"Please, save him..." I turned to look at Damar with teary eyes. "Save him, Damar."

The silence in the palace hall was deafening, broken only by the wet, heavy sound of Thalor’s labored breathing against my shoulder. I could feel his heat fading, replaced by a cold, clammy sweat that smelled of sharp, acidic rot—the red-scale venom.

Damar watched for a while and did not move. His eyes were fierce and filled with disgust as he looked at the merman pressing his weight on me as he struggled to draw breath, his life fading right before everyone’s eyes.

Damar knew a lot about herbs and medicine. And he was also a snake beastman, so he should know exactly how to save another from a snake’s poison. He is the only one I can turn to.

He hates Thalor, and I know it, but even if I have to go on my knees and beg him, I will do it. I cannot let Thalor die. I cannot let one of my mates die. Even if I have to beg him to help, I will go that far.

I looked at Damar, my vision blurred by hot, stinging tears.

He stood like a statue of silver and ice, his emerald eyes fixed on Thalor with a look that was impossible to read. It wasn’t hatred—not exactly—but a cold, calculating distance. He was weighing the life of the male who had intruded on his territory against the desperation in my eyes.

"Damar, please," I choked out, my voice breaking. "I know you hate him. I know you didn’t want this. But he saved the cubs. He saved our people. You’re the only one who knows how to stop this."

I shifted, my knees about to touch the stone floor as I prepared to lower myself, to actually beg, but Damar moved before my knees could hit the ground.

He was fast, appearing beside me in a heartbeat. His hand caught my shoulder, stopping me from debasing myself.

"Don’t," he rasped, his voice low and vibrating with a strange, pained tension. "Do not kneel to me for the sake of a fish, Ari."

"Then do something," I demanded, my voice dripping with fear and desperation. "Help me, Damar. Help... him." I sobbed.

Damar narrowed his eyes with a hint of discomfort before he turned his head to look down at Thalor again.

The merman’s tanned skin was turning a sickly, translucent grey, and the purple of his hair looked dull against the blood. Damar’s nostrils flared, tasting the air, identifying the specific strain of red-scale rot.

What do I need to do to get him to help? Does his hatred run so deep that he would let Thalor die? Then... if I’m also poisoned, will he finally act?

Ah, no, that’s a stupid thought. It won’t help the situation since Damar will turn his attention to me instead of testing Thalor, and his hatred for Thalor will just keep growing.

"It is a deadly poison," Damar said, his voice suddenly clinical, devoid of emotion, but I flinched.

If he said this, that meant he was preparing to act, right?

"The kind that shuts down the lungs first. If I don’t neutralize the heart of the bite, his blood will turn to sludge before the sun hits the horizon."

He didn’t wait for my response. Damar reached into the small leather pouch he happened to have on him, just in case I got exposed to poison. It was filled with the rare herbs he’d gathered. He pulled out a dried, blackened root and some pea-sized fruit.

He finally got into action.

"Noah! Fenric!" Damar called, and though his voice was calm, it was cold enough that it made both their hair stand on end with a start. "Hold his arms. If he thrashes, he will pump the poison faster. So," his eyes grew into pin-sized slits. "Pin him down."

I felt an eerie feeling from his words just now. Was it just me, or did he actually mean something else when he said to ’pin him down’?

Noah and Fenric dropped to the floor instantly. They didn’t ask questions; they saw the look on Damar’s face and knew Damar was in his element. They clamped Thalor’s arms to the stone, their expressions grim.

Damar looked at me.

"Ari, I need you to hold his head. He’s going to scream, and he might try to bite his own tongue. If you don’t want him to die, then do not let him."

I nodded, my hands shaking as I cradled Thalor’s head against my lap, my fingers stroking his sweat-soaked temples.

Damar didn’t use a stone knife. He shifted his index finger just enough for a single, razor-sharp claw to emerge. With the precision of a surgeon, he sliced a cross-hatch pattern directly over the bite marks on Thalor’s back. Dark, foul-smelling blood oozed out—it was already thick and stagnant, so it did not flow out properly.

It got me worried. What do we do now?

There are no proper doctors or equipment. We don’t have a syringe to drain it either.

My body trembled, fearing the worst of the situation.

But then, Damar did something that made my heart stop. He leaned down and pressed his mouth directly to the wound.

"Damar!" I gasped.

He didn’t listen. He sucked the black poison out, spitting the tainted blood onto the stone with a focused intensity that made it seem like this wasn’t his first rodeo. Once, twice, three times, until the blood running from the wound turned a brighter, healthier red.

He then crushed the blackened root between his teeth, mixing it with his own potent saliva, and then squeezed the pea-sized fruit between her teeth, and then, with his mouth hovering over the wound, the liquid he had squeezed in with his saliva slowly spilled out onto the open wound.

I know this is a serious situation and one of my husbands was currently dying, but... that was kind of hot.

As soon as the liquid touched the wound, Thalor’s body suddenly jolted. His eyes flew open, and a melodic, agonizing wail tore from his throat. It seems to shake the very ground we were standing on.

A siren wail was so powerful that it could threaten our steady, strong hold.