“Mae, this is my hellren.”
From over on the bed, the soot-covered female was in sad shape, the oxygen mask obscuring a lot of her face—but none of her emotions.
He read those all too easily. And that was why he’d wanted to see her.
The suffering was so awful, so deep . . . it reminded him of himself.
After he greeted his shellan with a kiss, he looked at the patient. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said roughly. “About what I knew.”
Over on the gurney, the female nodded. Coughed a little. Kept her bloodshot eyes on him, and yet she was not angry at him. Then again, she wasn’t feeling anything but the pain.
“I just wanted you to know that,” he said. “And I wish there was something I could do.”
Ehlena dried her hands. “She would like to go home. Maybe you could drive her where she’d like to go? There are so many injured here.”
The female on the hospital bed pulled her mask down. “What happened to them?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “The Brothers.”
Rehv answered that one. “The shadows came for them. It was an epic fight downtown, like the demon needed them to stay where they were at the Commodore. Fortunately, there were no casualties. There might have been, though—except all of the sudden, it stopped. The enemy just up and disappeared.”
“Sahvage,” she said in that rough way. “When he pulled the demon into the fire. As soon as she was killed, her power disappeared. He saved the Brotherhood.”
Rehv nodded and glanced back at the door. “Well, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why all the fighters in this household are outside your hospital room.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand—”
“You’re Sahvage’s female. So they honor his memory by taking care of you.” Rehv lowered his voice. “You’re not as alone as you think you are. Not anymore.”
There was a long period of silence. And then she said, “You are so wrong about that. Without him? I will always be alone.”
Two hours later, as the Mercedes’s headlights washed across the front of Tallah’s cottage, Mae felt the agony in her chest ramp up again—and she had a thought that her pain was like that house fire the demon had started, suddenly exploding in intensity.
She closed her eyes and wondered if she would be able to go in at all, much less spend the rest of the night inside.
“You know, you can stay up at my lake house instead,” the Reverend said next to her. “It’s safe. There are Chosen there. It’s a good place to heal.”
Mae refocused on the front door. “No, this is my new home. I might as well get used to it.”
And yet she didn’t get out of the warm car. Instead, she stared at all the darkened windows, the overgrown bushes, the ragged trees.
“A wonderful female lived here once,” she remarked sadly.
And now she could see the pathway to her becoming what Tallah had been, an old female who lived in those four walls, tottering around the oversized furniture, forever resolving to tidy things up a bit better.
“Thank you for the ride,” she said as she popped her door.
As she went to get out, the Reverend touched her arm. “You can always call the training center. There are resources there for you. I gave you the number.”
“Thank you,” she said, even though she knew she would never phone in.
“Anything you need, you come to us.”
She nodded, but only to get him to stop talking. She honestly did appreciate what he was saying, but she couldn’t think about anything other than the aching present and the four hundred years in the future when all this was done. All the suffering over. When she finally died herself.
Getting out, Mae said some stuff to the male, and he nodded like whatever it was had made some sense. Then she walked over to the cottage’s front door. As she opened the way in, she took a deep breath and only smelled smoke.
It was going to be like that for a while, they’d told her. Her sinuses had captured, and were going to hold on to, the acrid scent for a number of nights.
Like she cared, though.
Mae waved over her shoulder and closed the door. Then she leaned back against the cool panels and looked at the back of the hutch that Sahvage had moved out of place to protect them. Memories of him picking it up were as sharp as knives, and yet she couldn’t avoid them even as they sliced at her heart.
To try to get her attention elsewhere, she took another inventory on how her body was doing. Not too great: Her skin was hot, but more than that, her inner core was overheated, as if her body temperature had been permanently raised by the fire.
Like she was a roast beef in a restaurant, just out of the oven, throwing off her own BTUs.