The airtight steel door slammed shut with a heavy hydraulic hiss, sealing out the roar of the blizzard beyond.
Kaelen carried Serin’s limp, freezing body down a corridor lined with stacked instrument panels until he reached his private secret medical laboratory.
The room was isolated underground, illuminated by the turquoise glow of tubes filled with magic-stabilizing agents. In the center, an elliptical stabilization table radiated thin waves of warmth.
Kaelen laid Serin down on the table with exquisite care, as though the woman in his arms were made of the most fragile glass.
The skin of Serin’s neck had frozen deathly pale, covered by a thin layer of icy frost that was slowly creeping toward her temples. Her heartbeat fluttered so faintly behind her ribs, like the wings of a dying butterfly.
“Keep her heartbeat steady...” Kaelen whispered to himself, his trembling fingers hurriedly driving crystal magic-link needles into the pulse points of Serin’s wrists.
The monitor beside the table flashed red, displaying the sharp plunge of Serin’s magic-line graph. The cold poison from the Peach Blossom curse’s upheaval was clogging all her major blood vessels.
Without extreme measures, every cell in Serin’s body would die within minutes.
Kaelen drew a deep breath that burned in his throat. He removed his tactical coat, rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt, then drove a second magic-drawing crystal needle directly into the vein in his own wrist.
He was going to transfer some of Serin’s cold poison into his own body.
A forbidden method with up to a ninety percent risk of fatal death for the recipient.
Zzzzzzzt!
The moment the magic flow connected through the crystal transmission cable, Kaelen’s body jerked rigid with a scream. The veins in his neck and arms swelled instantly, radiating a horrifying blue tint.
The ancient ice inside Serin’s body was sucked into him, battering Kaelen’s internal organs like repeated blows from an iron hammer.
ARGH!
Kaelen gripped the edge of the medical table with one hand, stretching his chest muscles until the buttons of his shirt snapped off. Fresh blood burst from his mouth and dripped onto the steel floor. His eyes reddened as blood vessels ruptured under the pressure, but he refused to cut the magic transmission.
At the same time, the laboratory alarm began to blare. Red flashes swept across the automated defense system as Kaelen’s body temperature plummeted to an extreme low. The connecting crystal needles glowed far too brightly, threatening to explode under the strain of excessive magic.
With his left hand trembling violently and nearly paralyzed by the cold, Kaelen pulled the manual stabilizer lever beneath the table. He forced the system to inject a direct supply of synthetic antidote into his own bloodstream to hold back the wave of poison.
Inside Kaelen’s mind, fragments of tragic memories distorted by magical amnesia began flashing violently.
He saw flames engulfing a sacred site twenty years ago, a blood-streaked fragment of a red dress, and the anguished cries of a woman whose name haunted him every time he awoke from a nightmare.
“I won’t let that tragedy happen again...” Kaelen growled through clenched teeth.
He focused all his mental endurance on drawing more and more pure ice poison from Serin’s body, heedless of the numbness spreading through the nerves in his left arm.
An unbearable burning pain traveled through the marrow of his bones, but Kaelen’s focus did not waver from the woman on the table for even a moment.
On the table, the icy frost covering Serin’s neck slowly peeled away and evaporated. A faint flush of pink crept back into the curator’s lips. Serin’s chest rose slowly, exhaling its first warm breath after the deadly crisis.
Serin slowly opened her impossibly heavy eyelids.
Her vision was blurred. She could only make out Kaelen’s tall silhouette, leaning weakly against the side of her table. She saw blood spattered across the floor, and saw how Kaelen’s arm had frozen black from absorbing the poison that had been about to kill her.
“Kael... en...” Serin called, her voice so faint it seemed caught between confusion and profound pain.
Kaelen lowered his head, which felt as heavy as lead. His body trembled violently, radiating the aura of death that had now shifted into his own chest. He rested his forehead against the edge of the table, right beside Serin’s half-conscious ear.
Kaelen’s cold, blood-scented breath brushed against Serin’s neck.
“Don’t move...” Kaelen whispered weakly, his voice hoarse, broken, and heavy with the regret he had kept buried in the darkness of his amnesia for twenty years. “Your magic... hasn’t stabilized yet...”
Serin could feel Kaelen’s frozen fingers reach for her wrist and grip it with the last scraps of strength left in him. Gone was the arrogance of the Commander of the Main Guard. All that remained was a broken man before the woman he loved.
“I’m not asking you to forgive my sin from twenty years ago...” Kaelen whispered shakily into Serin’s ear. A cold tear slid from the corner of his gray eye and fell onto Serin’s pale cheek. “...I’m only asking you to stay alive.”
That was swoony and absolutely heartbreaking! Is Serin finally starting to soften? Tell us what you think in the comments!