Breathe

Chapter 32

Cian

For the next few hours, I drifted in and out of consciousness. At least a pint, maybe two, of blood had been taken right out of my veins, and I was feeling the effects. I didn't seem to be able to focus my thoughts—they wavered at one topic, then moved on to another, and took a leap to yet another. The sheets stuck to me; I was supremely uncomfortable, writhing in my own clammy skin as if searching for escape somehow.

I was regretting this.

I was definitely regretting this.

I heard the door to the room open, and managed to lift my eyes. An unfamiliar face stared back at me, one of the Silhouettes, a girl that didn't look much older than me. "Cian Horne, right?"

I groaned out a reply: "Yours truly."

The Silhouette nervously adjusted her necklace. I wondered distantly if this was yet another one of Nick's brainwashed minions. "Someone's asking to see you," the girl responded. She saw me raise my eyebrows, adding briskly, "Um, in the front part of the Destiny."

Away from here. Where I had wanted to be since my arrival. What was this? "Nick doesn't have any objections to this visitor?"

"Nick's preoccupied," the girl replied. "He's conferring with an old friend."

"Old friend?"

"I don't know the details. I've just been sent to fetch you."

"By who?"

The girl gritted her teeth, storming away from the door and to my bedside, tugging me out of bed and to my feet. "No one. Just come on already."

I swayed a little on my feet, my head spinning from moving too quickly. "Geez, woman—I'm up, I'm up."

We went down the hall, to the tunnel-like corridors Nick had led me through the first night I'd shown up here. It took a moment for my feet to fall back into rhythm, and my head still pounded, but I was feeling a whole lot better than I had been yesterday. Regardless, unease still plagued me. Who was this 'visitor,' and what could they possibly want with me? And, considering how Nick had been watching me like a hawk for these past twenty-four hours or so, why was he suddenly preoccupied?

I didn't like the look of this, especially not when a hand reached from the dark and tugged sharply at my collar.

I stumbled backwards with a yelp, just as a voice hissed: "You scream like a little girl, Cian. Quiet."

The unease within me subsided. I'd know that voice anywhere. Whirling, I gasped, "Muffin?"

Lucie stood before me, her dark eyes shining like jewels in spite of the lack of light, her uncontrollable curls piled in a bun on top of her head. I heard the click of a flashlight before the beam shone in my face, blinding me. "It's you? Really?" she asked. Her tone sounded wary. "Not...like, demon you?"

I shook my head, using my hands to shield myself from the bright onslaught. "No, they haven't done anything to me, besides drawing a ton of my blood—"

"Where's my money?" asked the Silhouette that had brought me here, brushing my past my shoulder. She held out a greedy palm, levelling a glare at Lucie.

To my surprise, my brother stepped from the shadows. It was odd to see him in such a place like this, where darkness and danger seemed to press in from the walls. What was even stranger was the cool collectiveness in his eyes, the precision with which we whipped out a wad of twenty dollar bills and shoved it in the girl's palm. "Go, and don't tell anyone we're here," he ordered. "If you do, you'll regret it."