Beyond Ruin

by Kit Rocha

His lover's heartbeat was erratic, but not racing like it should have been. Instead, his heart was thumping slowly, each labored beat taking longer than the one before.

  Holy shit. "Jade!"

  She appeared on Mad's other side, breathless and disheveled as she sank to her knees and pried open the bag. "What do you need?"

  "Atropine. He's bradycardic." Maricela covered her mouth to stifle a confused sob, so Dylan gentled his voice and explained while Jade prepared the syringe. "His heart rate doesn't fit the rest of his symptoms."

  "What does that mean?" Scarlet asked as she helped him cut open Mad's shirt.

  "It means he's not just high." Dylan dug his transcutaneous pacemaker out of the bag. He peeled the backing from both pads and placed them—one high on the right side of Mad's chest, and the other on the left side of his rib cage.

  He flicked on the tracker and watched the screen come to life with a series of beeps and trails that represented Mad's heart rate. A normal human heartbeat was poetry, a series of spikes and dips in just the right intervals, just the right times. Mad's was a mess, the intervals all fucked up, and the recovery times longer than normal.

  His heart was failing right in front of Dylan's eyes.

  "Push the atropine," he ordered, "and get ready to start pacing."

  Mad's hand shot up, wrapping around Dylan's arm in a bruising grip. "Take me back—" He gasped in a breath, and his fingers flexed painfully. "Four. Bury me in Four."

  Dylan's heart twisted. "You're not going to die, sweetheart. Not on my watch." He couldn't afford to sedate him, not without knowing what drugs—or poisons, a tiny voice whispered—he had in his system. "When I start up this machine, it's going to hurt. I'm sorry."

  Mad muttered something in Spanish. Gideon pried Mad's hand from Dylan's arm and closed both of his own around it. "He says he's ready."

  When Dylan switched the monitor into active pacing mode, Mad stiffened and groaned through clenched teeth. Maricela and Isabela clutched at each other, weeping, while Scarlet looked on in ashen-faced silence.

  Jade's expression was blank as she took a moment to twist her hair up out of her face. But her eyes were dark with fear when she met his, and her hands shook slightly as she rolled up her sleeves.

  Dylan touched her arm. "The atropine and the pacing will get it done. We'll stabilize him, get him to the hospital. I promise."

  "But what happened?" Gideon growled, his voice rough with a dangerous edge that was anything but holy.

  Dylan's gaze skated past him and snagged on the goblet Mad had been using during dinner. It was different from everyone else's, delicately wrought glass etched with scrollwork and flowers, rimmed with gold. "What's with the fancy cup?"

  Gideon glanced at the table, his brow furrowed. "One of the glass crafters made it for me a couple years ago. I always—" He broke off, his gaze fixing on the carved back of his usual seat—the seat Mad had been in tonight—and his jaw tightened. "Shit."

  "So it's yours."

  "Yes." He whispered something too soft for Dylan to understand and brushed Mad's hair back from his forehead. "Could this be poison?"

  What better way to get rid of the leader of Sector One? One showy religious experience followed by a heart attack? His people would be too busy building his fucking shrine to think about assassination plots. "It's a possibility. A good one."

  Dylan glanced at Jade. She rose silently and crossed to the table to retrieve the glass. The pitcher of wine still sat in front of Leo, who paled visibly. "I poured the wine for him."

  Isabela wrapped her arms around him. "We all drank it, love."

  Which meant the poison had to be in the cup. Dylan clenched his jaw and checked the monitor. Mad's heart rate had steadied, but he'd slipped completely out of consciousness now—a blessing, maybe, when the cardiac pacer was sending regular jolts of electricity through his body to keep his heart going.

  He turned to Gideon. "We need to get him to the hospital and find out exactly what he's been given. We can keep him alive in the meantime, but that's the only way to make him well."

  "Maricela, have one of the drivers pull a car around." Gideon didn't look up from Mad's slack face as she rushed to obey. "I'll stay and question everyone who could have laid a hand on that cup."

  "Not a bad idea, Gideon." The monitor was still beeping steadily, but Dylan had to press his fingertips to the spot below Mad's chin and feel the pulse thumping there before he could swallow past the lump in his throat. "Because it looks like someone's trying to kill you."

  Chapter Nine

  The printout in his hand made sense, but it wasn't the whole picture. Not by a long shot.

  "Lysergic acid diethylamide." Dylan tossed the papers on the table in front of Jade and turned back toward the row of vials—the dregs of the wine remaining in Mad's goblet, divided into miniscule samples. "No wonder he was seeing dead people. Someone dosed him with LSD."

  She frowned and studied the paper. "But that's not all. It can't be, can it?"

  "No." He glared at the vials. "There's something else here, something quieter. Something hiding under the trip."

  Soft fingertips brushed the back of his neck. A calming touch, warm and gentle. "You'll find it."

  Her quiet confidence should have soothed him. It did, but it also left him feeling out of sorts, because she didn't understand the truth. None of them did.

  The reason he was so damn good at healing was because he knew every possible way to inflict injury. He knew every pressure point, every weak spot, every unpleasant sensation that could make someone beg for mercy. He'd been trained as well as any of Eden's soldiers, only his battleground was the human body, and his weapon was knowledge.

  He used his knowledge to heal these days, but he could never escape its origins in torture. He felt himself slipping into those old habits now, letting his mind sink into the depths of violence, trying to understand.

  "If it were me," he whispered, "I'd start flashy. Psychedelics are a good choice for One—you heard that woman."

  She stroked his nape again. "Mmm. Visions."

  "If they're ready to jump to that conclusion because no one's thinking drugs, it'd be easy to slip in something else."

  "Something subtle." Her voice dropped to a whisper, too. "What would you use, if you couldn't afford to create a martyr?"

  "There are a hundred things no one would test for. Things no one uses anymore." It would have to be a drug that was fast and deadly, that would stop the heart with a minimum of fuss and leave everyone believing that God had simply called their golden boy home. "Digitoxin, probably. It fits his symptoms, and you don't even have to get it from Five. The glycoside is extracted from the foxglove plant. You could grow it in your backyard, bypass a paper trail altogether."

  Jade pressed gently against his shoulder, urging him to face her. "You intervened in time. Mad will recover."

  He couldn't look at her, couldn't see that quiet certainty reflected in her eyes. "It's not that simple."

  "Dylan."

  He finally met her gaze and almost flinched. "What if we hadn't been there?"

  She laid her hand on his cheek. "Then Gideon Rios would be dead. Because I don't think Mad would have stayed without us."

  Gentle words, but they twisted in the pit of his stomach like a knife. He'd spent years letting strangers depend on him only in the most fleeting, superficial of ways. And now, not only did he have Jade looking at him like he could move heaven and earth, but there was Mad to think about. Mad, who sometimes looked at him the same way, who made Dylan want to be as good a man as he obviously thought he was.

  The only one of them with any sense was Scarlet. She looked at him and saw danger, pain. Smart fucking girl.

  He turned his head.

  Jade sighed. "You always do that. Turn away, as if you can't stand to let me see you."

  "What if I can't?"

  "What are you afraid I'll see? Too much darkness, or not enough?"

  There was a solemnity about her tonigh
t, an exhaustion that seemed to permeate her soul. So he gave her an honest answer. "I wouldn't worry at all if I was sweetness and light, like Mad or Scarlet. But I'm not. And neither are you."

  "Neither am I," she agreed softly. "So don't hide from me, Dylan. You can't show me anything that will shock me."

  She believed it to be the truth, so he let it lie. "What do you suggest, Jade? What's our next move?"

  She turned back to face the row of vials and brushed her finger over the top of one. "We use the darkness inside us to protect them."

  "How?"

  "We find out who would want Gideon dead." When she looked up at him, he saw death in her eyes. "And we take care of it before he tries again. Or succeeds, and leaves Mad with Sector One around his neck like a noose."

  The possibilities were as endless as the multitude of drugs someone could have used to stop Mad's heart. An angry sector leader. Eden. A jilted lover. A true believer who thought Gideon was fucking up the Prophet's legacy. Or, as Jade had pointed out, someone who wanted Mad in control of Sector One, for whatever reason.

  The last possibility made Dylan's blood run cold. It was the last thing Mad wanted—hell, when he thought he was dying, his last, frantic thoughts had been about the spectacle One would make of him. But he would do it if he had to, if walking away meant suffering, or another civil war.

  Dylan sat back and held up both hands. "You're the expert in human behavior, but motive is tricky. Know what's not?"

  "Opportunity." She tilted her head. "Anywhere else, I'd say it was easy. The leaders in Eden barely know their servants exist. I managed to subvert the loyalties of half my patron's household by my second month. But Mad's family knows their people. Even he knows them."

  "You know what Scarlet would say." He laid his hand on Jade's hip. For a moment, all he could see was Scarlet's hand in the exact same spot, skin on skin, and arousal tightened in his gut. "Fuck it. Gideon won't rest until he finds the bastard, we know that. So we leave the manhunt to Rios and his rage, and we take care of Mad."

  Jade traced her fingertips over the back of his hand. "And Scarlet."

  And Scarlet. Her discomfort during the boisterous family scene had been achingly apparent. Whatever her life had been like, Dylan was sure it had been lonely. But her distress paled next to her terror at Mad's medical emergency. She hadn't panicked, but she hadn't been able to hide her agony, either. It was seared onto Dylan's memory, another glimpse behind her tough façade. "She loves him, doesn't she?"

  "She doesn't believe so." Jade's smile was sweet and a little sad. "I think I'm safer for her to care about. I'm not a prince in exile who might have to take up the crown someday. I'm not going anywhere."

  He turned his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers. "Don't be too hard on her—or yourself."

  "I'm not." She lifted one shoulder in a tired shrug. "It's who they are. Sweetness and light. I want to see them shine together."

  He tugged her into his lap. The stool rolled, and his back hit the edge of the metal counter, rattling the vials. Dylan ignored it. "Don't forget how much they shine for you."

  "For us," she countered, leaning against him. She was soft and warm, and something more—easy, maybe, in a way she hadn't been before. The subtle tension, the artifice, was gone. She wasn't lying with her body anymore. "They're so bright. Are you ever afraid you'll get burned?"

  "Not at all." He didn't have room to worry about that, not with every bit of emotion, of feeling, licking over his soul like flame. Everything in the world already burned. At least he could make them—Mad, Scarlet, even Jade—burn with him.

  Scarlet spent her vigil counting Mad's breaths.

  She never meant to. At first, it was instinctive, a way to reassure herself that the silent rise and fall of his chest was steady, reliable. Slowly, it evolved into a way to distract herself. If she spent the quiet hours at his bedside replaying the scene at Gideon's estate in her mind, she'd go insane.

  So she counted. One after another, until the numbers blurred and ran together and the silence became so loud that she had to break it. So she opened her mouth and began to sing.

  Softly. Nothing that would disturb Mad's rest, just the silly tunes and lullabies she'd heard as a child. When she ran out of those, she made up more, nonsense rhymes that almost made her smile.

  Almost.

  But a good lullaby was about more than the melody or words. It was about the vibrations, a tactile rhythm of human contact. There was just enough room in his hospital bed for her to climb in beside him. She stretched out on her side, curled around him, pressed her chest to his shoulder and her lips to his temple, and started all over.

  "Buzzing bees?" Mad's voice was as rusty as his laugh. "Have you ever seen one?"

  Relief stole her voice for a handful of choked, painful seconds. "No. Have you?"

  "I saw a whole farm full of them once." He turned his face to hers. "Thousands and thousands. I should take you sometime."

  "We've got to get you back on your feet first." The words trembled, and Scarlet squeezed her eyes shut.

  "Keep singing to me." He covered her hand with his. "I could hear you."

  She shook her head. Staying here felt selfish, too much like hiding. "Dylan will want to know you're awake."

  "Dylan will come check on me eventually." His hand tightened, surprisingly strong for a man in a hospital bed. "Don't leave me, Scarlet. Please."

  The plea shredded what was left of her resistance. "I won't." She brushed her lips over his temple and snuggled closer. "Tell me about the bee farm."

  "It's big. Bigger than the warehouse where we hold our fight nights. A giant greenhouse. They keep the bees inside because they're so rare—people try to steal them. And inside it's just rows of sunflowers and clover and hives…" His voice drifted off as he rubbed his forehead against hers. "It's magic."

  Hiding. They could talk about the honey farm, stay away from everything real, but it wouldn't change anything. "Someone tried to kill your cousin."

  "The cup." He sighed. "What was in it?"

  "I don't know. Dylan and Jade are working on it."

  "Where's Gideon?"

  "Looking for his own answers." Scarlet slipped her hand from beneath his and laid it on his chest. "I was so scared, and I'm ashamed of myself."

  "Ashamed?"

  "Because I shouldn't tell you," she explained helplessly. "You're hurt. This—none of this is about me. It's about you."

  "Hey." He moved carefully as he rolled to face her. "You can talk to me. You can always talk to me."

  Always, but it wasn't enough. There were others who were worried, people who meant more to him—his family, Dylan. Jade. "I'm just glad you're okay."

  "Scarlet." He cupped her cheek, brushing away the tears she hadn't realized were falling. "Don't worry about me. I'm hard to kill. People have been trying my whole life."

  "Amazingly, that does not make me feel better."

  Mad grinned with morbid amusement. "At least they weren't trying to kill me this time?"

  "Hilarious." But seeing him smile brought the relief rushing back, and Scarlet found herself mirroring his expression.

  "That's it, sweetheart." He stroked her cheek again. "We laugh or we cry, and I decided a long time ago I wasn't going to let them see me cry."

  Them. He said it like she should understand, like they had a shared enemy. But what the fuck could a street rat from Three have in common with a runaway prince?

  Not a whole hell of a lot. Just an adoptive sector—and the tattoos around their wrists. "Dallas is gonna lose his shit," she whispered. "Completely. Lex won't be able to contain him this time—not that I think she'd try very hard. Not after this."

  Mad took a slow breath and closed his eyes. "He'll keep his shit together. Because something bigger is going on."

  "What, you mean the bombing in Two?"

  "More than that." He slid an arm around her, his fingers tracing up to sink into her hair. "We have to head back to Four soon. Dallas is call
ing everyone together for a vote."

  Something in his tone raced up her spine, bringing with it a cold jolt of awareness. "About Eden. About going to war with the city."

  "Yeah." His voice dropped. "It scares the shit out of me, but so does what happened in Two."

  Only an idiot wouldn't be terrified, because the two things were intimately entwined. When Eden's leaders felt threatened, whether actively or just by someone's radical ideas, they lashed out. "Better to go down swinging than let them stomp you like a bug."

  "We won't be the only ones swinging." He stroked her hair with steady hands. "Eden can't destroy all of us. They need Five and Eight, at least. And the crops…"

  "And Four?" She almost didn't ask, because she already knew the answer—Sector Four's liquor was worth far, far less than Dallas O'Kane's head on a silver platter.

  Mad finally opened his eyes, and he looked tired. Haunted. "I'm the worst kind of asshole. I want you and Dylan and Jade to stay here."

  Because it would be safer. Scarlet snorted. "If you think I'm gonna punk out when things get tough—"

  He shut her up with a kiss.

  She'd kissed him before, in the tent and during the stolen, dreamy hour when they'd all come together. This kiss held a different kind of desperation, not a physical hunger that would no longer be contained, but a silent plea. For understanding, for connection—she didn't know.

  All she knew was the soft graze of Mad's tongue against hers, his hand on her jaw, his slow, careful exploration—like he was learning her, memorizing her.

  He broke away to kiss the corner of her lips, and then the tip of her nose. But his words were serious. "I need to do something before we go back to Four."

  She couldn't stop her hands from tightening out of worry. "Mad…"

  "It doesn't involve killing," he assured her. "Exorcising, maybe."

  "Can I help?"

  Mad closed his eyes. "I need you to. All of you. I need to…"

  She cradled his face. "What is it?"

  He took a deep breath, then another. Slowly, like his body was aching. Like his heart was aching. "Dallas and Lex know. Ace does too, some. Cruz and Bren have probably figured it out. But I've never—I've never told anyone. And I need to, so I can let it go."