Chapter 67 67
Kaelen's POV:
I didn't sleep. Not really. Lay on the couch staring at the ceiling for maybe four hours, drifting in and out of something that wasn't rest, more like my brain buffering. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the hotel room. The needle in her neck. The man dragging her toward the bedroom.
And then the fire, my fire, and the way it felt when I stopped holding back. Like unclenching a fist I'd been making for twenty-two years.
Around seven I gave up pretending and went to wash my face in the bathroom. The mirror was small and cracked in one corner and the light was that yellow fluorescent that makes everyone look sick. I stared at myself for a while. Same face. Same eyes, back to blue-green now. Same hands, clean from last night but I could still feel the blood on them if I thought about it too hard.
I'd scrubbed them three times. Under the nails, between the fingers, the creases around my knuckles. The water had run brown and then pink and then clear, and I'd kept scrubbing even after there was nothing left because I could still feel it. Would probably feel it for a long time.
Marcus showed up around eight. I heard his car pull in and went to the door, letting him in before he knocked because I didn't want the sound waking Annabeth. She was still asleep. I'd checked twice. Three times. Maybe four, I lost count. Just cracked the door enough to hear her breathing, make sure it was steady.
"How is she?" Marcus asked, shrugging off his jacket. He looked tired too, lines around his eyes deeper than usual, but his clothes were clean. He'd gone somewhere, maybe a hotel or another safe place he hadn’t mention, at some point, showered, changed. I was still in the same ripped shirt and scorched jeans from yesterday because leaving the safe house to change felt like abandoning a post.
"Woke up around three. We talked a little. She went back to sleep."
"Her fire?"
"Still nothing. She tried to reach for it, you could see it in her face, and there was just... nothing there."
Marcus nodded, like he'd expected that. He moved past me into the small kitchen area and started making coffee with the supplies he'd stocked here months ago. Folgers from a plastic container, a dented pot, water from the tap. The whole safe house smelled like dust and old wood and now, slowly, cheap coffee.
"The sedative they used," he said while the pot heated up. "I've seen it before. Once, years ago. The Order developed it specifically for red dragons. It doesn't just knock you out, it suppresses the connection to your fire at a... call it a cellular level. Like it puts the dragon part of her biology to sleep."
"And it wears off."
"It wears off. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours, depending on the dosage." He leaned against the counter. "But the recovery is rough. Her body's fighting the drug and trying to reboot her systems at the same time. She'll be exhausted, weak. Probably in pain she won't admit to."
That sounded exactly like Annabeth.
"There's something else," Marcus said, and I didn't like the way he paused before continuing. "Your healing abilities. Golden dragon healing works through physical contact, right?"
"Yeah. But I tried that yesterday. It helped with the bruises, the surface stuff, but the drug is... it's deeper than that. I can't just pull it out."
"No. But you can help her body fight it. Think of it like..." He rubbed his jaw, searching for words. "Like jumpstarting a car. You can't fix the engine, but you can give it enough charge to turn over on its own. Your healing energy can accelerate what her body is already trying to do. But it's not a quick touch. You'd need sustained contact. Extended. Long enough for the energy to actually circulate through her system."
I stared at him. "How long is sustained?"
"I don't know. An hour, maybe more. Depends on how deep the drug went."
An hour. An hour of touching Annabeth, of being close enough to feel her heartbeat, while she could barely look at me without flinching. An hour of pretending my hands on her skin was medical and not... everything else it was.
"She won't want that," I said.
"She doesn't have to want it. She needs it." Marcus poured two cups of coffee and handed me one. Black, no sugar, slightly burnt. "I'm not going to pretend this isn't awkward, Kaelen. I know what's between you two and I know how she feels about you right now. But my daughter is lying in that room with her fire suppressed and her body fighting a drug designed to kill dragons, and if you can help her recover faster, you're going to help her."
When he put it like that, there wasn't really room to argue.
"You should ask her," I said. "Not me. It's her body, her choice."
Something shifted in Marcus's expression. Surprise, maybe. Or approval. Hard to tell with him.
"I'll talk to her," he said. "But you'll do the healing."
He went to check on her. I stood in the kitchen drinking coffee that tasted like it had been filtered through a sock and tried not to think about the last time I'd had my hands on Annabeth for any extended period. The night at the stone well when she'd kissed me. Training sessions where our fingers brushed and neither of us pulled away fast enough. The night she'd said I love you and I'd held her so close I could feel her ribs expanding when she breathed.
I heard voices from the back room. Low, Marcus's rumble and then Annabeth's, quieter, rougher than usual. I couldn't make out the words. Didn't try.
After a few minutes Marcus came back.
"She says okay."
"That's it? Just okay?"
"What did you expect, a written invitation?" He grabbed his coffee and headed for the door. "I'll be outside checking the perimeter. Give you two some privacy."
"This isn't... it's not like that, Marcus."
He stopped at the door and looked at me over his shoulder with an expression that clearly said he wasn't stupid. "I know what it isn't. Do it anyway."
Then he was gone and I was standing in the kitchen holding a cup of terrible coffee and staring at the hallway that led to the back room where Annabeth was waiting for me to come touch her. For medical reasons. Completely clinical medical reasons.
Right...