Midnight came and went. I knew because at some point between the waves of heat that kept crashing through me, I'd opened my eyes long enough to see the clock on Kael's nightstand tick past twelve and into the small hours of morning when everything hurt worse and time stopped having meaning.
The heat had gone from manageable to brutal somewhere around eleven and now I was shaking with it, skin too tight and too hot and every nerve ending screaming for relief I didn't know how to ask for.
Kael's hand stroked through my hair, steady and grounding, while Riven's thumb traced circles on the inside of my wrist where my pulse hammered against the skin. Draven had draped a cool cloth over my forehead that did exactly nothing but I appreciated the gesture anyway, and Thorne's presence at the foot of the bed felt like an anchor keeping me from flying apart completely.
"Talk to me," Kael murmured, his voice cutting through the haze. "Tell me what you need."
