Chapter 35: Another Council

“Are you sure you’re alright?” It must have been the fifth or even sixth time Gisella had asked the same exact question to Ryre. He had found it endearing at first, but now only rolled his eyes and gave her a slight shove every time a stray cough left him.

She pouted. “I’m just worried.”

“Well,” Ryre said as he sat on his bed and pulled her onto his lap, “Thanks to you, I am a whole lot better than I was before.”

And he meant it. The agonizing ache in the bottommost pit of his stomach had left him the minute he had drank the blood of the deer.

His skin was beginning to feel less dry and taught and even the horrible eyesight that had overtaken him in his moments of sheer hunger had begun to recede and make way for the inhuman clearness with which he saw now.