Harem System novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Sixty Breaths

Veyra was awake when he reached bed three.

The bandage that bed nine had used to tie her to the frame lay in a loop on the floor.

Her face was the color of old paper, and her amber eyes were steady.

"You stopped taking the crystals," Nils said.

"They only delay it." Her voice was a thread. "I don't want to be delayed anymore. I wanted to be here when you came."

"That was stupid."

"Yes."

Liriel came in behind him and checked her pulse in silence.

She looked at his chest.

She looked at Veyra.

"Sixty breaths," she said. "Hand to hand, nothing more. I'll have my palm on his back. If I say stop, you let go the second I say it."

"Understood," said Veyra.

Nils sat down on the edge of the bed.

He held out his right hand, palm up.

She looked at it for a long moment.

Then she laid her fingers across his.

The pull came at once.

He had braced for the wire, the hot sharp tug he had felt in the closet.

It did not come.

What came was slow, a deep soft draw that ran from his palm to his breastbone, where the new core took it and turned it warm.

It gave something back.

He felt it, small and sweet, flowing into her hand.

Her breath caught.

"Oh," Veyra said.

"Does it hurt?"

"No." She stared at their hands. "It doesn't hurt you?"

"No."

"Nils. It doesn't hurt you."

Her face crumpled.

Liriel's palm was flat between his shoulder blades.

"Forty," she counted. "Forty-five. Slow breaths, both of you."

Veyra turned her hand over and laced her fingers through his.

Color came back into her mouth.

It came back slowly, a flush in her lips that she did not seem to notice.

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