جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 54

Kael POVThe cold seeped through the wet marble floorboards, pinning me to the stone.Lucien weighed heavy in my arms. His broad shoulders, once an unyielding wall of solid muscle and dark aura, felt hollow and fragile. The dark, spiderwebbing lines of Sanguine Poison had crept up his neck, crossing his sharp jawline and staining his pale cheeks black.His breathing came in ragged, shallow rasps. Every time his lungs expanded, a wet, choking sound echoed from his chest, dark blood pooling at the corner of his lips."Vale," I rasped, my hands shaking violently as I pressed both palms flat over the black entry wound on his shoulder. "Keep your eyes open. Look at me."His crimson eyes were dim, the brilliant red light fading into a cloudy, lifeless gray. His pupils dilated, struggling to focus on my face through the dark haze taking over his vision.The frost aura that always surrounded him, the cold cedar scent that could freeze a room, was completely gone. In its place was the sickenin

Kael POVThe digital scanner chittered a final, sharp warning beat before going dark.Rin stood pinned against the chemical bench, his face drained of color as the red warning symbols reflected off his glasses. Outside the inner chamber, the heavy stone walls hummed with the distant, grinding echo of the Sump's drainage pumps."Sanguine Rot does not care about chemical blockers," Rin said, his voice quiet in the vast room. "It was designed during the First Age to break vampire noble lines from the inside out."I stepped past him, my eyes fixed on the wooden examination table.Lucien lay motionless under the harsh white glare of the overhead lamps. The black veins had reached his jaw, branching across his cheekbones like shattered glass under his skin. His chest was flat, completely still, without even a tremor of breath."What breaks it?" I asked."Nothing," Rin rasped, wiping his palm across his apron. "The High Conservatory spent fifty years looking for an antidote. They found zero