AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I listened, and sure enough, I heard the soft hitch of breath. The faint echo of Trixie’s heart.
“But I heard it stop,” I said, mystified as I glanced down, not ready to surrender myself to the hope that this was finally real. “I heard her heart stop.”
“The magic I gave her—black fennel—is incredibly unstable and dangerous. It puts the recipient into a deep coma and then sends magic to repair the big organs.”
“You basically killed her to revive her? You idiot, Belinda.”
“It was the only chance,” Belinda said. “It worked. She’ll be okay, Dominic. She’ll be okay.”
As if to punctuate Belinda’s point, Trixie’s eyes opened. Her hands came up, and fingers as cold as ice stroked my cheek.
“Dom,” she whispered.
“Darling,” I said, pouring myself fully into the stream of hope crashing around me. “Trixie. I’m so sorry. I love you more than anything. I never intended to hurt you.”
“I know,” she murmured. “I know, Dom. You lovable idiot.”
Chapter 27
Two weeks later
Trixie
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Dom rested a reassuring hand on my back. “You don’t have to return to your apartment at all. I can hire movers to pack your things. You can stay with me in the penthouse. Forever, if you want.”
I leaned against Dom. He’d spent the last two weeks helping me back to health, along with the constant array of nursing staff who were lovely but a little overbearing, in his penthouse. It’d taken me two days to convince the staff he’d hired that I was perfectly able to use the bathroom without assistance.
“I feel okay,” I said, meaning it. “I do need to be back here.”
The black fennel magic Belinda had administered in that warehouse basement had taken a lot out of me, but it had saved my life. I was getting my strength back slowly but surely, and I was finally feeling a few standard deviations away from normal again.
We stood outside of my apartment on the seventh floor, a place I hadn’t stepped foot since Levian and Sebastian had ransacked it. I had no clue what sort of shape it’d be in. Emmy had been living here, but honestly, she’d been spending so much time sleeping on the couch in the penthouse to keep me company that I couldn’t imagine she’d had much time to put our things back in order.
I opened the door on the seventh floor, let myself in, and found Emmy sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of steaming coffee in hand. She looked up and smiled brightly at me.
“I made coffee! Dom said you’d be back today.” Emmy waved her hand at a mug. “Welcome home. You know, temporarily.”
I blinked. My apartment was just as I’d left it, except better.
At first glance, I wondered if I’d made up the home invasion. My plants were all in their proper places looking healthier than ever. Then, I started to isolate some of the details that informed me indeed, I hadn’t imagined anything.
Some of my plants had been potted into new homes, probably because their old pots had been broken. Books had been placed back on their proper shelves, but some of the covers looked too new and too shiny to be the same copies I’d had before. Picture frames had been replaced with nicer versions, lamps were all bright and unbroken, and there wasn’t a shard of stray glass on the floor.
“You did all this?” I said to Emmy. “You should’ve waited—”
“I didn’t lift a finger,” Emmy corrected. “This man here handled everything.” She nodded at Dom with a new fondness. “He even had the Society of Magical Sciences come in and replace all of my lab equipment with the best in the industry.”
“My plants?” I turned to Dom.
“I had a few gardeners from Le Jardín pop over and work their magic,” Dom muttered. “Just so you didn’t have to worry about it.”
“It’s too much. It’s perfect.”
Dom cleared his throat. “On that note, about the sale of the building...”
“Dom—”
“Wait.” He took a breath. “I’ve put it on pause for now. Extenuating circumstances.”
