Page 7 of Cardinal House

“Where’s Raine?”

Those are the first words out of my mouth.

Cracked and dry. So. Fucking. Dry. It feels like the roof of my mouth is sandpaper when one of my brothers pushes a cardboard straw between my lips, the water at a disgusting lukewarm temperature, but god, does it taste fucking good.

“Not here,” Thorne says plainly, honest and true, my older brother is never a man to mince his words.

“Get him here,” I groan.

The pain in the centre of my chest feels like an elephant sitting atop my sternum with a fire laced sword shoved between my ribs, every breath laboured and bone fucking dry. The cough that comes shoots out of my mouth and has me bowing in agony. Body curling into itself like one of those little grey woodlice my nephew Atlas always picks up and holds out to me before stuffing them into his pockets.

Eyes gritty beneath shut lids, I flop back on the bed, my entire body aching, and a roaring headache pounding in my temples.

Jesus.

“Wolf, you need to relax, your blood pressure is spiking and then you will have the nurse in here berating me for working you up,” Thorne tells me, his tone brokering no argument. “Raine is fine, he feels bad, but he is fine.”

Finally opening my eyes, I squint hard, my lashes crusted over, the wash of bright white light spearing my pupils like a blade, “Fuck me,” I groan out, gritting my teeth in a molar-cracking clench, as I attempt to sit my arse up.

“Easy,” Thorne hisses, his hands on my upper arm, upper back, “I’ll move the bed, lie back down.” Pressure from the flats of his hands against the fronts of my shoulders has my spine gently reconnecting with the weird half sponge, half air-filled mattress. “Right,” he says, a white controller in his hand with an array of different coloured buttons. “This should do it.”

With that, the back of the bed starts to push forward, and I’m sitting up, panting at the crunch in my abdomen, but I feel better than I did lying down, less like I nearly died and more like I’m about to.

“Fuck me, I feel like shit.” Sweat beads across my brow, gathering at my temples, and I feel cold all over.

“You have been shot before,” my brother states.

Thorne, ever the wordsmith.

“Yes, I have. Too many fucking times, but never point blank by my own brother. Jesus Christ, it’s like there’s a fire in my lungs,” I complain, letting my head drop back with a thud. “Why aren’t I on the good shit? How long have I been out?”

“Which question would you like answered first?” Thorne drawls.

He slides his hands into his slacks pockets, cocking his head just slightly to one side. His perfect wave of black hair is styled neatly with his usual side-parting, his dark eyes like a black night’s sky intent on mine. He blinks once, slowly, and although his face is completely stoic, I can feel his teasing smile. He does that now. Smiles. Real ones. Since Haisley came into his life.

“You’re such a fucking fuck.” I exhale a huff of breath through my nose.

“I know.” He licks his lips, straightening his head on his shoulders, “One, you are on the good shit. And two, three days.”

“I’m tired as fuck,” I moan, a jolt of pain spearing through my lower back, vibrating through the discs of my spine, the cords of my neck.

“Yes, well, you died a few times, I am sure that is quite exhausting.”

“I don’t even have the energy to give you a reaction to that, bro,” I sigh heavily, breathing as deeply as I dare. “What’s the damage? Healing time?”

“Few more days here for monitoring, fluids, antibiotics, but you are looking at a slow six to eight weeks recovery.”

Slowly, I blink, staring down at my chest. A huge white gauze bandage covers the wound so I cannot see, but it feels as though a crater has been blown through the centre of my heart. The tape holding it down is stuck like a second skin and the thought of peeling it off when my body aches so much makes nausea roll in my belly.

I think of our youngest brother. The tape that held gauze to half of his upper body, his face, his neck, covering burns inflicted by our own mother. He was nine when she started changing her cleansings, spouting a bunch of culty bullshit, and changing up our treatments.

I wish I didn’t love her.

“I want to see Raine,” I swallow thickly, a lump in my throat, “I want to see our brother, Thorne.” I look to him, my eyes, so much different in colour to his, are glassy, his face a blank picture of calm, but I know he’s hiding something. “Where is he, Thorne, where the fuck is he?”

“He has not been heard from since it happened,” he tells me reluctantly, and for a long second I just stare at him.

Thorne lied to me.

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