Chapter 107

Logan

My body ached like hell.

I blinked my surroundings back into focus, quickly recognizing where I was. I was in the medical wing, where I had been delivered in the early hours of the morning upon returning to the palace.

With my many injuries and the wolfsbane still making my system sluggish, Evelyn had insisted I be tended to. I resisted at first, but the events of the past few days quickly caught up to me, and I fell asleep the moment I fell into the hospital cot. Without the adrenaline to motivate me, the full effect of my torture and entrapment was palpable.

Now, my body felt heavy and sluggish, but the haze that had gripped me for days was blessedly thin. When my eyes opened fully and I looked around, I found Evelyn immediately.

She sat beside me, her posture rigid, as if she was torn between staying and bolting to find something else to busy herself and still her anxious thoughts.

But she was already working on something. Her hands moved with clinical precision as she prepared a vial of liquid. I hadn’t ever seen it in person before, but I knew what it was: the wolfsbane cure. Her cure.

“Drink,” she said softly, but not tenderly.

I swallowed it without protest, the bitter taste making my throat burn. I knew that this would expel the last of the drug’s effects. With it, I would be clear-minded again.

“You shouldn’t have even been able to stand last night,” Evelyn muttered, adjusting the bandages around my wrists that covered the chaffing from my manacles. “They poisoned you with enough to drop three wolves. I don’t know how you managed everything last night. You should have been incapacitated.”

“I was running on adrenaline,” I admitted. I did not mention that the sight of her in danger had chased away any shreds of hesitance.

“If it weren’t for this…” she tapped the empty vial, “you’d still be a mess for days. But you should feel better in an hour. At least, better where the wolfsbane is involved. I can’t attest to your other injuries.”

I wanted to thank her, to tell her that she’d saved me yet again, but the words tangled in my head, lodging in my throat. All I could see was the pain shadowing her eyes. I had to explain. Once and for all.

“Evelyn,” I rasped, my voice still raw. “What Emma said and did… I hope you can see now that I would never choose her. Never. That… That kiss in the woods wasn’t sincere. She has been manipulating things the entire time. It wasn’t what it looked like. I never—”

The door creaked open. Chris stepped inside, his brow furrowed with what appeared to be concern. His gaze darted between us, softening when it landed on Evelyn. I didn’t miss it, this subtle change in his demeanor when he saw her. It made me tense all over.

“You should rest,” he told me, though his eyes never left her. “Evelyn, don’t push him too hard. He nearly died. Again.”

I clenched my jaw, watching the way he hovered, too close. The faint brush of his hand against hers when he passed her another vial of medication for her to use. The way his eyes softened when she smiled politely at him. It didn’t take a genius to see it.

I felt a snarl building in me and had to press it down.

“I’m not pushing him to do anything,” Evelyn reassured him. “He just woke up.”

She smiled at him in a way that seemed genuine and warm. It was not necessarily in a way that was flirtatious, but it still irked me.

And he returned the grin. There was a gentleness to his expression that revealed everything. How had I ever missed it before? Or was this a new development that had sprung up in my absence?

Chris chuckled. “Alright, I trust you. Give him a dose of this later today for the pain. He already had one last night when he was out, so this should only be administered this afternoon.”

Evelyn smiled. “Got it.”

And with that, he took his leave. I watched him shuffle away with a critical glare.

When he finally left, I turned my head toward her. “He’s in love with you,” I said flatly.

She blinked, then scoffed, busying herself with tucking away supplies. “Don’t be ridiculous, Logan.”

But I wasn’t wrong. The tension in her shoulders told me she knew it too.

“He is,” I insisted.

“He told me that he had a crush on me, yes,” she confirmed. Her face was heating as though she was embarrassed. “But it’s not like that. At least on my end. And he knows it.”

I leaned back against the pillow, my ribs screaming with the motion. “He still would do anything for you if you asked. It’s so obvious it’s painful.”

“Now you know how it felt to watch someone else with you. To watch you smile at them and laugh with them. To worry if you would choose them instead.” Her eyes flicked up at me, sharp as a blade. “Now you know what I felt every time Emma was near you.”

That shut me up. I had always known that Emma had tormented Evelyn by using the prospect of being with me as a weapon. But being on the opposite side of it all was an entirely different feeling. And I had to admit, it hurt.

The hush between us stretched taut, heavy with all the words neither of us could seem to spit out. I felt like I had mispoken, but everything between us was laid bare. I just wasn’t sure how I could move forward with it.

Finally, I broke the lapse of silence with the only other question clawing at me. It felt good to redirect my attention and energy. Thinking about Chris and Evelyn for too long couldn’t be good for anyone involved anyway.

“Where is she?” I asked.

Evelyn stiffened. She didn’t need to ask who I meant. “Emma’s in the dungeons. Where she belongs.”

Relief and fury twisted in my gut at once. My muscles protested as I pushed myself upright, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.

“You can’t be serious,” Evelyn said, grabbing my arm. “Logan, you can barely walk. You need time to recover. You heard Chris. You shouldn’t push yourself.”

At the mention of his name again, I gritted my teeth. Like hell I would take advice from him right now.

“I need to see her,” I insisted.

“Logan—”

“No,” I said, cutting her off. “We can’t give her a chance to escape again. I need to interrogate her, and then she must be executed. Publicly and quickly. And this shouldn’t be delayed for my recovery. I can walk and talk just fine.”

“I still don’t think—”

“I’ll come back for that dose of medicine later,” I said, pointedly not acknowledging that it was Chris who had prescribed it.

Before she could press the argument further, I pushed past her and into the hallway. Admittedly, each step was agony, but pain I could live with. Answers on the other hand… I couldn’t wait another second for those.

And Emma was going to give them to me one way or another.