The scorpion poison was barreling through his central nervous system, jamming up his neuro-highways and-byways, making it so that dragging his body over to his clothes involved an embarrassing display of weakness. The trouble was, the antivenin had to stay in the car, because the princess would have found it, and showing a core weakness like that was like handing over your loaded weapon to the enemy.
Trez clearly lost patience with the show, because he went over and picked up the coat. “Just put this on so we can get you treated.”
“I…get dressed.” It was whore’s pride.
Trez cursed and knelt down with the coat. “For fuck’s sake, Rehv-”
“No-” Wild wheezing cut him off and took him flat on the floor, giving him a quick close-up of the knots in the pine boards.
Man, it was bad tonight. The worst it had ever been.
“Sorry, Rehv, but I’m taking over.”
Trez ignored his pathetic attempts to fend off help, and after the sable was wrapped around him, his friend picked him up and carried him out like a broken piece of equipment.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Trez said as his long legs took them quickly to the Bentley.
“Watch…me.”
To keep him and Xhex alive and out in the free world, he had to.
NINETEEN
Rehv woke up in his bedroom in the Adirondack Great Camp he used as a safe house. He could tell where he was by the floor-to-ceiling windows, the cheery fire across the way, and the fact that the footboard on the bed had putti carved in the mahogany. What he wasn’t clear on was how many hours had passed since his date with the princess. One? A hundred?
Across the dim room, Trez was sitting in an oxblood club chair, reading in the dim yellow light of a goosenecked lamp.
Rehv cleared his throat. “What book is that?”
The Moor looked up, his almond-shaped eyes focusing with a sharpness Rehv could have done without. “You’re awake.”
“What book?”
“It’s The Shadow Death Lexicon.”
“Light reading. And here I thought you were a Candace Bushnell fan.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Fine. Great. Perky as shit.” Rehv grunted as he pushed himself up higher on the pillows. In spite of his sable coat, which was wrapped around his naked body, and the quilts and throw blankets and down comforters on top of him, he was still cold as a penguin’s ass, so Trez had obviously hit him with a lot of dopamine. But at least the antivenin had worked, so the wheezing and shortness of breath were gone.
Trez slowly closed the ancient book’s cover. “I’m just getting ready, s’all.”
“For going into the priesthood? I thought the whole king thing was up your alley.”
The Moor put the tome on the low table next to him and rose to his full height. After a full-body stretch, he came over to the bed. “You want food?”
“Yeah. That’d be good.”
“Gimme fifteen.”
As the door shut behind the guy, Rehv fished around and found the sable’s inside pocket. When he took out his phone and checked, there were no messages. No texts.
Ehlena hadn’t reached out and touched him. But then, why would she have?
He stared at the phone and traced the keyboard with his thumb. He had a striking hunger to hear her voice, as if the sound of her could wipe away everything that had happened in that cabin.
As if she could wipe away the past two and a half decades.
Rehv went into his contacts and fired up her number on the screen. She was probably at work, but if he left a message, maybe she’d call him on her break. He hesitated, but then hit send and put the phone up to his ear.
The instant he heard ringing, he got a vivid, vile image of him having sex with the princess, his hips pounding away, the moonlight casting obscene shadows on rough floorboards.
He ended the call on a quick punch, feeling as if his body were coated in shit lotion.
God, there were not enough showers in the world for him to be clean enough to talk to Ehlena. Not enough soap or bleach or steel wool. As he pictured her in her pristine nurse’s uniform, her strawberry blond hair back in a neat ponytail, her white shoes unscuffed, he knew that if he ever touched her he’d stain her for life.
With his numb thumb, he stroked the flat screen of the phone, as if it were her cheek, then let his hand fall down onto the bed. The sight of the brilliant red veins of his arm reminded him of a couple more things he’d done with the princess.
He’d never thought of his body as any particular gift. It was big and muscular, so it was useful, and the opposite sex liked it, which meant it was an asset of sorts. And it functioned all right…well, except for the side effects it kicked out from the dopamine and the allergy to scorpion venom.