Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 59827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
He sprinted across the ice. Distantly aware of security shouting. Of his mother’s hands moving frantically in his peripheral vision. Of the crowd scattering in every direction.
But all he could see was the dark hole in the ice where Evianne had disappeared.
She surfaced.
Shoving the boy up.
Veil grabbed the child, hauling him onto solid ice, passing him to the security team. The boy was coughing, crying, alive, and Veil barely registered any of it because he was already turning back to the water.
Evianne was sinking.
Eyes closed. Body limp. Slipping beneath the surface like the water was pulling her down.
He dove in.
The cold was vicious, instant, a thousand needles driving into every inch of skin, but Veil barely felt it. He grabbed her, wrapped his arms around her chest, and kicked hard for the surface, his muscles burning, his lungs screaming, every second stretching into something eternal.
He broke through. Gasping. Dragging her to the edge where hands helped pull them both out onto solid ice.
“BREATHE, damn you, BREATHE—”
Her lips were blue. Her skin was white. Her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t responding. Veil knew the signs because his father had made him learn water safety, made him take the courses, made him promise.
He scooped her into his arms and ran.
The medical facility was close. He covered the distance without thought, kicking open the doors, shouting for help, and then the medical team took over. Dr. Faulke barking orders. Nurses with heated blankets and warm IV fluids and monitoring equipment. Everything moving fast, efficient, practiced.
Someone tried to pull him back.
“Your Grace, you need to—”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Sir, you’re hypothermic too, you should—”
“I. Said. I’m. Not. Leaving.”
The nurse backed off. Dr. Faulke made a practical decision.
“At least get into dry clothes. You won’t help her by collapsing.”
Someone brought scrubs and blankets. Veil changed without leaving the room, without taking his eyes off Evianne’s unconscious form on the medical bed.
Her vitals were stable.
Breathing steady.
Temperature slowly rising.
She was going to be fine.
She was fine.
She had to be fine.
Because the alternative. The thought of her not opening her eyes. Not looking at him with that mixture of exasperation and awareness she tried so hard to hide. Not writing boundaries on pieces of paper and then blushing when he stood too close.
His hands were shaking.
Not from the cold.
From the memory of watching her disappear under the ice. Of diving in and finding her sinking, her body limp, her face slack. Of the absolute, annihilating terror that he was too late.
“Your Grace?”
Dr. Faulke appeared at his elbow. “She’s stable. The hypothermia was moderate but not severe. She should wake within the hour.”
“The boy?”
“Also stable. Minor hypothermia. His mother’s with him now.” Dr. Faulke paused. “Miss Evianne saved his life. Another thirty seconds and it would have been a very different outcome.”
They moved her to a private room, and Veil sat in the chair beside her bed and watched the monitors track her heartbeat, her oxygen, her temperature.
Five days she’d avoided him.
Five days of careful distance and neutral professionalism and silent meals and averted eyes, and Veil had let her do it because his pride demanded it, because the Duke of Veilcourt did not chase women, because he’d convinced himself he didn’t care.
What a fool he’d been.
What an absolute, pride-blinded fool.
Because five minutes ago, he’d watched her slip beneath the ice with her eyes closed and her body going limp, and every defense he’d spent fifteen years building had collapsed like it was made of nothing. Five days of pretending he didn’t care, wiped out in five seconds of pure terror.
She’d jumped into a frozen lake for a stranger’s child. Hadn’t hesitated. Hadn’t calculated. Hadn’t waited for security or rescue equipment or someone more qualified.
She’d just run.
Every woman Veil had ever known had wanted something from him. His title. His money. His connections. They came with careful smiles and strategic vulnerability, and he’d learned to see through all of it, learned to keep his distance.
But Evianne had spent five days running from him, not toward him. And then she’d run toward a drowning boy without a single thought for herself.
That wasn’t strategy.
That was just who she was.
Veil sat there watching the color slowly return to her face, and the feeling in his chest, that cracked-open, terrifying, undeniable thing, only grew stronger with every steady beat of her heart on the monitor.
Five days of distance.
Five seconds of terror.
And the Duke of Veilcourt finally understood that pride was a very poor substitute for the woman lying unconscious in front of him.
Chapter Five
I WAKE UP WARM, WHICH is wrong.
The last thing I remember is cold. Cold so deep it felt permanent, like it had replaced my blood and my bones and everything that made me alive. But I’m warm now, warm and heavy and aching everywhere, and there’s a beeping sound, steady and rhythmic, and something attached to my arm, and the air smells like antiseptic and lavender.