Passenger (Passenger #1) - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,145

her vision, blocking the sight of her bleeding hand against the pale stone.

There was a howl of fury and a shift in the wind at her back. Etta fell forward again, but managed to get the veil away from her face. That’s when she saw Nicholas barreling shoulder-first into one of the men she’d seen before.

People gathered around, some beginning their prayers, others arrested by the sight of Nicholas throwing his fist into one man’s face as the other attacker jumped on his back. The second attacker’s hand disappeared into the folds of Nicholas’s robe and Etta heard Nicholas cry out as he threw his head back and knocked him off.

No one moved to help, not until Hasan burst out of the bazaar and began to shout for aid. By then, both of the men in black robes were on their feet; Etta didn’t see how they managed it, but they ran into the chaos they had created, chased off by the Janissaries.

“Etta—Etta!” Nicholas dropped to his knees in front of her, his lungs working like bellows. “Are you hurt?”

Before her thick tongue could form a response, he swayed, his eyes blinking as if in surprise. She reached out, one hand gripping his arm to steady him, the other going to his side—where a large, wet patch of violently crimson blood was spreading.

“No—” Etta choked out, “no, no! Nicholas!”

She couldn’t even catch him as he fell.

HE KNEW THAT HE WAS IN trouble when the wound did not pain him at all.

Fragments of the last few hours were scattered across his mind, the way the wind had toyed with the white petals dusting the open courtyard. Had that really been only a few hours ago? Impossible. It was dark now. Days might have passed, and he could not surface long enough from the depths of a terrible, gripping sleep to see for himself.

Soft voices carried on above him. Soft hands lifted the bandages at his side to inspect his wounds. Soft cloths mopped away the infernal sweat from his face. If there was one thing Nicholas had not been expecting, it was how soft a touch Death had for him. It seemed unfair, somehow, to not go out fighting. To be denied the chance to burn, to rail against it, to shout it down until his last breath left him. Wasn’t that his right? Or did it only feel so wrong because he had spent the whole of his life fighting so bloody hard? To go with a whisper…the thought seemed to sit upon his chest, making it harder and harder to breathe.

Perhaps he would think upon it some more, when he was not so tired.

Yes.

THE PLACE WHERE THEY HAD BROUGHT HIM SMELLED OF THE earth. There was a constant shuffle of quiet feet and voices around him. What he knew of their language was irrelevant; it was impossible to concentrate over the roaring of his own blood in his ears. A hospital, then? He forced his eyes open at the first touch of light on his lids.

Around him were walls as white and pale as a tomb, ornamented lavishly with carvings. Nicholas tried to focus long enough to see what was there. A thousand suns. A thousand flowers. The atmosphere was calm and peaceful. Even the water they sponged his face with was sweetly fragranced, strewn with flowers that reminded him of Etta. But, of course, what didn’t make him think of Etta now?

Though there were beds open beside him, he was alone in this stretch of the hallway, left to watch the water spilling over the room’s fountain, to watch the young men and women who came to fill their basins from it. He was lifted, made to drink tasteless broth. Nicholas might have told them that it was pointless—his throat was swollen and raw, like he’d swallowed the whole of the sun. He knew.

The wound had not killed him.

The fever would.

Despite his weak struggling, they kept him wrapped tightly in the bedding, trapped inside his own heat until there was little choice but to sweat and suffer. All of these people tending to him, and no one would help him.

Etta will.

Etta would. Holy God—he’d seen a man try to smash her skull against the stone, and the very last chain of his control had snapped. Was she all right? Where was she? And the date…how many days had passed? Would she know to go without him?

When his eyes slid shut again, it wasn’t her face that he saw,