His elbows braced on the mattress, he held Khloé’s hand between his, his thumb pressed against the pulse on her wrist. The back of his throat ached, and it hurt to swallow.
She felt cold to the touch. Too cold. Too still. Too … lifeless.
Khloé was all spirit and laughter and mischief. Now, though, she was so deathly pale he was surprised her heart still beat. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her lips seemed to have whitened. Worse, her pulse was so weak it was a wonder he could detect it.
Her body was shutting down. He knew it. They all knew it. And there was fuck all they could do about it. The infection had now settled into Khloé’s organs and it was systematically killing her.
Tears stung the back of his eyes, clogged his throat, and tightened his chest, but the tears didn’t fall. He never cried. The Ramsbrook staff had beaten that out of him.
The air in the room was thick with anguish and hopelessness, and it almost hurt to breathe it in. His bedroom was packed with people—many from Khloé’s lair, many from his. Some spoke in hushed tones, some quietly wept, some paced and sniped at others.
No one tried to give him false assurances. He was glad of that. Because he was pretty sure he’d explode on anyone who tried it.
He was conscious of the time ticking away. She was weakening with every minute that passed, taking him that little bit closer to losing her. A profound loneliness hovered at the edges of his being, ready to swallow him whole. His world would be a dark, cold place without her. It wasn’t a world he had any interest in living in.
A debilitating grief smothered him and made his ribs feel too tight. He’d always believed that he’d find some way to save her. He’d had to believe it. So he’d stayed positive and held onto hope.
That hope had vanished.
Now, he felt defeated. Drained. Flayed open right down to his soul.
His demon was still and silent, angry at the situation; angry that it was helpless to save her; angry that the universe would take her from it. It wanted to rant and rave and scorch the Earth. Maybe Levi sensed that, because he stuck close to him, a silent pillar of support.
Keenan wanted to tell him to leave. He wanted to tell them all to leave. He wanted to be left alone with her. The only thing stopping him from emptying the room was that he knew she wouldn’t have wanted him to deprive her loved ones of these last moments with her.
Sick to his stomach, Keenan squeezed his eyes shut. To think that he’d held back from her for so long, to think he’d wasted all that time they could have spent together …
His shoulders bowed. Part of him was irrationally angry with her for leaving him, and he hated that part of himself.
Hearing the scrape of wood on wood, he opened his eyes to see that Teague had moved his chair to the other side of the bed. The hellhorse watched her, his eyes as vacant as those of Enoch’s puppets. The guy looked numb—probably with shock and despair.
Strangely, Teague’s presence didn’t piss off Keenan or his demon. Maybe it was because they were both buried too deep in anguish to care about anything other than the woman lying so still on the bed.
Keenan pressed a kiss to her hand. She didn’t stir. She hadn’t responded to anyone since she’d passed out—not even telepathically.
That awful moment when she’d toppled to the saloon floor like a dead weight … fuck. He kept mentally replaying it over and over, as if his subconscious was determined to torture him with it.
“There are so many powerful demons in this room,” said Teague. “Yet not one of them—hell, not even all our power put together—could heal her. How is that fucking fair?”
Keenan met the man’s eyes, knowing his own gaze was flat and dead. “It isn’t,” he said around the thick lump clogging his throat. None of it was fucking fair. If anyone deserved to live a long, happy, fulfilling life, it was Khloé.
“I tried to help her.” Ciaran’s voice wavered, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “It usually works. Why didn’t it work?” he asked no one in particular.
Jolene put a hand on his back. “Because she was weak from the infection and the battle.” Her eyes grew wet. “You don’t bear any blame here, Ciaran. No one in this room does.”
Keenan disagreed. If Knox had just called on the flames of hell when Keenan had asked, this would not have happened. Yes, she’d still be infected, but they might have had time to find some way to heal her. Now, they’d run out of time.
“We got to her as fast as we could,” Jolene added.