Unexpected

Chapter Thirty-One

A/N: Dedicated to Maddie_Herondale33 for being the first to comment on chapter thirty with such enthusiasm! Your participation is greatly appreciated, thank you :) And thank you to everyone else who chimed in with their own comments. :D

CINDER

Three hours later >

Cinder sat alone in the New Beijing's Top one Hospital, where they rushed Kai in on emergency care as soon as Torin found them in Kai's room. Torin had taken one look, and in ten minutes Kai was being hauled onto an emergency ambulance and driven to the hospital. Everything happened so quickly, it was almost a blur. Her head hurt. It hurt a lot. So did her stomach and jaw. 

Cinder had successfully knocked Clover out in that room, but the price was Kai, her beloved, had been stabbed in the stomach. Cinder dropped her head in her hands, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to expel the horrifying images from coming back to life in her mind again. 

The blood.

There was so much blood. And it was all Kai's. Cinder would never forget the way the red liquid seeped from the knife wound, the way it stained through his clothes and dripped onto her fingers, sliding down her wrist. The only consolation was, that Clover had been taken into custody. She was slumped in the corner of the room, knocked clean out. Torin had ordered guards to place her on lockdown, no contact with any form of humans or Lunars was issued.

Cinder ran her hands through her messy brown hair, sighing. It had been one heck of a day. And now here she was, sitting alone in the empty hospital, worrying that the love of her life could be dying, and that it was all her fault because she couldn't stop Clover fast enough. 

Footsteps clattered on the floor, and Cinder glanced up. She recognized the doctor who had taken Kai into emergency care. The doctor ignored her presence, instead making her way to stand behind the receptionist's desk, rifling through multiple files.

Cinder leaped to her feet and rushed straight over. The doctor looked puzzled.

"Is he going to be okay?" Cinder asked, looking up at the doctor clad in white. The doctor met Cinder's gaze, sighing as she snapped off her surgical gloves, placing them on the desk. Cinder tried not to notice the trail of red left on the white desk, probably from the gloves. 

"I can't reveal information on a patient unless you're a relative," The doctor replied snootily, arching a slender eyebrow at Cinder. She curled her hands into fists, gritting her teeth. If this doctor thought she was going to keep Cinder from knowing if the love of her life was okay, then she had another thing coming.

"I'm his girlfriend." Cinder snapped.

The doctor clasped the clipboard she was holding to her chest, eyeing Cinder down with a strict gaze. "Ma'am, if you must insist, Emperor Kaito will be just fine. The knife wound was, fortunately, not very deep. If any deeper, though, he might have had a higher chance of dying. But-" The doctor shrugged. "We stopped the bleeding. He's in intensive care right now, being monitored 24/7." 

Cinder reached out and gripped the doctor's wrist. "I have to see him," Cinder begged. "I have to know if he's okay. Please. I'll do anything. Just let me see him."

"Alright," The doctor frowned and shook Cinder's hand off. "Fine. Seeing as you are royalty, the Lunar Queen, and Kai's girlfriend," she nodded grudgingly. "You're permitted to see him. His room is number 305, down the hallway to the right." 

Cinder released a breath of relief. "Thank you, thank you so much. I owe you everything, you saved him. Thank you." 

The doctor didn't look up, just sat down in her chair and waved her off. "Yes, yes, very good."