Dante and Adrian each took one of her hands and guided them into the icy water. The shock of it ripped a weak cry from her throat, her body tensing in protest, but they held her hands firmly in place.
"I know, I know," Adrian whispered. "Just for a few minutes. Then we'll switch to your feet."
The cold was excruciating against her burning skin, a different kind of pain than the fever, but it still hurt. Her hands went numb almost immediately, yet she could feel the chill creeping up her arms, pulling heat away from their core, forcing her body to give something back at last.
After five minutes that felt like an eternity, they removed her hands and did the same with her feet, plunging them into fresh basins of ice water. This time Lilian didn't resist. She was too drained to react, letting them move her body however they needed.
The ice bath, combined with the constant rotation of cold compresses and the regular changes of dry underwear, finally began to have an effect.
"Forty point nine. "It's dropping. Finally."
They kept going, and at least one of them stayed with her at all times. They rotated duties, and switched roles so no one exhausted themselves, while never leaving her alone.
Lilian barely noticed their handoffs, no longer knew if minutes or hours were passing. Her awareness had shrunk down to simple sensations of the burning heat, shocking ice, gentle hands, low voices murmuring nearby. The rest of the world had faded away.
"Forty-one point two," Dante's voice cut through her haze. "It's still climbing. We're approaching dangerous territory."
"How much higher can it go before we risk permanent damage?" Adrian asked, sounding concerned.
"I don't know," Dante admitted, and the uncertainty in his usually confident tone scared Lilian even through what little awareness she had left. "Every transformation is different. Some newborns can tolerate up to forty-two point two. Others don't make it past forty-one point seven."
"Then we need to be more aggressive with the cooling. What else can we do?" Lucien said from somewhere near her feet.
For a moment, there was only the sound of water sloshing in basins and towels being wrung out.
"Ice packs," Dante said at last. "Direct application to the major blood vessels. It'll be extremely uncomfortable, but it may be the only way to save her life."
Lilian wanted to object, to tell them to stop, and she was fine with just the towels, but her voice wouldn't cooperate. Her throat felt like sandpaper, and no sound would come out.
Lucien went back after went to get some other ice packs. "Where do you want to place them?" he asked.
"Neck, armpits, groin," Dante replied without hesitation.
Lilian felt the towels being moved aside to reach those areas. She heard the ice packs crack as they were activated, and then they were pressed against her skin.
The ice pack at her neck was placed right over her carotid arteries. The cold was so intense, and all she could do was whimper.
"I know. I know it hurts. But you're doing great. Just hold on a little longer," Adrian whispered close to her ear, soft and soothing.
Next came the ice packs under her arms, after that, they were placed right at the crease of her thighs to cool the blood pulsing through her legs.
Even through her fever haze, Lilian was aware how intimate this was. She lay almost naked, vulnerable, and being handled by three vampires manipulating her body.
"Hold them in place. Adrian, take the neck. Lucien, armpits. I'll handle the groin," Dante instructed.
Lilian could feel the ice packs pressed against her skin. Still, they're each of every touch felt like a lot to handle in her fevered state.
"Check her temperature in five minutes," Dante said. "If this doesn't bring it down, we escalate."
"Escalate how?" Lucien asked.
"Ice bath. It'll shock her system, but we might not have a choice."
Those five minutes felt like forever. Lilian started shivering so hard her teeth chattered, and accidentally bit her tongue, tasting the blood.
"Five minutes," Adrian announced quietly.
Dante lifted one hand from the ice pack on her thigh long enough to check her temperature. The beep was way too loud in the silence.
"Forty-one point three," he said. "We keep this up for at least thirty more minutes."
Thirty minutes. It felt impossible.
Lilian tried to distract herself, tried to count her breath but she kept losing track. Then she tried to remember her small apartment, the restaurant where she works, her normal life before all this. But those memories felt like a movie she had seen once, not her actual life.
Was she really ever that normal human girl?
"Lilian," Adrian's voice pulled her back. "Stay with us. Listen to me. Can you hear me?"
She managed a weak nod, or though she did. Everything felt heavy, slow, and far away.
"Good. That's it. Keep listening to my voice. I'm going to tell you a story, okay?"
Adrian began to speak, telling her about the first time he had seen snow after his transformation.
How he had been turned in 1682 in a warm climate and hadn't experienced winter until he traveled north decades later. How the first snowflake had melted on his cold skin and he had stood there for hours, watching the world turn white, marveling at the beauty of something so simple that he had taken for granted as a human.
Lilian barely followed the details, but the sound of his voice mattered. It was a lifeline she could grab onto. She let his words carry her attention away from the burning heat and the freezing ice.
Around the six-hour mark, things began to slip.
At first, it was subtle. Lilian could have sworn she saw shadows moving in the corners of the room, looking like dark shapes that scattered like smoke when she tried to focus on them. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, but they wouldn't go away.
"Adrian," she mumbled, her voice slurred. "There's something… in the corner…"
"There's nothing there, Lilian," he said gently resting his cool hand on her forehead. "That's just the fever messing with your head. What you're seeing isn't real."
But it looked incredibly real. The shadow began to take form, looking vaguely human but twisted and wrong. Their faces kept shifting when she tried to look at them directly.
"They're watching me," she whispered, fear finally breaking through the haze. "They're waiting for something."
"They're not real. Those things are just a fever dream," Dante said firmly from his place near her thighs, holding the ice packs in place.
Lilian tried to believe him, but the shadow creatures looked too real to ignore. She watched one of them detached from the corner of the room and started moving toward the bed with unnatural jerks.
"It's coming closer! It's reaching for me!~" she said, her voice rising with panic.