Page 47 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

“What?” I demand. “What happens if you screw up?”

“Chances of cardiac arrest are high. Shuffle.” She gently hip-bumps Archer to the side and presses a hand to Christabelle’s forehead. “We have to correct acidemia before her organs sustain damage. But we’re in a fricken bedroom, Lix. We’re not in a hospital.”

“We can make it work here.” I study Christabelle’s pale cheeks and try to remember their exact coloring from five minutes ago. Ten. Twenty.Is she getting better or worse?“Anything you need,” I rasp, peeling my eyes away from her face and bringing them back to Minka’s. “You name it, and I’ll get it for you.”

“Go wash your hands.” She pricks Christabelle’s finger again and repeats her step of adding the droplet to the small handheld machine. “Clean yourself up, then come back here and freshen her up. Bring damp towels and wash her face. She deserves to wake not covered in her own vomit.”

She gives me her back and checks the screen in her hand, then exhales a tired sigh, clearly unimpressed with the machine’s reading. “We’ll check her sugars every hour from now until she’s out of the woods.”

“And will she be?” I wring my hands and stay where I am by the bed, silently begging for a miracle. “Will she wake?”

“I’m gonna make sure of it.” She takes a piece of white tape from her pile of supplies and places it over the rubber tubing, adhering it to Christabelle’s arm. “And she probably didn’t tell you because she’s proud. Not everyone wants to discuss their medical needs, Felix. By the time she might’ve been inclined to, she’d have been too sick to get the words out.”

“She was debating with me earlier.” I lick my dry lips and try to remember the vicious words she tossed my way. Her brutal attacks, a concept that is now oddly satisfying to me. If she could spar like that while in the throes of a diabetic episode, then how mean will she be when she’s running on all cylinders?I intend to find out.“She didn’t even mention she wasn’t feeling well.”

“You’re her enemy.” Micah grabs my arm and gently pulls me back. “Survival 101, Lix: we don’t tell the enemy what makes us weak.”

“She made herself weak! She endangered herself with her silence, knowing she’d have been stronger if she spoke up.”

“She doesn’t know you, man.” He continues to pull me with him as he crosses the threshold, until the last thing I see is Christabelle laid out on my brother’s bed, her arms pierced on both sides, tubing snaking away from her body, and that fucking braid I created frizzing because I made her wet her hair. “She doesn’t know that you’d have helped if she told you what she needed.” He brings me into the hall and forces me to turn. “She assumed we’re all like the Malone who came before us.”

“But we’re not,” I groan. My heart thuds deep in my chest, stinging with every beat—a punishment for the mess I’ve created. “I only wanted to shut her up, Micah. I didn’t want her to die! This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

12

CHRISTABELLE

I SCREWED UP

My head pounds. My mouth, drier than the desert. My stomach, more tender than I’ve ever experienced in my life. My eyelids feel impossibly heavy; like, it’s physically impossible to lift them. And my body, weighed down by bricks.

But I hear voices. And manage to process the soft mumble of chatter. Not just from one person, and not even between only two.

Multiple.

“Her sugars are stable.” A woman’s voice flitters through my ears and into the war being waged inside my aching skull. “Her potassium is good. We still have to replace the fluids she lost, but that’ll take a couple days of consistent treatment.”

“She gonna be okay?” a different voice asks. A voice that part of my consciousness recognizes, but not so well that I can name the owner. “No permanent damage?”

Clothes rustle, like someone shrugs. “Can’t know till she wakes, Arch. But…” The woman exhales a deep breath. “I think she’ll be okay?”

She says it like a question. Like she’s not sure.

“I’m not a doctor for the living, remember? I perform autopsies, not miracles.”

Autopsies?

Am I dead?

“Her pulse is steady,” the voice reports. “Her sugars are good. Her vitals are fine… ya know, considering.”

“How long do we have to wait?”

Thatvoice, the final one, I know.

Felix Malone.

The devil himself.

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