Page 323 of Halfblood Deceived

Mari approached him, placing her hand on Aella’s neck. “Her lips are turning blue. We need to go to the infirmary.”

Zeydan didn’t need to be told twice.

He hurried upstairs and reached the infirmary in a blur. He realized this was hardly helpful since Mari had to catch up with him. His heart raced and his hands shook as he placed Aella on the narrow table.

Something is wrong, wrong, wrong! Screamed his instincts.

Kamilla entered the room mere seconds later. She was pale as a ghost, in need of a blood host, no doubt, but she didn’t let that stop her. She looked for a crystal in a drawer and placed it on the crook of Aella’s neck. Blue magic flared, displaying a hologram of Aella’s organs.

Zeydan’s chest squeezed. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think stomachs normally move like that.”

“They don’t,” Kamilla agreed, brow furrowed.

Diana entered the room in a blur, blue eyes wide with panic. “What’s happening to her?”

“I don’t know,” Kamilla admitted, looking as disconcerted and downright terrified as Zeydan and Diana felt, which was not reassuring.

“Oh, fuck,” Mari said, a bit breathless from the doorway. She locked the door behind her and approached to roll Aella to her side. “We need a bucket—”

Aella convulsed and vomited a gurgle of dark red blood on Zeydan’s armor and the floor.

Diana let out a broken cry, one hand flying to her throat. “Oh, goddess.”

Zeydan’s ears rang. He held Aella’s head so she wouldn’t choke before Mari could tell him even as he felt as if the room were tilting under his boots.

Kamilla sniffed. “Something is not normal about that blood.” She took a metallic container from the counter and came back with it just as Aella vomited what seemed to be a whole pint of blood.

“What in the gods’ name is happening?” Zeydan asked, his voice low and shaky with the panic building inside him.

“If there is an infection, vampires eliminate it by excreting the compromised blood via vomiting,” Mari explained hastily as she placed a green-glowing hand on Aella’s stomach.

“Because we don’t have sweat glands, and our digestive systems are so different, yes,” Kamila said. “But Aella is half gargoyle. She has a humanoid digestive system. And sweat glands.”

“She’s not sweating,” Mari commented, eyes bright with magic and glazed as she cast a reading spell under her breath. Zeydan had seen her do this before. She could see inside someone without the need for holograms. “And her systems are changing. All at once now. It’s too much too fast.”

Aella convulsed and vomited more blood onto the floor.

“What sort of infection does she have?” Diana asked. “Did they poison her?”

Kamilla and Zeydan both sniffed at Aella and the blood.

Goddess, she looks so pale; Zeydan thought. “I can’t scent any poison I know of. And you, Kam?”

Kamilla shook her head. “No. But we can’t rule it out.”

Aella twisted on the bed and coughed up another mouthful of too-dark, oxidized blood.

“Please tell me she’s not dying, Mari,” Zeydan heard himself say. His head felt close to exploding from the pain and his whole body was shaking now. It was torture seeing Aella suffer and not knowing how to help her. He couldn’t fight her illness with his sword.

Aella sagged with a low groan.

Mari and Kamilla rolled her onto her back. The latter placed the crystal between Aella’s collarbones again. The hologram of her organs flared to life.

Mari’s brow furrowed. “Her blood levels are dangerously low.”

“A transfusion?” Kamilla suggested.

“You can have my blood,” Diana offered.

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