The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(51)

“Don’t talk like that,” Taye yelped. “She’ll be fine. We just need to wait for the doctor.”

Bethany didn’t look convinced, but she shut her mouth.

They hovered there, useless, as Bea shook and choked for air. She sounded awful, like her throat was convulsing the same way as the rest of her body, horrible fleshy noises, her mouth gaping open and lips rolling inward. Bethany turned Bea on her side at one point, in case she vomited, but nothing came out except spit.

Bea was still seizing when Halsing arrived, Noam crouched down at her bedside and holding on to her sweaty little palm. He could barely bring himself to look at her.

“How long has she been like this?” Halsing said.

Bethany shook her head. “Too long. Fifteen minutes, at least.”

Halsing’s mouth was a straight line.

“Is she going to be all right?” Taye asked. His tone seemed forcibly even, like he was trying hard to seem unaffected.

“I doubt it,” Halsing said. No sugarcoating.

“Can’t you do something?” Noam retorted. “Where the hell have you been, anyway? A child is dying, and you’re off doing what? Help her! ”

Halsing brushed her gloved fingertips against Bea’s temple, wiping away a bead of perspiration. “I wish I could, but it’s regulation. I have to spend my resources on those who might survive.”

Painfully, perfectly logical. After all, this place couldn’t support mechanical ventilation. Noam knew that. Bethany knew it too; Noam saw it in the lines between her brows and the set of her shoulders as she leaned in over the bed, like she thought proximity might keep Bea alive.

“Her IV bag is empty,” Noam said. His voice sounded like it came from far away, hard and angry. “I’ll get her a new one. We can at least spare fluids, right?”

Halsing hesitated, but then she nodded. When Noam returned from the supply closet, she and Taye had both moved on to other patients, leaving Noam and Bethany to watch Bea.

Bea’s body was so still. So . . .

“It’s okay,” he told her.

Bea made a strident noise in the back of her throat, wrists jerking awkwardly. Noam fumbled with her hand for a second, staring down at Bea’s pale face and wishing . . . he wished he knew healing magic, even though it wouldn’t work on something like this. Even if he knew how, the magic he would use to heal her was the same magic that was killing her. The thing that made Noam a witching would ensure Bea never was.

He brushed damp hair from her forehead, sweeping it behind her hot ear. “It’s okay to let go,” he whispered. He chose to believe she understood.

A nurse took over eventually and sent Noam to hang fluids and bathe sweaty brows. He kept checking on Bea every chance he could, even when nothing changed, until at last, late in the afternoon, when the setting sun cast red light into the tents, he looked over, and her bed was empty.

Dara found him that night out by the boardwalk. The wind had picked up sometime in the dusk hours, and it whipped sea-smell off the ocean, briny and fishy, tangling Noam’s hair and blowing sand up the back of his shirt. Off duty, Dara had changed out of his greens into something gray and fitted, the whites of his eyes flashing in the lights from the pier.

“I thought I’d find you out here,” Dara said when he reached Noam’s side. He was close enough their shoulders almost touched.

“I’ve never seen the ocean before.”

Noam gazed out at the black water, the moonlight glancing off the crests of waves as they crashed into shore. And past that, where the sea blurred into starless sky.

Dara kicked at a few broken shells in the sand, scattering them toward the dune grasses. Silence unspooled between them, Dara’s tension drawn in his posture and the wordless line of his lips. Noam felt it too; he’d been feeling it ever since Bea died.

“This is Lehrer’s fault,” Dara said.

Noam looked at him, heart stumbling over a beat, but Dara was focused on the horizon, as if he’d temporarily forgotten Noam was there.

“And how do you figure that?”

As Dara turned away from the sea, his hair blew across his face, dark and wild. “If Lehrer cared about stopping the virus, don’t you think he’d send real doctors? Don’t you think he’d spend tax money on vaccine research and supportive care, not . . . not these pointless wars in Atlantia, fighting for territory that was never ours to begin with?”

“Don’t get me wrong—I think the Atlantian occupation is fucked up, and of course I support vaccine research,” Noam said. “But Sacha’s the one running this country, not Lehrer.”

Even saying Sacha’s name made him feel like he’d been poisoned.

Dara’s face twisted in disdain. “Sacha doesn’t have any actual power. He does exactly what Lehrer wants him to do.”

Noam knew that wasn’t true, having read Sacha’s emails and witnessed him disregard Lehrer’s wishes to commit horrible crimes. But Dara didn’t want to hear that. Dara didn’t want to hear anything that wasn’t what he already believed.

“Why do you hate Lehrer so much?” Noam said, exhaling heavily even as he glanced back toward the barracks; if they were having this conversation, he didn’t want to be interrupted. Dara made a face, and Noam rolled his eyes. “I mean it. You can barely look at him. Do you really think there’s some conspiracy? Or do you just hate him for personal reasons?”