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coat
and rubbed his fingers between her breasts to stimulate her heartbeat. “I’d
think you’d prefer drinking my blood rather than having me fondling you.” He
moved his hand to her hot belly. Blood still pumped out. “What’s your name?”
    “Rye.”
    Just having her answer showed she wasn’t ready to give up
life.
    “Is that it?” he asked, trying to start a conversation of
any sort just to keep her awake.
    She looked at him again. “It’s enough.”
    “So that’s the name you want carved on your grave marker?”
    “Don’t trouble yourself.” Her obstinacy showed spunk.
    If he were the one lying near death, he might have said the
same thing. With hardships of day-to-day living and the lack of beauty in the
world, why not give up the struggle to hang on? On the other hand, perhaps her
display of stubbornness was a sign she was healing on her own.
    “Aren’t you going to ask me to burn you instead of burying
you?” He needed to keep her talking to prevent her from sliding into a coma.
    “According to you, I’ll burst into flames soon enough.” She
gasped a weak sound. Her eyes closed and her head lolled to the side.
    “Rye?” He gripped her chin and turned her face toward him.
“Rye, look at me.”
    Her thick golden lashes lifted and her glistening blue gaze
lacked the resolve of her words.
    “Your temperature is rising. You should drink before it’s
too late.” He offered his wrist again. “You must have some reason left to
live.”
    Her eyes widened and he knew he’d found a chink in her
obstinacy.
    Then she let out a sigh of defeat. “I was fed an extract
from allium.”
    Blood poison . Still, she could survive it or so he
had heard.
    “You have to try,” he said again, not knowing to what extent
his blood could help. As a loner, he didn’t have long or detailed conversations
with purebreds of the lamian species to know all the differences in them
compared to humans. And half-breeds, those who had a mix of lamian and
human blood, had enough dissimilarities that it wasn’t a topic that came up in
his travels.
    “I need…too…much.” She coughed on the last word.
    Rye convulsed with sickening sounds of distress.
    Sevrin’s stomach knotted. The haunting memories of his
mother’s illness flashed in his thoughts. He pulled Rye forward, rolling her on
her side. Vomit and blood spewed from her pale lips. He grabbed her shoulder
and steadied her as she continued to heave. Bile hit the bottom of his trouser
leg and his boot. When he touched her bare back to hold her from falling on her
face, he felt other gashes in her skin and more sticky blood.
    “Fuck.” What sadistic son of a bitch did this to her and
why?
    “I’m sorry,” she said, anger fringing the apologetic tone.
    Realizing how his disgust for her abuser could sound aimed
at her, he swept her hair back from her forehead. “Don’t be.” He moved his hold
away from where his fingers dipped into the split skin but he found no safe
place to hang on to her without touching an open cut.
    She tried pushing herself away but another round of vomiting
forced her forward. He held her tight, helping her back to the ground when she
stopped shaking. Shifting his coat back in place to cover her, he felt around
the garment for the pocket with his flask.
    He opened the lizard-hide container. “Here, drink this.” He
raised her head.
    “No,” she protested. “It will dilute my blood and make the
poison recycle easier through my veins.”
    “And if you don’t get cooled down soon, you’ll die. It’s a
damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation.” He flipped back the coat
from her upper torso and poured some of the water on her neck and chest. The
clean liquid cut paths through the grime.
    With bloodstained hands, he wiped the water along her
collarbone and up her slender neck. The mixture of blood and dirt smeared
together. He splashed more water on her face and wet her dry-cracked lips. She
didn’t protest.
    “How does