"I just left him there," she whispered, lifting her head to look at Paul while she made the confession. "He's in so much pain, and I just left him there."
Paul frowned. "Josef couldn't say anything at all last night. I gave him blood and he immediately tried to bring you back. He didn't say why, but I assumed you were still trying to heal Dimitri."
"He's being poisoned, and I couldn't get it all." She gasped and let out another little sob.
"You had no choice," Paul assured her. "If you'd stayed any longer, we couldn't have brought you back. You'd be dead, or wandering in the spirit world and then where would Dimitri be? No one else can find him. At least this way, when you're strong enough, you can go back and help him."
"In the meantime he's suffering horribly. That pain is worse than anything you can imagine," she said. "At least when I was there, he knew someone was looking for him, someone cared enough to come after him. But the pain . . ." She trailed off with another choking sob.
"During the day, he'll be in a Carpathian sleep and won't be able to feel anything," Paul reminded.
She shook her head. "His Lycan blood will keep him awake most of the time. I doubt with that kind of pain he'll be able to sleep at all." Her head nearly exploded again and she pressed both hands to her temples. "Is Josef all right? Are you? You must have had to give him blood a couple of times."
"He was in bad shape," Paul admitted. "He couldn't move a muscle. I think you used up every bit of energy both of you had, but I knew if I gave him blood it would help him." He showed her his wrist where he'd slashed his vein open and pressed the wound to Josef's mouth.
Paul was human and didn't heal the way Carpathians did. The laceration looked ugly and raw. She took his hand gently and turned it over to examine the clean cut his knife had made.
"Don't try to heal me, Sky," Paul admonished. "I'm healthy, I can heal on my own. You need to conserve your energy to get well yourself." He hesitated, clearly afraid of upsetting her more.
"What?" she asked, pulling back and taking in great gulps of air. "I'm okay, really. I just feel weak and my head is pounding." And guilty. So terribly guilty. Fearful beyond any description. There was no way to express to Paul or anyone else the endless agony Dimitri was in. She felt some of the pain, but he'd attempted to block out most of it from her. She couldn't imagine how much worse it was for him.
"Josef couldn't tell me anything last night. What exactly is going on with Dimitri? What have they done to him? How can they hold someone so powerful a prisoner? That doesn't make sense to me."
"They have him wrapped in silver chains," she explained. "I know this because they burn right through his skin in the way acid does ours. They're torturing him. He has these silver hooks in his body, his chest, ribs, his hips and thighs, even his shoulders and calves. The hooks allow tiny silver beads to break off and drop into him when his body temperature heats them, one by one. It's a slow, torturous death."
Paul shook his head. "A Carpathian should be able to get rid of any silver if it really poisoned him."
"Dimitri is both Lycan and Carpathian. His Lycan blood reacts to the silver, and he can't free himself. The silver works its way through his body until it pierces his heart. Once it threads through the heart, it will kill him." She forced herself to look at Paul, her lashes wet, her throat trying to close on her. "It's a brutal, ugly way to die."