Chapter 65 65
Annabeth's POV:
The first thing I noticed was the ceiling. Wood. Dark, unfinished, with a water stain in the corner that looked kind of like Florida if you squinted. Not my ceiling. Not my room.
The second thing was the pain.
Not sharp, not localized, just... everywhere. Like someone had taken my entire body and wrung it out like a dishrag and then put it back together wrong. My head was the worst, this dull heavy pressure behind my eyes that made the dim light from the window feel like staring at the sun.
I tried to move. My arms responded, barely, like they were operating on a two-second delay. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. And when I reached for my fire, that automatic reflex I'd developed over weeks of training with Marcus, there was nothing. Literally nothing. Not even the low background hum that had become so constant I'd stopped noticing it. Just a blank space where it used to be, like reaching into a drawer and finding it empty.
That scared me more than the pain.
I turned my head, slow, because even that much movement made my skull throb, and saw him.
Kaelen was in a chair next to the bed. Not sitting in it exactly, more like collapsed into it, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his head tipped back against the wall at an angle that was going to destroy his neck when he woke up. He was asleep, or something close to it, his breathing deep and uneven in a way that said his body had shut down whether he wanted it to or not.
He looked... God.
His shirt was ripped at the collar and down one sleeve, the fabric stiff with something dark that could've been blood or ash or both. His jeans had burn marks on the knees, actual scorch marks like he'd been kneeling in fire, and his hands, his hands were the worst. Covered in dried blood, caked under his fingernails and in the creases of his knuckles, the skin underneath clean and unbroken because of course it was, he healed, but the blood was still there. Other people's blood. On his hands because of me.
There was ash in his hair. Actual gray ash dusting through the blonde strands, and a smear of something across his jaw that might have been soot. He smelled like smoke and sweat and that warm thing underneath that was just him, cedar and cinnamon or whatever it was, I'd never been able to pin it down.
I stared at him for a long time. Longer than I should have. Watching his chest rise and fall, cataloguing the damage to his clothes and the blood on his skin and thinking about what he must have done to look like that. What he must have become in that hotel room after I blacked out.
The last thing I remembered was his voice. That sound that wasn't human anymore, that made the walls shake. And his eyes, gold so bright it hurt, and an expression I'd never seen on his face before. Like something had broken loose inside him that couldn't be put back.
GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER.
My throat closed up. I pressed my face into the pillow, which smelled like dust and something chemical, definitely not my pillow, and tried to breathe through whatever was happening in my chest. It wasn't crying exactly. More like my body trying to process too many things at once and failing at all of them.
The movement must have made some noise because Kaelen's breathing changed. A sharp inhale, a shift in the chair, and then silence. I could feel him looking at me even with my face in the pillow.
"Annabeth?"
His voice was rough. Wrecked, actually, like he'd been screaming or breathing smoke or both. I should turn around. Should acknowledge him, say something, anything. But my face was wet and I was lying in a strange bed with no fire in my chest and his blood-covered hands had done terrible things for me and I didn't know what to do with any of that.
"Annabeth. Hey." The chair creaked. Footsteps, and then his hand on my shoulder, careful, barely touching, like he was afraid I'd shatter. "Can you hear me? Are you okay? Talk to me."
I rolled onto my back and looked at him.
He was standing over me with the worst expression I'd ever seen on a person's face. Relief and terror and guilt and something desperate that I didn't want to name, all of it fighting for space behind those eyes that were still slightly gold around the edges, like he couldn't quite turn it off.
"Hi," I said. My voice came out scratchy and weak, like I hadn't used it in days. "How long was I out?"
"About fourteen hours." He said it flat, matter-of-fact, but his hand on my shoulder was trembling. "You scared the shit out of me."
"Fourteen..." I blinked. That meant it was, what, the middle of the night? Early morning? The window showed darkness, so yeah. Past midnight at least. "Where are we?"
"Safe house. Mill Road. Marcus's place."
Right. The safe house Marcus had been using as a base for months.
"The Order," I started.
"Handled." He said it in a way that shut down further questions. Not mean, just... final.
I looked at his hands again. At the blood. He noticed me looking and pulled his hand off my shoulder, shoving both of them into his pockets like he could hide what was on them.
"Is any of that yours?" I asked.
"No."
"Kaelen."
"None of it's mine. I heal, remember?"
"I remember." I pushed myself up on my elbows and the room tilted. Bad idea. My arms were shaking with the effort of holding myself up and my vision went fuzzy around the edges. "Shit."
"Hey, hey, don't—" He reached for me, then stopped, his hands hovering in the air between us like he didn't know if he was allowed to touch me. That hesitation, that careful distance he'd been keeping for weeks, even now, even here, even after everything. It made something twist in my stomach that wasn't nausea.
"I'm fine," I said, which was obviously a lie. I was the opposite of fine. I was lying in a strange bed with no powers, no phone... wait, where was my phone?
"On the table." He must've seen me looking. "Marcus brought your stuff from the car. Your phone, your keys, your jacket."
"Right." I lowered myself back down because my arms were done pretending they could hold me up. The ceiling and its Florida water stain stared back at me. "My fire's gone."
"Not gone. Suppressed." He sat back down in the chair, pulling it a couple inches closer to the bed. Then moving it back. Then forward again, like he couldn't decide how close was appropriate. "They used some kind of device that disrupts dragon fire. And the sedative, whatever they injected you with, it's dragon-specific. Designed to knock out our systems."
"How do you know all that?"
"Marcus. He got here a couple hours ago, checked on you. Said you'd be out for a while and the fire would come back on its own, maybe a day or two. Your body just needs to metabolize the drug."
A day or two. A day or two without my fire, without the one weapon I had, stuck in a safe house with my estranged father and the ex-boyfriend I hadn't spoken to in weeks until last night when I showed up at his door because I needed him.
Needed. Past tense. Except I was still lying in a bed he'd put me in, in a safe house he'd carried me to, and the blood on his hands was there because he'd fought his way through a room full of armed men to get to me.
I wasn't really in a position to use past tense about anything.