The Unclaimed (University of the Gods Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

When he felt her beside him, his eyelids fluttered. She took it to mean that he wanted her to come closer and gingerly sat down next to him. When she touched his hand, she almost started crying. He was so frail, he looked like he would break and she was afraid she would hurt him by her mere presence.

“You finally made it up here”, he croaked.

“Ben never said how bad it was.”

Her voice caught in her throat and she had to fight the urge to break into sobs.

“It’s good you… ”, he started but went into such a coughing fit that he was unable to speak any more.

Cassandra helped him sit upright until he was finally able to suck in more breath. The servant got all flustered, telling her that it was his job and that she had to leave. Cassandra, still holding on to Alexander, snapped at the servant to get lost.

“You haven’t done anything to make him better”, she hissed. “Go complain to someone who cares, I am not leaving his side.”

With that she returned her attention on Alexander, who was still coughing, not waiting or caring for the servant’s reaction who left the room muttering that she would regret this.

Holding Alexander, Cassandra desperately wanted to punch something. How had they let it go that far? Why hadn’t they helped him?

“Have you eaten?” she asked softly and gently rocked him back and forth but he didn’t answer. “What about water? Did you drink something?”

By the look of his sunken cheeks she guessed he hadn’t. She took a look around and saw that there were pills and potions and medication lying around everywhere, even several IV drips but when she looked at the bruises at the insides of his arms she knew that they hadn’t been able to hook him up to them.

Cassandra gently laid Alexander down on his pillow. The girl from the sofa stuck her head in but when she saw what was going on, she disappeared. Cassandra was sure that she would go get someone too but she didn’t care. She needed to help him.

“So this is what we’ll do”, Cassandra said more to herself than to Alexander whose breathing was shallow at best. “I will get a glass of water and a spoon and I will feed this glass to you even if it takes the whole day and you will drink it.”

She reached for the water at his bedside, then thought better of it and went to get fresh water from the bathroom. At first he resisted, pressing his lips together and wasting the remainder of his strength on fighting her. But eventually he gave up and opened his mouth and she fed him spoon after spoon. When he made a gagging noise and seemed to want to throw it up again, Cassandra clapped her hand over his mouth.

“Don’t you dare”, she hissed. “Nothing that goes in today will come out again. Do you hear me? You are stronger than that. Your body has been your worst enemy these past years. It is time for you to fight back. I know that you can do it.”

She didn’t look up when Ben stormed in with the servant at his side and she didn’t reply to his demand to know what was going on. Then he saw that Alexander was accepting what she gave him without throwing up and he told the guards to stand down. Then he went to the sofa in Alexander’s living room to sit down.

Spoon after spoon went in. In the end it took a couple of hours but Cassandra managed to feed Alexander a quarter of the glass before he fell asleep from exhaustion. She gently put the water down, made sure that Alexander was properly covered and then went into the living room.

Ben met her at the door. They fought for a while, making as little noise as possible, until Ben finally let himself be pinned against the wall where he met Cassandra’s white-hot anger with a kind of resigned calm. Cassandra hadn’t even noticed that she was crying until she felt the sobs shake her whole body. She wanted to scream at Ben that it was all his fault, that they should have taken better care of Alexander and that they were killing him.

Ben, too, was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion and didn’t look much better than Alexander. All the pent-up rage left her and she let go of him. He was breathing heavily, a faint sheen of sweat showing on his forehead and Cassandra realized that he had a fever and was barely able to stand. Cassandra bit her lip and went to sit on the sofa while Ben remained standing at the window with his back turned to her.

“What is going on?” she asked quietly, all fight gone out of her. “Why is he in such bad condition?”

Ben balled his hands into fists.

“The sickness hit him hard and fast”, he started and wiped his hand over his face. “A couple of days ago he seemed to be getting better but then it got so much worse. We were unable to move him to the infirmary. He just kept throwing up everything they fed him and they couldn’t even hook him up to an IV drip because his veins were so dried up they couldn’t get in. And then we all got sick and there was barely anyone left to help him except for Madame Margot’s servants and Mia, who seems to be the only one who hasn’t contracted this terrible illness…”

Cassandra felt desperation claw at her.

“I will stay with him today and through the night”, Cassandra said. “I don’t care whether it is proper protocol or not, I need to be here.”

The tension in his shoulders was visible but this wasn’t about him, or her. It was about Alexander.

“Fine. If you stay, I’ll stay”, Ben said after a while.

There was movement behind them and they both turned around just in time to see Mia enter through a side-door Cassandra hadn’t even known existed. It was well hidden, so well, that Cassandra wasn’t sure that it had been there a moment ago. Mia was carrying a tray and was at first unaware of their presence. She was murmuring to herself and once again Cassandra felt alarmed by Mia’s strange behavior.

Ben moved and Mia almost dropped the tray. It had fruit on it, bread and a carafe filled with water. But what interested Cassandra most was the array of green and yellow vials filled with liquids. Mia caught the tray from falling but one of the yellow bottles tumbled off and broke on the floor. Cassandra was there in an instant and caught a familiar smell.

“It’s Ambrosia”, Mia squeaked and snatched the tray from Cassandra when she tried to take it. “It helps Alexander get better. But he doesn’t take it. It all comes out again. I can’t make him keep it down.”

She looked worried. Cassandra felt that Mia didn’t want to hurt Alexander but there was something off about her and Mia’s hectic attempts at kicking the broken bottle under the sofa didn’t help to soften the impression. Cassandra let her pass and then bent down to pick up the pieces of the broken bottle. She made sure not to cut herself and quickly wrapped them in a tissue she took from Alexander’s desk.

When Ben explained to Mia that they wouldn’t need her help, she gave Ben such a dark look that Cassandra felt the hair on her arms raise but in the end, Mia gave in and retreated.

“I need to talk to her, talk to her”, she murmured and buried her face in her hand. “She won’t like it, not at all, she won’t.”

And with that she stumbled out of the room, biting into her hands as if she needed to stop herself from screaming.

“What’s wrong?” Ben said but Cassandra’s thoughts were whirling.

She had seen the vials in Alexander’s room many times before, the pills and potions, and up until now she had simply put them down to medication he had to take because of his condition.

“Is it true what Mia said?” she asked, frowning. “Do the vials really contain Ambrosia?”

Ben pressed his lips together.

“We didn’t have a choice”, he said, sounding angry and resigned at the same time. “We know the risks but when we came here, Alexander was in even more pain than usual. He insisted he felt his legs tingle and that he could move them sometimes during the night. But at the same time the pain was becoming almost unbearable and that was when Madame Margot offered to give him Ambrosia.”

Cassandra remembered the drink Ben had given her after her fight with the hydra and the one he had had sent over when she had been sick. And she remembered the taste of the liquid Charlie drank to restore him to his good looks from their kiss on New Year’s. They had all been the same, more or less at least, she now realized.

“I thought it was only available to the gods”, Cassandra said.

Ben nodded and shook his head at the same time.

“It is, in its purest form”, he said. “Ambrosia is their only source of nutrition, they don’t need anything else. To us, to anyone with a human element in their blood, it can have incredible healing powers but it can also drive us mad or even kill us. That is why we only drink it watered down or with something else mixed in to lessen the risk of going crazy or dying on the spot.”

“Why does Alexander take Ambrosia on such a regular basis then?” Cassandra asked. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Madame Margot is… special”, he said, unsure how much he should tell her. “She has abilities that enable her to…”

Cassandra interrupted him with an impatient wave of her hand.

“I know that Madame Margot is a sorceress”, Cassandra said and for a moment Ben looked surprised. “That doesn’t explain why you trust her with Alexander’s life.”

Ben’s expression became dark as thunder, then he suddenly went very pale and swayed. Cassandra was beside him in an instant, helping him to the sofa where he took a seat. He was drenched in sweat, looking like he was about to faint. Cassandra handed him a glass of water and waited until he had drunk it. Then she felt his forehead.

“You are burning up”, she said and Ben growled.

“I am fine”, he said, croaking and coughing. “You know that we would never do anything to harm Alexander. Madame Margot is able to prepare the Ambrosia so that we can take it with little to no risk. She is Heracles’ friend and he trusts her and we have no reason to doubt his judgment. He would never do anything to risk our lives. Do you believe that?”

Cassandra guessed she did but she had a feeling that Madame Margot might have her own agenda here. She could see the benefits of giving Ambrosia but she also knew that she would have healed without it on both occasions that she had received it; all it had done was speed things up. But she wondered about Alexander, whether for him it was indeed something that helped him survive. All she knew was that whatever Mia had brought for Alexander today wasn’t Ambrosia or at least it was nothing like the stuff she had drunk before, modified or not. What she had drunk had been
golden
, there was no better way to put it. When Mia dropped the bottle in Alexander’s room, the stuff had smelled rotten somehow, evil.

Suddenly she felt like they were being watched and a moment later Madame Margot entered together with a Heracles that looked like he had been raised from a deep sleep despite the fact that it was barely noon.

“I heard that there is a little in improvement in our patient”, Madame Margot said and smiled at Cassandra who suddenly felt like a mouse trapped by a snake.

Madame Margot was holding on to Heracles in a possessive grip. Heracles, nodding absent-mindedly at Cassandra and Ben, let himself fall on the sofa beside Ben and rubbed his eyes.

“You look terrible, Hades”, he said and coughed.

He smiled weakly when he saw Cassandra looking at him.

“Don’t worry, I am fine”, he said. “I never had it as bad as the rest.”

Madame Margot, pale and beautiful, went up to Ben to feel his forehead. Then she pulled out a vial with golden liquid and told Ben to drink. Ben didn’t even hesitate. He drank it in one go and after a moment, color returned to his cheeks, his breath becoming less labored with every breath until he was able to stand up again.

“Thank you”, he said and Madame Margot nodded.

Then she held out another vial to Cassandra.

“You were the only one able to make Alexander keep something down”, she said and Cassandra felt her throat tighten. “This is almost pure Ambrosia, much stronger than what I have just given to Ben, but if we want Alexander to survive this night, he has to take it. It is the only thing that can save him now.”

Cassandra tried to find something in Madame Margot’s expression that would tell her whether she could trust her but all she could see was an honest willingness to help Alexander. Was she wrong to suspect Madame Margot? She opened the bottle and took a careful sniff. Madame Margot raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“Now that you know our little secret, I hope we can trust you to keep it”, Heracles said, yawning again and then winking at Madame Margot.

Madame Margot smiled benignly at Cassandra who suddenly felt her throat constrict in a tight, invisible grip. She couldn’t breathe but no one else seemed to notice that there was something strange going on. Then it was over and Cassandra desperately gulped for air. And that was where she saw the slightest shift in Madame Margot’s appearance. It wasn’t the shift between man and woman she had seen before, it was as if Cassandra suddenly saw someone else entirely. It was over so quick, it could have just been the lack of oxygen that made her dizzy. Cassandra knew that she would have to be very careful around Madame Margot from now on.

Cassandra nodded, then went into Alexander’s room, hoping that she wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

She sat down next to Alexander, took a spoon and put the liquid to Alexander’s lips. Madame Margot had brought the real thing and Cassandra wondered whether Mia had given her some kind of warning when she had said that she “had to tell her”. But something told her that Madame Margot was acting on her own here. And even though Cassandra was sure that Mia didn’t want Alexander to die, she wasn’t sure whether the girl wanted him to get better either. After all, when Alexander was sick she was most needed, wasn’t she? Alexander took this moment to wake up and start coughing, effectively spilling the liquid on his mouth and face. Cassandra took a towel, gingerly wiped his face and then prepared for the longest hours of her life.