Page 75 of Seducing Jenny
How could they love me, after I murdered Surge?
The room reeked of blood and vomit and whatever the fuck Discord had lanced out of my leg. Whatever Mal had injected me with, I had a hard time keeping my head up to watch what was happening with Surge. I didn’t want to watch it, but I couldn’t look away. The least I could do was suffer the sight of my crime.
When I focused my eyes on him, my hearing came back all at once.
Longshot ordered, “Pressure there, hold it!”
“I’m not done!” Discord’s voice cracked. “He needs more blood! He can have all of it, I don’t fucking care—”
“Not until he’s no longer bleeding out, you dumbass!” Mal snapped. “If you’re connected while he’s bleeding out, you’ll bleed out too!”
“Fine,” she hissed and moved, presumably putting pressure on something. Then she lowered her arm below the level of the exam table.
“Tiger, med kit,” Longshot said.
Tiger fetched the big black bag on the floor. “What else?”
“Stand by.”
The four of them worked together, focused and desperate to save Surge, but I feared it was a lost cause. I didn’t know how much time had passed, five minutes or five hours, but by the time I looked anywhere but Surge, the suns had started to set outside the lab’s window.
Finally, the frenzy of working on Surge calmed.
“The only thing we can do now is wait,” Longshot said, his voice grim, but steady. “Discord, how are you feeling?”
“I’ll be alright.” She was still connected to Surge but standing up with her arm over him for the blood to easily flow down.
Then, Discord turned to look at me, her eyes full of rage. “What do we do with her?”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Mal said.
“Yes, it was, she’s a conduit,” Discord spat angrily. “They attract ghosts.”
“That’s just a myth,” Longshot said, putting the implements he’d used on Surge into the sink.
“And how do we even know she was even possessed, for that matter?” Discord went on, narrowing her gaze on me. “Everyone knows that conduits hate magicians. Her people slaughtered his people, and she could have been here to finish the job—”
“Then why didn’t she attack him before?” Mal said, trying to be the voice of reason, even though I understood Discord’s suspicions. “She had plenty of chances to attack him before now. You’re being irrational.”
“Oh, am I? I’m so sorry, Mal,” she drawled sarcastically, before she snapped, “I’m a little low on blood for some reason! Oh, right, I’m trying to save Surge’s life aftersheslashed his throat!”
“Everyone, stop arguing!” Tiger’s voice cracked through the tension. “It can’t be good for Surge to hear all this.”
That appeared to calm Discord down. She huffed, her violet eyes burning a hole through me. Studying her, it was then that I realized her hair was dyed black. I could see her blue roots.
Tiger came to me. “Jenny, what does Grass know about…anything?”
I swallowed hard, tasting bitter, coppery blood that I knew was Surge’s from the initial attack. “Not much, I don’t think. She was bluffing every conversation she had with anyone—”
“You could see that?” Mal asked incredulously. “Hear it?”
I nodded. “Everything. But I couldn’t control her. The closest I came was making the headaches worse and giving her intestinal cramps when she had decided to seduce everyonehere. Whatever sedation you gave her, that’s the only reason why I was able to make her scream ‘no’ when you tried to give her the antivenom.”
“Why did you do that?” Discord asked, looking genuinely perplexed.
“Because of Grass’ thoughts. She was scared she would die her second death in my body, ifIdied. She wanted the antivenom to save herself from going to the ether.”
Discord frowned. “But you didn’t know if the antivenom would save you in time. If she left your body too late…”
