Bryce couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond Hunt and his words and the pain in her leg, the scar across her very soul.

Hunt whispered, “You’ve got this. You’ve got this, Bryce.”

She didn’t. And the Hel that erupted in her leg had her arching against the restraints, her vocal cords straining as her screaming filled the room.

Hunt’s grip never wavered.

“It’s almost out,” the witch hissed, grunting with effort. “Hang on, Bryce.”

She did. To Hunt, to his hand, to that softness in his eyes, she held on. With all she had.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Sweetheart, I’ve got you.”

He’d never said it like that before—that word. It had always been mocking, teasing. She’d always found it just this side of annoying.

Not this time. Not when he held her hand and her gaze and everything she was. Riding out the pain with her.

“Breathe,” he ordered her. “You can do it. We can get through this.”

Get through it—together. Get through this mess of a life together. Through this mess of a world. Bryce sobbed, not entirely from pain this time.

And Hunt, as if he sensed it, too, leaned forward again. Brushed his mouth against hers.

Just a hint of a kiss—a feather-soft glancing of his lips over hers.

A star bloomed inside her at that kiss. A long-slumbering light began to fill her chest, her veins.

“Burning Solas,” the witch whispered, and the pain ceased.

Like a switch had been flipped, the pain was gone. It was startling enough that Bryce turned away from Hunt and peered at her body, the blood on it, the gaping wound. She might have fainted at the sight of a good six inches of her leg lying open were it not for the thing that the witch held between a set of pincers, as if it were indeed a worm.

“If my magic wasn’t stabilizing the venom like this, it’d be liquid,” the witch said, carefully moving the venom—a clear, wriggling worm with black flecks—toward a glass jar. It writhed, like a living thing.

The witch deposited it in the jar and shut the lid, magic humming. The poison instantly dissolved into a puddle within, but still vibrated. As if looking for a way out.

Hunt’s eyes were still on Bryce’s face. As they’d been the entire time. Had never left.

“Let me clean you out and stitch you up, and then we’ll test the antidote,” the witch said.

Bryce barely heard the woman as she nodded. Barely heard anything beyond Hunt’s lingering words. I’ve got you.

Her fingers curled around his. She let her eyes tell him everything her ravaged throat couldn’t. I’ve got you, too.