“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” the female said. “We have to focus on her.”
“Then focus, dammit,” the familiar male voice said again.
“We are.” This time the female’s voice held an edge of frustration. “The problem is, you’re not hearing what I’m saying. It’s not the injuries that are killing her.”
“Then what is it?” another female asked. This one too was familiar, calm where the others were frustrated, and Zander found himself struggling to bring his eyes open so he could make the connections he knew were right on the tip of his mind. He squinted but couldn’t see more than a hazy film.
“She doesn’t seem to have a will to live.”
“Skata.”
Okay, that voice was clear as a bell. Zander knew Ther-on’s voice anywhere.
On a groan, Zander rolled to his side and pushed himself up to sit. Pain stabbed every inch of his body, but he ignored it. The bed beneath him was firm, more like a gurney than a mattress. He looked up and around as his vision came and went, took in the white walls and bandages and tape on the long counter to his right and realized he was in some kind of medical facility.
The half-breed colony. Which meant Titus had gotten him and Callia here after all.
Links, memories, flashes of what had happened in that cave, in that cabin, hit him from all sides. Callia. His feet hit the floor. Almost went out from under him. To keep from sliding to the ground he braced a hand on the bed behind him until he was steady, then slowly followed the sound of voices toward the hall.
Shit. He was weak. Weaker than he’d been his whole life. Just crossing the room made him feel like he’d climbed Mount Olympus.
He gritted his way through the pain. When he rounded the corner and looked down the long narrow hall, he discovered he’d been right. A small group was huddled deep in conversation. Theron, Casey, Nick and a female who wore blue scrubs and held a clipboard.
“Zander, oh, my God.” Casey rushed to his side and tried to take his weight by slipping an arm around his waist, but he brushed her off and leaned one hand against the wall near her head instead. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
He ignored the king’s daughter, the one who would never be queen because her mother had been human, and looked at Theron. “Where’s Callia?”
“She’s being monitored,” the female said before Theron could answer.
The woman was average height for a half-breed female, average weight. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she had nerd written all over her plain-Jane features. She also obviously didn’t think much of him, because the scowl on her face was anything but friendly.
Zander dismissed her and looked over her head toward Nick, standing on her other side, looking like he had a migraine the size of Mount Rushmore. Join the fucking club. Nick dwarfed the woman in both size and confidence. “I want to see her.”
“Zander,” Casey cut in with a hand on his arm. “That’s not a good idea.”
Zander glanced down at Theron’s wife, his eyebrows drawn together, while a strange feeling brewed in his chest. They were keeping something from him. “Why not?”
Theron pushed away from the wall where he’d been leaning to stand at Casey’s side. “Because she’s not doing well. And neither are you. You’re in no position to…”
Zander’s gaze jumped to Theron, and warning bells went off in his head. What was Theron doing here? If Titus had gone to Argolea and brought him back, and Casey had come with him, it meant something wasn’t right. These days Casey stuck close to the castle for Isadora’s sake.
“Don’t fuck with me, Theron. Did she wake up? How long has it been?”
“It’s only been twenty-four hours,” Theron sighed.
Zander cut a look at the healer, then refocused on Theron again. And he knew his temper flared in his eyes, but he didn’t give a rip. “Twenty-four hours? Why the hell haven’t you taken her back to Argolea if they can’t do shit for her here?”
“Watch it, hero,” Nick mumbled from across the narrow hall.
Zander’s eyes whipped to the leader of the half-breeds.
“Don’t piss him off,” the female muttered to Nick. “You saw her scars.”
“What the hell are you mumbling about?” Zander glared down at her. “And who in Hades are you anyway?”
“Lena,” Nick said behind her, straightening from the wall himself. “One of our best healers. So ditch the attitude, or I’ll put your ass back in that bed myself.”
Zander’s jaw ticked, and that familiar feeling of rage pushed against his chest. The only thing that kept him from losing his cool was the palm of Theron’s hand now pushing against his sternum.
“Everybody chill out for a few minutes,” Theron said. He glared down at Lena. “And cut the digs. Tell him what you just told us.”
The female heaved out a breath like she didn’t want to tell him anything, but finally said, “Do you know anything about daemon poison?”
“Daemon what?”
“Poison,” she said louder, challenging Zander with her eyes in a way that made him wonder what the hell he’d ever done to her. He was 100 percent sure they’d never met. “An archdaemon’s claws are filled with a poison. Even if the wounds heal, the poison destroys healthy tissue one cell at a time. If it gets into the bloodstream, it travels to the organs and does the same, though at a much slower rate.”
“What are you saying?” Zander asked.
“She’s saying Callia’s infected, Zander,” Theron said. “Titus told us what happened in that cabin. Atalanta sealed Callia’s wounds, trapping the poison inside.”
Zander looked from face to face, trying to make sense of what they’d just told him. “I’ve been cut, bitten. All the guardians have been wounded. You—”
“You’ve never been cut by an archdaemon,” Theron said.
“Odds are good none of you have tangled with an archdaemon,” Nick cut in. As Zander glanced his way, Nick frowned, the expression doing shit to settle the unease in Zander’s gut. “The archdaemon doesn’t usually fight. He commands. We’ve seen this before. Certain victims my scouts have come across have had the festering type of wound Lena described. We didn’t know what it was until we found a female, alive, with a similar wound on her leg.”
Lena looked down at her feet, pursed her lips as if she’d heard it all before, but Zander didn’t miss the revulsion sliding over her features or the way she refused to meet his or any of the others’ eyes.
“She was pregnant,” Nick went on. “In a great deal of pain. She’d been raped. Repeatedly.” Casey gasped, and Nick rubbed a hand over his forehead, like just the thought sickened him as well. “We tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let us. She begged us to kill her.”
“From what we can tell,” Lena finished for Nick when it was clear he didn’t want to go on, “the archdaemon is the only one who can reproduce. We think he uses this poison to immobilize his victims and keep them alive long enough to give birth.”
“Dear God,” Casey said, covering her mouth with her hand. At his side, Theron slipped an arm around her waist and drew her close.
“The rate of gestation seems to be severely amplified for daemon offspring,” Lena continued. “A month, maybe two. We’re not entirely sure. We haven’t been able to study it.”
“Study it?” Zander snapped. “Like a science experiment?” His thoughts ran back to Callia. To the way she’d been laid out on that table before Atalanta.
“We did find one of these offspring shortly after birth,” Nick said, flicking Zander a warning look before focusing on Theron. “Dead. Its body looked human, but there was something about the eyes that wasn’t right. And the internal organs—”