Chapter 10: Fever and Memory
The wet cloth felt entirely inadequate against her forehead, sliding down her skin the moment I lifted my hand. The guest room was stifling despite the damp chill of the estate at midnight, held in a suffocating vacuum behind the heavy oak door I had locked from the inside. She was shivering under three layers of imported wool blankets, yet her skin burned with a terrifying dry heat that seemed to radiate outward into the quiet shadows of the room. Every shallow breath she took rattled in her chest, a dry, papery sound that reminded me too sharply of how long those lungs had been starved of clean air.
I sat on the edge of the mattress, the dark fabric of my suit trousers catching on the coarse linen of the spare sheets. My fingers trembled slightly as I wrung out the cloth in the china basin on the nightstand, watching the water ripple under the amber glow of the bedside lamp.
"Stay with me," I murmured, leaning in close enough to catch the faint, broken rhythm of her breathing. "Just a little longer."
Her eyelids fluttered, pale skin bruised with exhaustion, but she didn't open them. Instead, a low, ragged sound tore from her throat—not quite a word, but a desperate sequence of syllables that summoned the dark years she had spent trapped behind the wainscoting.
"Cold," she whispered, her voice cracking like dry timber. "The wall... he locked the latch. The iron... it wouldn't turn."
My jaw tightened until the muscles ached. I knew the man who had built that cavity, who had treated a human life as an inconvenience to be tucked out of sight behind the crystal chandeliers and polished mahogany. Hearing her voice relive the terror of that first click of the lock made the blood pound violently in my ears. But right now, anger was a luxury I couldn't afford. Her pulse was racing, erratic and weak, fluttering beneath her damp wrist like a trapped moth. If the fever broke her mind before her body recovered, we would lose everything—not just the truth, but her life.
I stood up abruptly, pacing the length of the Persian rug. The local hospital was twenty minutes down the county road, but walking into an emergency room with a malnourished, undocumented survivor of a decades-old confinement meant immediate police involvement, administrative inquiries, and a public scandal that would tear my family apart before the first investigator even reached the front gate. Yet keeping her here without proper medication was a gamble with fatal odds.
My gaze fell on the heavy mahogany desk near the corner, where my encrypted phone sat beside a stack of unopened mail. There was one option left, someone whose discretion had been purchased years ago through family legal channels, though I hadn't called him since my father's funeral.
Dr. Marcus Vance. He was semi-retired now, living quietly on the outskirts of town, maintaining a medical license that occasionally required looking the other way for people of our standing. He didn't ask questions as long as the fee cleared and the patient didn't die on his examining table.
I picked up the receiver, my thumb hovering over the keypad as I dialed the private ten-digit number from memory. The line rang twice, three times, a hollow mechanical drone that echoed in the silent room.
"This had better be important," a gravelly voice answered on the fourth ring, thick with sleep and irritation.
"Marcus," I said, keeping my voice low and level, staring across the room at the bed where she tossed restlessly against the pillows. "I need you to come to the estate. Quietly. Through the side garden entrance."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, followed by the rustle of bedsheets. "Julian? At this hour? What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?"
"It's not my trouble," I replied, my eyes fixed on the trembling form of the survivor as she let out another choked, feverish breath. "It's a medical emergency. High fever, acute respiratory distress, prolonged deprivation. Bring your bag and your absolute silence."
A heavy sigh whistled through the earpiece. Marcus knew my family's history, knew the dark corners of this house better than most. He didn't hesitate for long; men like him understood the value of a closed mouth.
May you like
"I'll be there in thirty minutes," Marcus said tersely, and the line went dead.
I lowered the phone back onto its cradle, my reflection staring back at me from the dark glass of the window. The clock on the mantel ticked away the seconds, measuring out the time we had left before the fever claimed whatever strength she had remaining.
