Before I could process his words, Sylus called, his voice coming through the speakerphone that Xavier deliberately turned on, making sure I could hear every single word.
“Have you found the pearl? Charlotte cried herself to exhaustion and finally fell asleep. Make sure you find it before she wakes.”
My stomach dropped. Not because of the pain, but because I realized the full depth of my insignificance.
Charlotte Hooper, Sylus’ childhood sweetheart, the woman I could never be. The woman for whom I was nothing but a placeholder.
With a quick, confident motion, Xavier plucked the pearl from inside my body, holding it up triumphantly. “Brother, I found it.”
At that very moment, blood began to pour from the wound, soaking the table beneath me.
I gasped, struggling for breath as waves of dizziness swept over me. It felt as if my life were slipping away, as if the blood loss would claim me before I had a chance to make sense of the nightmare.
Sylus’s voice remained cold, indifferent. “Good. Now, hurry back and make sure she does not die.”
Xavier’s casual demeanor shifted ever so slightly. At Sylus’s command, he snapped back to attention, moving quickly to staunch the bleeding with gauze.