My hand stopped, hovering over the handle, the weight of one push being the fork in the road—the moment that could change things inside me for the rest of my life. If I do this—if I open this door, there’s no going back; what I may see in my husband could haunt me for forever.

With a breath, I pushed the door open; “David?”

No one responded.

“David. It’s me.” I knelt down beside the bed, slipping among the shadows, grateful not to see just yet. A firm silhouette rested like a mound on Mike’s bed, and warm heat simmered off it, the putrid, puss-scented reek of rotting skin making me hold a breath. When a shadow blocked the dim light from the hall, I looked up. “Em. Is he alive?”

“Yes, but he’s not bothering to breathe—he’s in too much pain, but he is alive.”

“Pain?”

After a long sigh, Emily walked across the room and placed her hand on the bedside lamp. “I hope you’re ready for this, Ara.”

“Wait.” I jumped up and grabbed her wrist. “How bad is he?”

“Bad?” She almost laughed. “Put it this way, Ara, when we sent him off with the Warriors, he was weak, really weak, and so battered already. Take that and mix it with what we assume was around twenty minutes in a roaring fire, and bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“Yes, we think. By the time you told us what happened, it’d already been four hours since we rescued you. When Morgaine’s knights got there, though, David wasn’t on the fire anymore. Someone pulled him out.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know, but they just left him there.”

“Do you think, maybe, he pulled himself out?”

Emily shook her head. “The caplet of venom he bit into was enough to put him in a state-like-death for over six hours. There’s no way he pulled himself out.”

“Caplet?”

“Yeah. Venom of the Created. He bit into it when you bit him.”

“But...I thought he was immune?”

Emily breathed out through smiling lips; “No one is immune to that much venom in one dose. Like drugs—you can a have a little, but too much and you’re down.”

“So, my venom, in a high enough dose, could still kill him?”

“Not sure. He was weak when he swallowed Morgaine’s venom, but, are you really willing to test that on anyone?”

“No.” I considered the mound for a second. “Do you think Arthur pulled him out…maybe he…?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that Morgaine examined him and said, from the looks of his skin, he had to have burned for at least twenty minutes.”

“Is there anything left of him?”

“How ‘bout I just turn on the light.”

“Wait.” Mike swept into the room and wrapped his arms around my waist—linking his fingers in a tight belt of restraint. “Okay, do it.”

The light spread to each corner of the room quickly, lighting up flash images as I turned my face away, closing my eyes around a hairless head, the skin cracked and charred, like lava simmering on water. “That’s David?” I covered my mouth, inching closer to Mike. “That’s really him?”

“Yes,” Emily said.

“Ara, just look—just open your eyes,” Mike said.

With my hand tightly holding possible vomit in, I shook my head.

“Ara, will you just look!”

One eye at a time opened slowly, blurring, focusing on the light in the room before shifting edgily over the twisted, unmoving life form. “Oh God.” I pushed out from Mike’s arms, landing by the bed. “He’s bad,” I noted, my eyes running over the black cage of skin, revealing a prisoner of blood and yellow liquid, seeping out through interlaced fingers of raw, stretching skin.

“He’s not that bad,” Mike said.

“He’s not as bad as I imagined.” I wiped a tear from my cheek.

His mouth was completely melted together; a section of his chin fused to his chest, and one arm stripped of the flesh—all the way down to grey bone.

“Was he conscious?” I looked at Mike. “You said he burned alive. Did he know what was going on?”

“Under venom, you’re in a lockdown.” Morgaine appeared in the room. “Its sole purpose is to paralyse the body, but—”

“Not the mind,” Mike added solemnly.

“He knew.” I covered my mouth. “When Jason lifted him—he knew he was going to burn.”

“Yes. But it was always a risk, Amara. He went willingly to that fate, knowing he was saving your future.” Morgaine touched David’s fingertips—the only two fingers on his body that weren’t charred. David twitched.

“Oh God.” I sniffled, picturing how the flames fingered his skin, dissolving his face, singeing his hair until it curled and shrivelled against his scalp—and all the while, I sat, watched—did nothing. “How can I ever forgive myself for not helping him?”

“It’s not your fault, baby.”

Without another thought, I slid my bottom teeth across my wrist until the flesh popped open and a burst of blood spilled out, as I fought tears and sobs to hold my arm steady. He was alive—frozen in pain while he laid there burning. Melting. He felt that. I rested my wrist against his lips. “Drink,” I cried, “David, drink—please?”

“Ara.” Emily grabbed my hand. “He can’t. He’s too badly damaged. He has no way of swallowing.”

“No.” I looked at the unrecognisable face of the man I loved. “There has to be a way to get blood into him.”

“We’ve tried, baby.” Mike lifted me away from David and pressed his thumb firmly against the cut on my wrist. “He’s just too burned.”

“If he can’t drink blood, how will he recover?”

“It will happen—in time,” Morgaine said. “We’ll coat his burns with it, and, eventually he’ll start to heal. It’s just going to be a long process—from the outside, in.”

“But he will recover?”

“Yes.”

The breath I took numbed my legs as it travelled through me. I dropped to the floor, snuggling into Mike when he squatted beside me and cupped my face to his chest.