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My jaw dropped, and I pulled away. "Oh, hell no," I said, and Quen's smile widened even as his eyes shut to hide that unsettling seeing-around-corners glint.
Trent came up beside me. I could sense his irritation at me for not waiting for him, and under that, his gratitude that someone, even if it was me, had been with Quen.
"I didn't think you would," Quen said. "But I had to ask." His eyes opened to fix on Trent beside me. "I had someone else lined up if you said no. Can I at least get you to promise to help him when he needs it?"
Trent shifted from foot to foot as his tension looked for an outlet. I went to say no, and Quen added, "From time to time, if the money is right and it doesn't compromise your morals."
The scent of silk and other people's perfume grew stronger as Trent became more upset. I glanced at his frustrated worry, then back to Quen struggling to take another breath. "I'll think about it," I said. "But I'm just as likely to haul his ass in."
Quen's eyes closed in acknowledgment and his hand rolled palm-up in invitation. My eyes pricked again. Shit. Shit. Shit. He was slipping. His need for support had surmounted his pride. I hated this. I hated it!
Hand shaking, I slipped my warm fingers into his cool grip, feeling his fingers tighten about mine. My throat closed, and I angrily wiped at my eye. Damn it all to hell.
Quen's posture eased, and his breathing evened out. It was the oldest magic in the universe, the magic of compassion.
Dr. Anders began to pace from the window to the dresser. "It wasn't ready," she muttered. "I told him it wasn't ready. The blending had only a thirty percent success rate, and the linkages were weak at best. This wasn't my fault! He should have waited!"
Quen squeezed my hand, and his face crinkled in what I recognized as a smile. He thought she was fu
Trent left the sunken area, and I relaxed. "No one is blaming you," Trent said, a hand on her arm in solace. He hesitated, then said without emotion, "Why don't you wait outside."
Surprised, I turned to see her indignant shock. "Oh, she's pissed," I whispered so Quen would know, getting my fingers squeezed in return. But I think she heard me, too, since she stared at me with a prune face for an entire three seconds, fumbling for words before she turned on a heel. Pace stiff, she went to the door. There was a flush of drums and light, then the soft smothering of darkness returned. Takata's base thrummed through it like a pulse.
Trent stepped into the lowered pit of Quen's bedroom. In a fast motion of anger, he shoved a piece of expensive equipment off a low cart. The noise of it hitting the floor shocked me as much as his unexpected show of frustrated anger, and I stared as he sat down where it had been to put his elbows on his knees and drop his head into his cupped hands. Trent had once sat and watched his father die, too.
I felt my face blank as I saw him raw and stripped down to the pain in his soul. He was young, afraid, and watching yet another person who had raised him dying. All his power, wealth, privilege, and illegal bio labs couldn't stop it. He wasn't used to being helpless, and it tore at him.
Quen's eyes had opened at the crash, and I found them waiting for me when I turned to him. "This is why you're here," he said, confusing me. Quen's attention slid to Trent, then back to me. "Trent's a good man," he said as if he wasn't sitting right there. "But he's a businessman, living and dying by numbers and percentages. He's got me in the ground already. Fighting this with him is a losing battle. You believe in the eleven percent, Rachel." He took an arduous breath, his lungs moving in an exaggerated motion. "I need that."
The long speech had winded him, and as he labored to catch his breath in wet inhalations, I held his hand tighter, remembering my father. My jaw gritted and my throat closed as I heard the truth in his words. "Not this time, Quen," I said, feeling a headache start and forcing my grip to ease. "I'm not going to sit here and watch you die. All you have to do is see the sunrise, and you're home free."
It was what Dr. Anders had said, and unlike Trent, I saw it as a real possibility. Hell, I didn't believe in the eleven percent, I lived on it.
Trent was staring in horror at us as it sunk in. He wasn't capable of living any other way than by his graphs and predictions.
"It's not your fault, Sa'han," Quen said, his gravelly voice carrying a softer pain. "It's a mindset, and I need her. Because as much as it looks otherwise…I want to live."
His face riven, Trent stood. I watched him rise out of the sunken area and walk away, pitying him. I could help Quen—he could not. The door opened and shut, letting in a sliver of life before the uncertain darkness that hid the future cocooned us again in a waiting warmth and smothering stillness. Waiting.
We were alone. I looked at Quen's dark hand in mine and saw the strength in it. The coming battle would be fought by both the mind and the body, but it was the soul where the balance lay. "You took something," I said, my heart pounding at the chance that he might actually talk to me. "Something Dr. Anders was working on. Was it genetic? Why?"
Quen's eyes were bright, still seeing around corners. Taking a breath that it hurt to hear, he blinked at me, refusing to answer.
Frustrated, I took his grip more firmly. "Fine, you son of a bitch," I swore. "I'll hold your stupid-ass hand, but you're not going to die." God, give us the eleven percent. Please? Just this once? I hadn't been able to save my dad. I hadn't been able to save Peter. I hadn't been able to save Kisten, and the guilt of his dying to keep me alive was enough to bring me sobbing to my knees.
Not this time. Not this man.
"It doesn't matter if I live or die," he rasped. "But seeing me through this is the only…way you'll find…the truth," he rasped, his body clenching in pain. It was getting worse. His bird-bright eyes fixed on mine, and the hurt in him was obvious. "How bad do you want to know?" he taunted as the sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Bastard," I almost snarled as I dabbed it away, and he smiled through the pain. "You son of a bitch bastard."
Twenty-one
My lower back hurt, and my arms. They were crossed to serve as a pillow as I lay slumped forward in my chair with my upper body draped on Quen's bed. I was just resting my eyes while Quen had another span of time where he could breathe without my encouragement. It was late, and so very, very quiet.
Quiet? Adrenaline pulsed through me and I jerked upright. I'd fallen asleep. Damn it! I thought in panic, my gaze going to Quen. His horrible tearing breaths had ceased, and guilt twisted in me as I thought he had died while I slept—until I realized he didn't have the waxy hue of the dead, but a soft color.
He's still alive, I thought with relief, reaching to shake him back into breathing as I had numerous times that night. The cessation of his labored breathing must have woken me.
But my outstretched hand stopped and tears threatened when I saw his chest rise and fall in an easy motion. Slumping back into the leather wing-back chair, I sent my attention to the wide sliding door that led to the patio. The moss and stones, hazy with the reflected sunlight, grew blurry. It was morning, and damn it all to hell, he was going to make it. Eleven percent chance my ass. He had done it. If he had crossed the eleven percent barrier, fifty was nothing.
Sniffing, I wiped my eyes. There was the softest rattle in Quen's breathing, and his sheets were sweat soaked. His black hair was stuck to his skull and he looked dehydrated despite the IV, wan with stress wrinkles, making him appear old. But he was alive.
"I hope it was worth it, Quen," I whispered, still not knowing what he had done to himself or why Trent blamed me. I fumbled in my bag for a tissue, forced to use a nasty one with lint all over it. Jenks hadn't shown up, and I hoped he was okay. There was absolutely no sound anywhere. The thump of the music was gone, and I could feel the peace that had settled over Trent's compound. By the light coming from the patio, it looked a shade after sunrise. I had to stop waking up at this hour. It was just insane.