my gaze. “Professor Gale found the two of you unconscious next to a cursed bridge.”
“Cursed bridge?” I repeat slowly, glancing at Jonah and then to Zander. “It didn’t seem like it was cursed. It gave us the clue we needed—the clue Gale wanted everyone to find. But then something happened. It felt more like someone intervened and hexed us.”
Jonah nods, touching his bandaged head. “Yeah, and the motherfuckers wanted us to drown.”
“Don’t fucking swear in a hospital,” Zander snaps, throwing the pillow at him that I threw. Jonah doesn’t manage to catch it and it whacks him on the head.
“Oi! I’m a sick individual over here. And it’s not a hospital. It’s a medical room on a budget.”
I giggle at his pouting expression and straighten up in the hospital bed. We seem to be the only ones in this budget ward. Where are Sage and Ronan? We left them in the library this morning before setting off into the forest. I glance up at the clock hanging above the door. It’s after six o’clock. That means we must have been knocked out for a good couple of hours. And I didn’t even get to hang out with Ambrose while I slept. At least, I don’t recall any of it, other than him telling me to wake up.
“Suppose you’re right,” Zander says, crossing his arms. “Who would want to hex you? Jonah, I can understand, but you? Also it’d take someone extremely powerful to knock you both out for so long.”
Jonah’s eyes are pressed on me, and I wonder if he knows something that I don’t. I certainly don’t remember seeing anyone follow us to the troll bridge.
The door opens and a petite girl in a black nurse’s uniform enters, carrying a tray of medication. She hands Jonah his first and then gives me a little cup. I eye it suspiciously.
“It’s just pain killers,” she explains, smiling softly, but she doesn’t make an attempt to move.
She waits until I’ve taken the pills before leaving. As soon as the door closes, I spit the tablets out, much to the disapproval of my visitors.
“What? I don’t take random pills from random people,” I tell them all, hiding them in my shirt pocket.
“I just did,” Jonah says, the blood draining from his face. “Do you think they’re secretly trying to drug us to harvest our organs?”
I burst out laughing, then wince, the effort sending a sharp stabbing pain into my side. “You never know,” I manage to say once I’ve caught my breath. “It’s why I refuse to take anything I haven’t bought myself.”
Zander and Gage exchange a disapproving glance.
Without even looking at me, Gage says, “I want you to rest here for the rest of the afternoon. The both of you.”
“Gage, I feel perfectly fi—”
“No buts. You took a severe blow to the back of your head. Just to be on the safe side, remain here at least until the doctor has seen you, then you can do whatever you want once you’ve been discharged.”
I watch him storm towards the door, giving us not so much as a backward glance.
For some inexplicable reason, a panicked reaction assails me when he slams the door. The feeling must be written clearly on my face because Zander reaches over and gently brushes his thumb across my cheek.
“He’s just worried.” Gesturing to the door, he adds in a whisper, “I’ve never seen Gage scared before.”
I look up at him, my breath catching as I struggle not to lean into his hand. “What was he scared of?”
Zander’s eyes gleam with an almost envious lust. “Losing you.”
The second he says those words, Pitch’s shadow jumps into my body, momentarily seizing the air from my lungs.
he tells me.
“I was hexed,” I tell the guys, kicking the covers off and throwing my legs over the bed. I look firmly at Jonah. “We both were, and the crystals never protected us. They weren’t powerful enough.”
I look down at my own crystal. It’s slightly melted at the bottom, and when I peek inside my hospital gown, I can see a burn mark that’s exactly the same shape and size as the crystal. I watch him look upon the luscious canopy of trees outside, at the slightly dying leaves carrying on the wind, and that’s when I suddenly realize.
Zander doesn’t have a binding crystal. How have I never noticed