm with black flecks—toward a glass jar. It writhed, like a living thing.
The witch deposited it in the jar and shut the lid, magic humming. The poison instantly dissolved into a puddle within, but still vibrated. As if looking for a way out.
Hunt’s eyes were still on Bryce’s face. As they’d been the entire time. Had never left.
“Let me clean you out and stitch you up, and then we’ll test the antidote,” the witch said.
Bryce barely heard the woman as she nodded. Barely heard anything beyond Hunt’s lingering words. I’ve got you.
Her fingers curled around his. She let her eyes tell him everything her ravaged throat couldn’t. I’ve got you, too.
Thirty minutes later, Bryce was sitting up, Hunt’s arm and wing around her, both of them watching as the witch’s glowing, pale magic wrapped around the puddle of venom in the vial and warped it into a thin thread.
“You’ll forgive me if my method of antidote testing fails to qualify as a proper medical experiment,” she declared as she walked over to where an ordinary white pill sat in a clear plastic box. Lifting the lid, she dropped the thread of venom in. It fluttered like a ribbon, hovering above the pill before the witch shut the lid again. “What is being used on the street is a much more potent version of this,” she said, “but I want to see if this amount of my healing magic, holding the venom in place and merging with it, will do the trick against the synth.”
The witch carefully let the thread of the magic-infused venom alight on the tablet. It vanished within a blink, sucked into the pill. But the witch’s face remained bunched in concentration. As if focused on whatever was happening within the pill.
Bryce asked, “So your magic is currently stabilizing the venom in that tablet? Making it stop the synth?”
“Essentially,” the witch said distantly, still focused on the pill. “It takes most of my concentration to keep it stable long enough to halt the synth. Which is why I’d like to find a way to remove myself from the equation—so it can be used by anyone, even without me.”
Bryce fell silent after that, letting the witch work in peace.
Nothing happened. The pill merely sat there.
One minute passed. Two. And just as it was nearing three minutes—
The pill turned gray. And then dissolved into nothing but minuscule particles that then faded away, too. Until there was nothing left.
Hunt said into the silence, “It worked?”
The witch blinked at the now-empty box. “It would appear so.” She turned to Bryce, sweat gleaming on her brow. “I’d like to continue testing this, and try to find some way for the antidote to work without my magic stabilizing the venom. I can send over a vial for you when I’m finished, though, if you’d like. Some people want to keep such reminders of their struggles.”
Bryce nodded blankly. And realized she had absolutely no idea what to do next.