Chapter 178 Bed Rest
ADRIANA
They brought him through the front entrance and the blood was on the floor before they had cleared the doorway.
I had heard the car coming and had been in the entrance hall already, having been moving toward the door since the guard’s message reached me, and the distance between hearing the words the King was attacked and seeing Elijah being carried by two of his own men with his head dropped forward and his shirt dark and wet, that distance was approximately forty seconds and it was the longest forty seconds I had experienced since the night the Cult took me.
I did not run to him. I moved to him, which is different, because running would have communicated something to the guards and staff around me that I did not have the luxury of communicating.
“The room. Now.” I turned to the nearest maid. “The royal physician should have been called the moment this happened — if he hasn’t been, call him. If he has been, find out why he isn’t here.”
They moved. I moved with them.
We all got to his room. He was placed on the bed. I checked his breathing first and almost fell to the floor in relief when I felt the warmth of it. It was a little labored and shallow, but it was there and that was comforting. I turned my attention to the wound, which was long and deep across the lower abdomen and had been losing blood for longer than I was comfortable calculating.
“Everyone out.”
Shawn was still in the doorway. I looked at him with the expression I had developed for his deliberate obtuseness.
“I won’t repeat that.”
He hesitated for a second but in the end turned and left, shutting the door behind him.
I stood in the room with my husband bleeding on the bed and made the calculation I had made only a few times in my life. The calculation of whether what the moment required was within the range of what conventional means could be addressed in the time available.
The physician was not here. The wound was significant. Elijah’s body was extraordinary in its resilience but it had its limits and blood did not wait for physicians.
I undressed to the floor and pressed my palms flat against the cold stone and began.
The incantations came back before I even tried to recall them. The wind moved through the room from nowhere. The candles did something unexpected with their flames.
That was the last thing I was aware of for some time.
Then next time I woke up, I was on the bed, fully dressed, under the duvet. The room was dark.
My head was informing me that the goddess had, as she sometimes did, taken the thing I had offered her and used slightly more of it than I had intended to give.
I sat up carefully.
Elijah’s side of the bed was empty, but I could hear water from the bathroom, which meant he was standing in a shower rather than lying in a pool of blood, which was an improvement significant enough to produce something that was almost relief.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My legs disagreed with this plan entirely and expressed their disagreement by giving way the moment my weight transferred to them, which sent me to the floor with an undignified impact.
The bathroom door opened.
“Adriana.” He crossed the room with the towel still around his waist and his hair still wet and the expression of a man who had been tracking sounds from behind a door and had been waiting for exactly this one. He helped me up and back onto the bed with the careful efficiency of someone who had some practice at this. “I told you to wait.”
“I didn’t know you were in the shower. How are you? Show me.”
He lifted the edge of the towel enough for me to see his abdomen. A scar, clean and complete, the tissue fully closed. Nothing that would require further intervention.
“You’re going to tell me I shouldn’t have,” I said.
“I’m going to thank you,” he said. “The physician arrived while I was in the shower. He confirmed that without whatever you did, the outcome would have been different.” He sat beside me. “Thank you.”
“Where is Leo?”
His expression changed in the way it changed when something was being managed from a distance.
“I have every available man in the forest and on the roads. Everything we know about the route is being mapped. I will find him.” He said it with the certainty. “Whoever planned this knew our route before we left, which means someone in a small circle gave that information either willingly or under pressure. I will find that person as well.”
I looked at him.
“You need to rest before you do anything.”
“Adriana—”
“You need to rest before you do anything. That is not a suggestion from your wife. That is a medical observation from the person who just expended a significant amount of herself keeping you alive.” I held his gaze. “You’ll rest for two days. Then you move.”
He looked like he wanted to object. He also looked like a man who understood this argument was one he would lose.
“Fine,” he said finally.
“Stay in this room. I’ll handle the official matters today.”
“The kingdom needs—”
“The kingdom needs its king functional. You are not currently functional. I am.” I stood up, carefully this time, with adequate warning to my legs. “I also need to tell you something, when you’re rested enough to hear it properly. There’s a situation in the pack that predates today and that requires your attention.” I paused. “But not today. Rest first.”
“You’re not going to tell me now.”
“No. Because if I tell you now, you will stand up and leave this room and undo everything I just did to keep you in one piece.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“You’re infuriating,” he said.
“I know. Sleep.”
I found Martine at the bottom of the stairs, and as I came closer I was almost certain I heard her exhale something that might have been the end of a sob.
“Are you alright?”
She straightened immediately. “My apologies, Luna. Yes. Do you need the files?”
“I do. And I need you to tell me if something is wrong.”
She looked at me and then away, and something in her face confirmed what I had heard.
“The files,” she said again. “Of course.”
I watched her retreating figure, wondering what that was all about.