|| Alaric's POV ||

The healers said I should rest.

I tore the throat out of the first one who tried to pull me from her bedside.

They stopped suggesting it after that.

The room smelled of blood and dying flowers. Someone— probably that fool Ezra— kept replacing the wilted moon blooms on the windowsill, as if their rotting petals could somehow sweeten the stench of death clinging to my mate.

I counted her breaths.

Eleven seconds between each.

Too ...