House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,223

I never forgot you.”

“I’m beginning extraction and stabilization of the venom,” the witch said. “It will worsen, but it’s almost over.”

Bryce couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond Hunt and his words and the pain in her leg, the scar across her very soul.

Hunt whispered, “You’ve got this. You’ve got this, Bryce.”

She didn’t. And the Hel that erupted in her leg had her arching against the restraints, her vocal cords straining as her screaming filled the room.

Hunt’s grip never wavered.

“It’s almost out,” the witch hissed, grunting with effort. “Hang on, Bryce.”

She did. To Hunt, to his hand, to that softness in his eyes, she held on. With all she had.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Sweetheart, I’ve got you.”

He’d never said it like that before—that word. It had always been mocking, teasing. She’d always found it just this side of annoying.

Not this time. Not when he held her hand and her gaze and everything she was. Riding out the pain with her.

“Breathe,” he ordered her. “You can do it. We can get through this.”

Get through it—together. Get through this mess of a life together. Through this mess of a world. Bryce sobbed, not entirely from pain this time.

And Hunt, as if he sensed it, too, leaned forward again. Brushed his mouth against hers.

Just a hint of a kiss—a feather-soft glancing of his lips over hers.

A star bloomed inside her at that kiss. A long-slumbering light began to fill her chest, her veins.

“Burning Solas,” the witch whispered, and the pain ceased.

Like a switch had been flipped, the pain was gone. It was startling enough that Bryce turned away from Hunt and peered at her body, the blood on it, the gaping wound. She might have fainted at the sight of a good six inches of her leg lying open were it not for the thing that the witch held between a set of pincers, as if it were indeed a worm.

“If my magic wasn’t stabilizing the venom like this, it’d be liquid,” the witch said, carefully moving the venom—a clear, wriggling worm with black flecks—toward a glass jar. It writhed, like a living thing.

The witch deposited it in the jar and shut the lid, magic humming. The poison instantly dissolved into a puddle within, but still vibrated. As if looking for a way out.

Hunt’s eyes were still on Bryce’s face. As they’d been the entire time. Had never left.

“Let me clean you out and stitch you up, and then we’ll test the antidote,” the witch said.

Bryce barely heard the woman as she nodded. Barely heard anything beyond Hunt’s lingering words. I’ve got you.

Her fingers curled around his. She let her eyes tell him everything her ravaged throat couldn’t. I’ve got you, too.

Thirty minutes later, Bryce was sitting up, Hunt’s arm and wing around her, both of them watching as the witch’s glowing, pale magic wrapped around the puddle of venom in the vial and warped it into a thin thread.

“You’ll forgive me if my method of antidote testing fails to qualify as a proper medical experiment,” she declared as she walked over to where an ordinary white pill sat in a clear plastic box. Lifting the lid, she dropped the thread of venom in. It fluttered like a ribbon, hovering above the pill before the witch shut the lid again. “What is being used on the street is a much more potent version of this,” she said, “but I want to see if this amount of my healing magic, holding the venom in place and merging with it, will do the trick against the synth.”

The witch carefully let the thread of the magic-infused venom alight on the tablet. It vanished within a blink, sucked into the pill. But the witch’s face remained bunched in concentration. As if focused on whatever was happening within the pill.

Bryce asked, “So your magic is currently stabilizing the venom in that tablet? Making it stop the synth?”

“Essentially,” the witch said distantly, still focused on the pill. “It takes most of my concentration to keep it stable long enough to halt the synth. Which is why I’d like to find a way to remove myself from the equation—so it can be used by anyone, even without me.”

Bryce fell silent after that, letting the witch work in peace.

Nothing happened. The pill merely sat there.

One minute passed. Two. And just as it was nearing three minutes—

The pill turned gray. And then dissolved into nothing but minuscule particles that then faded away, too. Until there was nothing left.

Hunt said into the silence, “It