The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(30)

Gradually, however, it occurred to her that there was no more grass in her face. No trees or temples off in the distance. No soft sound of running water from the baths.

She tried to shift her head and groaned.

“Selena?”

The face that entered her vision brought tears to her eyes. It was Trez … it was Trez …

Sure as if she had conjured him out of a dream, he was right before her, and she drank him in: his smooth dark skin, his almond-shaped black eyes, his tight-cut black hair, the looming presence of his heft and height.

Her first instinct was to reach out to him, but a blaze of pain stopped her, making her gasp.

“Doc Jane,” he barked. “She’s awake!”

Trez? she said. Trez, wait, I need to tell you something—

“Doc Jane!”

No, don’t worry about that. I need to—

“She can’t breathe!”

Things happened so fast. All at once, a mask was pushed onto her face, and something forced her lungs to inflate. Voices exploded around her. A shrill beeping sound suggested an alarm was going off—

Someone tried to straighten her out, and her joints roared in protest. Oh, wait, it was her trying move—she was trying to sit up to see what was going on.

“She’s moving!” That was Trez—she was sure of it. “Her arm moved!”

“She’s in cardiac arrest. Can you flatten her chest?”

The pain that came next was so great, she screamed.

“I’m sorry,” Trez said into her ear, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to get you flat—”

Selena screamed again, but she didn’t think it registered as sound. And then her vision blurred, starting with the peripheral and heading to the center, as if a fog were rolling in from all sides.

Suddenly, she was staring at the medical chandelier—which meant they’d somehow managed to get her on her back. Then came pressure on her shoulders, spine, arms. Her vision went in and out, that blurriness receding and returning as great waves of pain racked her.

“I don’t want to break anything,” Trez gritted out.

So it was his hands on her wrists, forcing her flat.

“I need to get in there. Now.”

Doc Jane appeared on the opposite side of the table, and in her hands were palm-size blocks with curly cords hanging from the ends.

“Get her robing off.” Doc Jane looked in another direction. “You males gotta leave or he’s not going to let us get to her torso.”

That alarm was so loud now, a solid continuous sound, no longer broken by intervals.

“Clear!” Doc Jane ordered.

A lightning strike hit Selena’s chest, popping her torso up off the table, cracking each and every one of her vertebrae, busting her spine out of its hold.

As she slapped back down on the exam table’s thin mattress, there was a brief, striking pause during which the three people around her, Doc Jane, the nurse, Ehlena, and Trez, all stared at her. She focused on Trez—and that was when she saw a fourth who was standing directly next to him, a big body turned away, a dark head tilted down and to the side.

iAm.

Oh, good, she was glad he was there for Trez.

Selena opened her mouth underneath the mask, looking directly into her Shadow’s black eyes. If only she could tell him—

Chaos lit off around her once more, her lungs punching against her ribs, voices igniting, people shifting positions.

“Stop bagging her,” Doc Jane shouted. “Clear!”

A second powerful current plowed through her, contorting her torso. This time there was no pause. That hard, powerful push into her lungs returned immediately and happened over and over.

“What do we do now?” Trez asked in a choked voice.

Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe, he was crying.

Trez, she thought at him. I love you …

Trez was living and dying by the vital-sign machine that was about a foot behind the head of the exam table. A rope’s worth of wiring connected Selena to its onboard computer, and the screen showed all kinds of info that didn’t mean much to him. The one thing he did get, however, and get very goddamn clearly, was that the yellow line across the bottom was supposed to peak and valley at regular intervals as her heart beat.

It wasn’t going up and down in a nice, steady pattern—even after the thing went haywire when Doc Jane put the paddles on the center and side of Selena’s torso and sent all that electrical charge into the Chosen’s chest.

Flat. It was flat again.

Ehlena kept bagging, her hands biting into a pale blue balloon that forced air into Selena’s rib cage. And meanwhile, Trez stared at that yellow line, willing it to jump, willing it to respond to a beat of Selena’s heart.

“Damn it, beat…”

Something brushed his face and he jumped back—only to find that Selena had actually reached up to him, her pale, slender hand extending in a series of jerks like the joint was rusty.

“Selena,” he said, dropping down so she didn’t have to strain. “Selena…”

He kissed her palm, her fingers, and then he let her brush his cheeks. Her eyes were incredibly blue, luminous, glowing. And for a moment, everything faded away so that it was just the two of them, the walls of the exam room, its equipment and personnel, even his beloved brother, disappearing from them.