When the sun came up, everything was locked tight and the work continued.
Except Kane was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Aweek later, Nadya had things running smoothly in her new clinic location. The Black Dagger Brotherhood had proven to be invaluable, bringing food and more medical supplies, but never asking for anything in return, a regular rotation of fighters showing up and pulling shifts at the former prison. And the same was true for the medical staff that came with them.
They weren’t the only ones who helped. The Jackal, as well as his son, his female, and his female’s sister moved in, as did Rio and Lucan. There was just so much to do, like food to make, clothes to hand out—and oral histories to record.
If there were any prisoners who had committed petty crimes, their sentences were hundreds of years too long for the property infractions or social insults they’d committed. And the violent prisoners had already been weeded out, as the Executioner had killed any of the ones prone to physical attacks. And what was left after those two groups were those who had been thrown into the camp for nefarious reasons such as personal or familial slights, or other things that were unconscionable.
So they were making progress righting wrongs, for the most part.
But not in all areas. Apex was still just sitting beside his wolven, who remained mostly unresponsive. Because of the trauma Callum had endured, the two of them continued to stay in those private quarters, and Nadya was the one who brought them meals and kept assessing the comatose male’s condition.
Apex only left the male for twenty minutes a night, allowing Nadya to sit with Callum as he disappeared to wherever he went. The only thing she knew was that every time he came back, it was with another white flower. The bed in the room was now surrounded by white blooms in various kinds of vases. She had a feeling the vampire was breaking into a florist’s somewhere, the fragrance of his floral thieving the kind of perfume she looked forward to smelling and which he clearly hoped would rouse the male.
So far, he was still waiting.
And in her own way so was Nadya. For someone else.
Kane… remained nowhere to be found.
By the fourth night when he hadn’t appeared or been discovered wounded, she had resigned herself to the conclusion she had been fighting.
He must have been killed during the infiltration.
The knowledge was horrifying enough, but when she thought about the way they’d left things, her heart ached to the point where she couldn’t catch her breath. She’d had her reasons for what she’d done, though.
And she tried to remind herself that they hadn’t spent all that much time together anyway—although that didn’t hold water. They had had a lifetime in a matter of nights—and those memories of being with him were going to have to last her until she went unto the Fade.
Time to focus on her job, she thought sadly as she went to the first of the sleeping berths in the row on the right.
“You’re looking much better,” she said to an elderly female who’d had pneumonia. Then she made a note on her med chart. “The penicillin is doing its job, and I’ll be back before dawn to give you another dose.”
As she went to move away from the pod, a frail arm reached out and myopic eyes tried to focus on her. “Thank you.”
Two words. Two syllables. And yet a wealth of meaning that even theglymeracouldn’t match with all their money and possessions.
What was left of theglymera, that was.
“You’re welcome,” Nadya murmured. “You just rest. I’ll be back.”
It took her a good hour to work her way around all the patients’ check-ins. When she was finished, she returned to the desk Mayhem had set up for her at the far end, from which she logged doses and kept track of symptoms and vitals. As she sat down, Nadya frowned.
Another pebble was on her master ledger.
It was small and round, and of a pink tone this time. As she put it in her palm and rolled it around, she loved the smooth surface. The veining. The fact that it clearly had been chosen with care.
Then she looked to the little dish by her lineup of antibiotic bottles. There were five other little stones, of different sizes and colors, like flowers that had been picked from a riverbed.
She had no idea who had been leaving them, but when she was at her most pathetic, she fantasized that it was—
“Hi.”
As Kane spoke up, he wasn’t sure what the reaction from Nadya was going to be. And as she looked up at him with a gasp, he told himself he should have given her more time. She had been working so hard, saving lives, easing pain, doing what she had been born to do, that she no doubt hadn’t had a moment to reflect on the way they had left things.
Then again, how arrogant of him to assume he was even on her mind.