Page 40 of The Bonds of Indigo

Handsome. Blond. Defined features softened by a five o’clock shadow. His slightly upturned nose and the dimples that appear when he smiles should make him look boyish, but the sharpness around his blue eyes says otherwise.

“Who’re… you? Where’s…” My throat rasps, so I swallow and try again. “Where’s Butcher?”

“We met on the phone. I’m Atlas.” Oh… right. His voice does sound familiar. “And grabbing us coffee.” He grins like that’s normal. “He’ll be glad to know you’re alive.”

My slow eye roll earns me a laugh. “You know… because you’re helping him.”

“Right.”

I lift my arm and the movement sends a lance of pain straight through my shoulder. Even beneath the clean bandages, the memory of Pyrehound teeth throbs. My skin feels too tight, like it’s struggling to contain the wound beneath.

“Why am I here? How long have I been out?”

When I shift, he steps in immediately, adjusting the bed and guiding pillows behind my back. The action is meant to be kind, but it makes me uneasy. Why is he being nice?

“Three days,” he says. “And we’re at Clydesdale General. Small hospital, about an hour from the lake.”

“I asked why, not where.”

I let my head sink back into the stiff pillow and breathe deep, trying to collect every scattered thought. I don’t remember anything between the moment my vision went black, and opening my eyes in this hospital room.

“Right, well…” Atlas rubs at his jaw, eyes flicking toward the door like he’d rather not be the one to explain. “I’ll let Butcher tell you that.”

Exhausting.

“You can just tell⁠—”

“I’m here and can tell you myself.”

My heart stutters hard.

I turn slowly, dreading what state he’ll be in after what happened near the gate.

Butcher steps into the white and cream room like he owns the place. Behind him, the whiteboard cluttered with messy scribbles looks almost frantic in comparison to the rest of the sterile space. He looks… different. Hair pulled back into a high bun, tension in his jaw, and shadows under his eyes. Strange, for a creature who doesn’t need sleep.

“Good to see you awake.”

I swallow against the raw burn in my throat, and nod.

“My blood didn’t heal you,” he continues, blunt as always. “And I could swear you were about to die, so I called Atlas here, then brought you to the closest hospital.”

Atlas whistles. “Peculiar. I’m intrigued to know why Vampire blood didn’t heal you… Is it because of being a Yldarwright?”

He drops into the chair again and crosses his leg, denim stretching tight around his knee.

I return my attention to Butcher. “Our blood is pure, so anything foreign we counteract. We naturally flush out poisons, blood, and all other foreign liquid from our system.”

“Your body did a shit job of getting rid of that poison⁠—”

“No…” I cut him off sharply, eyes narrowing. “I wasn’t poisoned.”

“Actually, that’s what the doctors said,” Atlas adds, raising his brows. “They flushed out your system. You’re lucky to be alive. It was a lot.”

I say nothing.

There’s no point arguing. They’re wrong, but not stupid. It wasn’t the toxin threatening my life—it was everything else. Exhaustion. Blood loss. The drain of trying to channel when I’m barely connected to anything but a void.

I can’t die thanks to this fucking hex. It was a means to make my several life sentences last, regardless of the treatment I was given.