The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(66)

“Nope, utterly incapable. Spends all his magic keeping himself young and alive. Of course, that means fast alcohol metabolism. Drinking doesn’t affect him at all.”

Ames passed Noam the bottle when Noam reached for it. “Kind of surprised he hasn’t given himself that viral intoxication syndrome thingy by now, if it takes that much work to keep himself looking pretty.”

“Not likely,” Dara said.

“I know.” Ames kicked her feet up in the air above her head. “He’s, like, immortal.”

“Immortal to fevermadness?” Noam asked.

“Immortal.”

Noam sighed. Ames and Dara were both cracking up again over whatever-it-was, but Dara’s hand was on Noam’s thigh, fingers tracing odd little circles against Noam’s hip, Noam slowly sinking through a dark and starry sea. His eyelids were heavy.

Eventually, Ames shifted—or Noam thought it must be Ames, because Dara’s head was still on his stomach—and another weight settled down on the bed next to him, someone’s breath warm on the side of his neck.

“I wish my dad would try something like that. Use too much magic, kill himself trying to stay young.”

Noam snorted.

“I’m serious,” Ames said. “I wish he’d die.”

Noam opened his eyes. It was a struggle to draw Ames’s face back into focus, even though she was so close. “You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, but I do.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” Dara shifted, arching his back like a cat. Noam stared at him, at the way that movement dragged the hem of his shirt up just enough to expose a swath of flat brown skin, Dara’s trousers tugged taut against his thighs. Dara cracked open his eyes to look back at the pair of them, black irises barely visible beneath his lowered lashes. “I suspect there are plenty of people who’d love to see your father dead.”

“Good. I hope they assassinate him.”

Ames said it with a viciousness that cut through the haze of Noam’s intoxication. He blinked, twice, and looked back to her.

“He doesn’t seem that bad. I mean, he’s like . . . bougie, I guess . . . but not that bad.”

“He killed my mother.”

Noam sat upright, quickly enough that Dara had to flinch out of the way of Noam’s elbows. “What?”

Ames hadn’t moved from where she lay, one arm flung overhead with fingers dangling off the edge of the mattress. Her eyes glinted in the lamplight. “You heard me. He brought me and my brother and our mom into the quarantined zone when I was, like, six. Got us all sick. Mom and brother died, but I lived. Obviously.”

Noam couldn’t—he didn’t want to believe it. Who would do something like that? Nobody was that crazy. Right?

Ames’s other hand was on his side, toying with the hem of his shirt. She said, “Guess he didn’t want to bother with a family if we weren’t gonna be witchings.”

He stared at Ames’s profile, her elegant features so incongruous with the half-shaved head and tattoos, her gaze fixed on her hand and Noam’s shirt.

“Did you tell anyone?” Noam asked, his voice barely audible even to his own ears. Surely Lehrer hadn’t known. “Before now?”

Ames shrugged. “Told Dara. Hard not to tell Dara.”

“What do you mean?”

A strange smile curled round her lips. “Don’t you know? Dara—”

“Shut up, Ames,” Dara snapped.

Noam looked. Dara was sitting up now, too, but he didn’t seem drunk anymore; his shoulders rose and fell with quick, shallow breaths.

“Jesus, fine, fine,” Ames said and rolled onto her stomach, pushing herself up. She made a face at the pair of them. “The point I’m trying to make is that I fucking hate him. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Noam said. He kind of hated the general now too.

“Great. Okay. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Dara grabbed at a nearby wastebasket, getting it under Ames’s head just in time for her to puke dinner and tequila into the liner bag. Dara had one hand on Ames’s back, rubbing circles and murmuring quiet words of reassurance, and Noam—

Noam tipped his head back and closed his eyes and tried to keep his own stomach where it belonged. Six years old. Six, and General Ames had taken his daughter—his wife, his son, his whole family—out where magic was endemic. Knowing they’d get sick. Knowing they’d rot from the inside just like Bea King, knowing they had a 90 percent chance of dying. Finding those odds favorable.

Ames was right. Someone ought to kill him.

“Noam.” Dara’s hand was on his knee, Dara’s voice murmuring in his ear. “Look at me.”

Noam looked.

Dara was close, close enough that Noam could’ve counted each eyelash were he sober enough to see straight. Ames still hunched over the trash, shivering.

“We need to go back downstairs,” Dara said.

“Why?”

“Because Lehrer’s going to send someone looking for us if we don’t. We’ve been gone a long time.”

Noam couldn’t look away from Ames, the damp back of her neck where her collar stuck to her skin. “What about—”

“She’ll be okay,” Dara said. “Promise. You’ll be okay, right, Ames?”