With This Ring

The smoke began to get into my system and the heat began to char at my skin. I crouched down into a protective position but I knew I was only mere seconds away from being burnt to a crisp. I tried to contain the coughing, but the smoke itself felt as though it was seeping into my very bones.

I could feel the fire start to lick at my skin when Levan blasted the extinguisher and it killed the fire in the section where I stood.

“Come out!” he yelled, but the ground was too hot.

“Maxim, come out!” he yelled and continued to blast the extinguisher to make a path for me, but I couldn’t move. He threw the fire extinguisher aside and came to me. Hauling me up, he dragged me out of the door.

“Come on,” Levan ordered with a shout at his men. “The whole place is going to go up in flames soon.”

“Freya…” I managed to croak out.

“She’s fine,” he reassured me.

With one of my arms around his shoulder and the other around Viktor’s we moved along. Everything passed by excruciatingly slowly and then…. so rapidly I experienced it in flashes. One moment I was struggling to walk and near collapse from the pain, and in the next I was being carried on a gurney into the hospital. I was in a corridor. Moving fast. I saw the light overhead, bright and so beautiful. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness, the damage to my body no longer bearable.

Levan remained by my side, but after a while there was only very little that I could register.

“Boris…” I muttered. “Don’t kill him. I’ll handle him myself.” I was going to finish him off just the way he had planned to do to me. Burn every single part of him to a crisp over an extended period of time. He was going to look for death and not see it.

“He’s dead,” Levan said harshly.

And I finally shut my eyes and let the blackness descend.

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Freya

Levan, Bianca, and I were seated in the hallway of Maxim’s hospital room, awaiting the moment when he would finally awake. It had been two days now, and his eyes remained shut.

They were speaking in low tones to each other and I felt alone and afraid. My nails were bitten to the quick, and my legs tapped nervously on the ground. Just thinking of all he had endured made me feel lost and sad. Stab wound, broken ribs, countless bruises, third degree burns on his hands and feet, the more serious problem of a concussion.

What saddened me even further was that I had, so far, only been able to see him a handful of times and only with Levan’s presence in the room. As if he didn’t trust me with his brother. As if he blamed me for what had happened to Maxim.

I felt as if I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to be by his side, to watch even the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, and to listen to the beating of his heart. To soothe his hand with my touch until he came awake. I knew I could will him awake.

I rose to my feet. “Levan, I’m going to sit with Maxim for a little while,” I announced, but before I could get to his door, two of his guards stepped in front of me and blocked my path. I turned around to look at Levan’s stern gaze, and Bianca’s face, guilty and apologetic. She knew if it was Levan in there she would be in there with him.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “He’s healing, let him be.”

I was not going to back down. “I’m not going to disturb him. I just want to be by his side.”

He sighed and came over to me. “Freya, the last thing I want is to be rude to you, but I think its best you keep your distance from him for now.”

“Says who? You? I’m his woman and I deserve the right to be with him just as Bianca would have the right to be with you if you were lying in there hurt.”

I’d never said the words out loud before, but I couldn’t deny the warmth that they filled me with. I was his woman. And no one could take that away from me.

Even Levan was a bit taken aback, that I had finally spelt it out. Still, he pressed on.

“I don’t think that you’re good for him.”

“That’s not your call to make.”

“My father could come by at any moment.”

I looked him in the eye. “I’ll step away when he does.”

He sighed at the determination in my eyes. I was going to go in no matter what he said unless they carried me out themselves. He nodded to the two men blocking my entrance, and they stepped away. I walked into the room, shut the door behind me and walked quietly towards Maxim. I could feel the sob forming in my throat.