I dragged a second chair close to the first, sat down facing Noa, arranging the blanket as she got into place, offering comfort and modesty. Her smile wavered as I closed my hands around her cold fingers. “I’m right here.”
“Promise?”
“Always.” My fingers tightened. The light in her eyes darkened, and it wasn’t because she was half naked and bra-less in front of two vampires, one of them Julien. Or because the position on the wooden chair had to be uncomfortable after the day she’d had. And the day before that.
She was reluctant because she hated revealing the scars, the constant reminders of how helpless she’d been beneath the vampires’ hands. Grief lay in those obliterating marks, grief over the loss of the wolf rune, the magic she thought of as a friend. The twitching that let her know she wasn’t alone.
Set traced delicate fingers over each rune and scar. Down the length of Noa’s spine. I rubbed my thumb over the back of Noa’s hand.
The vampire murmured, “I’ll need to see her wrist, too.”
I moved my fingers. “How much venom?”
“They left it in every wound like a connecting web. I’m tracing the pattern, trying to find the source.”
“How accurate is the tracking?”
Set turned Noa’s wrist, followed the line of runes I’d inked on my mate’s skin up to her elbow, then the curve of her shoulder. “Very accurate. It’s surprising Ago took so long to find her.”
“I kept them busy.”
A shudder ran through Noa’s hands.
“You’ll have to keep her still,” Set advised. “I can’t remove the venom. It’s welded into the scar tissue. All I can do is nullify the potency. Over time, the poison will dissolve on its own.”
Noa moistened her lips. “How will you nullify it?”
“With the venom of a sire. My venom. The rune at your nape is the base that feeds everything else. I’ll need to start there, then at points along your spine, down your arm, close to your heart. The wolf rune is the terminus.”
Noa’s breathing turned watery. “How long will that take?”
Set smoothed her hand over Noa’s hair, a gentle mother calming a restless child. She’d turned selected humans over the centuries. Understood how to settle rattled nerves and slow the sudden racing of the heart. Easing the last-minute horror tumbling through the veins.
“Twenty minutes, with so many runes,” she said. “I’ll be biting you, and it will hurt. I can’t numb the pain because what numbs you will neutralize the venom I’ll be injecting. Vampire mechanics, which I’m sure you have no wish to know. However, if my intention was to turn you, I would want the venom neutralized.”
“Meaning she uses the venom to kill,” I supplied, a deadening in my voice as I stared at Set.
“If I wished to kill her, it would already be done.”
Thunder was a strengthening vibration that rattled the roof over our heads.
Set smiled, her red lips slightly thinned. “Careful, dread lord. Trust is hard to reclaim once it’s lost.”
“Should I care about trusting you, Set?”
“You may have need of me. Of my vampires.”
“Shouldn’t you care about trusting me?”
“I care, wolf. I need you as an ally. But I’m willing to face you as an adversary.”
“We agree,” I said.
The trembling in Noa’s hands was heating. She was syphoning, and the energy was tumultuous beneath her skin.
“Set,” she said, her chin pressing down on the top rail of the chair back. “Neutralize the venom before I gods-damn blow something up.”
“You trust me when he does not?”
