Page 128 of The Hunter
The surge of elation and relief he felt drove Christopher to his knees. He prayed in that moment. Thanked a God he’d never believed in.
“You see?” Jakub said, throwing his little arms around Christopher’s neck. “She’s going to be fine, as long as you’re with us.”
But the fever flared in a matter of hours. Christopher and Jakub looked on in helpless horror as she shook with uncontrolled tremors, her teeth chattering though her skin burned.
Despair didn’t begin to describe the pit into which he was thrown.
***
“I just tucked Jakub in,” Farah said gently to Christopher as she leaned on the bedpost in the bedroom Welton had furnished all those nights ago. Millie had thought it looked like a forest. “He still believes she’s going to wake up any moment. He believes in you that much.”
If only Jakub knew that God owed Christopher no favors. But Christopher owed the devil plenty.
“You should sleep and eat something. I’ll sit with her and come for you if anything changes.” She held out a bowl of soup.
“I slept,” Christopher lied as he leaned forward in his chair, the only one in the entire house, the one he hadn’t left in almost two days. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Millie. Couldn’t look away. As long as he stayed with her, watched her chest rise and fall, then he knew she hadn’t left him. He’d close his eyes when hers opened. Not before. “And I’m not hungry.”
Farah left it alone, handing the soup to Welton, who’d been hovering silently at the basin. “What did the doctor say this morning?” She brushed a dark curl from Millie’s pale forehead.
“Her fever broke.”
“That’s excellent news.” The harder Blackwell’s wife tried to sound encouraging, the worse Christopher felt. “She’ll be back to us in no time.” Her face brightened. “I’ve brought you more good tidings. Chief Inspector Morley closed the matter of Lady Thurston’s death. It’s not something you’ll have to worry about in the future. Also, the police rescued those boys. They were hungry and traumatized, of course, but they’re unhurt. We’re finding places for them, hopefully together, as they’re brothers.”
Christopher nodded, because he was supposed to. He wished he cared. Millie would want him to care about something like that. Maybe he would, later. When she awoke.If… she…
“The doctor said that if she was going to wake, she’d likely do it today,” he reminded himself aloud.
“Of course.” With a soft press of her hand to his shoulder, Farah drifted to the door in a ruffle of skirts. “I’ll be downstairs with Dorian if you need me.”
He nodded, his head feeling heavy and his neck tight.
In her sleep, Millie gasped, her chest hitching on a labored breath as her fingers twitched.
“Millie?” Christopher rose and searched her face for signs of a change, but found nothing.
Lying flat on her back in the giant bed on the dais, arms to her sides and tucked beneath a mountain of blankets, she looked small and helpless. The warm beige color of the bedding made her white skin even paler. Though her spark was diminished, her magnetic beauty was not.
He’d gone through a lifetime of emotion while she slept.
The last eternity of hours had been spent in this gray sort of daze. As she hovered in between life and death, Christopher also existed in that limbo with her.
But he ached with love. With longing. With profound regret. With a fear that never faded to numbness but lingered so close to the surface his skin hurt with it.
What if she never smiled again? What if those dark eyes never sparkled with mischief, with that light that Jakub had tried so hard to capture in his painting? What if the last memory he had of her trulyalivewas the moment she’d offered to love him and he’d left her in a puddle of tears and cold bedsheets?
He had to tell her. She had to know.
Sinking to her side on the bed, Christopher took her cold, clammy palm and held it in both of his rough, scarred hands, willing some of his warmth into her.
She made another sound, like a cough, but not quite. His heart stopped until she was still again. His eyes stung and burned and he didn’t breathe for what felt like a full minute.
Christ, he couldn’t take much more of this.
“Millie?” He whispered her name. “Millie, you were right. Idofeel. It started the night I met you, the moment you blew me a kiss from the stage. It’s why I made that damned arrangement in the first place, because I had to touch you—” His voice broke and he had to clear emotion out of his throat. “Every time I said that I wanted you… I think I meant—I meant that I needed you. Ineedyou, Millie. I need you to wake up. I need to hold you against my heart because it’s the only fucking time I feel it beating. If you go, it dies. The last part of what makes me human dies with you. I’ll disappear. If you’re not on this forsaken planet, it might as well stop spinning until we all fly off into the void. Because that’s all there is without you. Emptiness.”
He felt something on his face, something hot and itchy. He lifted one of his hands to wipe at it and it came away wet.
Tears?Fuck.
