The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 543

Avery’s POV

“Melissa.” I shook her gently, patting her cheeks, trying to coax her out of sleep. “Melissa, wake up.”

Her head lolled against my arm. Her lips were gray, her face clammy. She didn’t stir.

Taking care not to bump her head against the floor, I gently shifted her onto the dirt, laying her flat. I sat back, scanning her body for injuries. There was a small gash at her left temple, crusted over with a dark scab. I doubted that was what had her unconscious, so I kept looking. No injuries on her arms or legs, no more than bruises and scrapes at least. Then, I got down to her feet and stopped.

Her right shoe was still on, but the one on the left had been removed, sock and all. I gagged at the sight of blood and bone sticking out and looked away, pressing my hand to my mouth for a moment before I forced myself to look back.

The smallest toe on her left foot was missing. Cut cleanly, partially scabbed over but still oozing.

I took a breath, telling myself that the missing toe wasn’t what was keeping her under, either. This was something else, something in her blood. Perhaps she’d been drugged or poisoned. Perhaps the witch wanted her alive but unconscious, maybe to feed on her. If her toe was missing, then maybe it was the first part the witch had taken.

I sat back on my heels and squeezed my eyes shut, thinking hard.

The witch, despite her flaws, was no idiot. Especially not when it came to plants. Her garden out front was thriving, and inside, dried herbs and flowers and roots hung from the rafters in every corner, tied off with twine, some old and brittle and some still green.

A whole shelf of jars sat along the back wall. If she had used any of this stuff to drug Melissa, then there was a decent chance that the antidote was in here too.

I got up, my burned leg screaming under me, and limped over to one of the shelves.

There was one thing the witch hadn’t considered when she left me here. That I would escape and find a way to save myself and Melissa using the one thing I knew just as well as she did.

Plants.

I began picking up jars and bundles, working my way through the shelves until I had what I needed. I pulled down a few of the most acrid things I could find and ground it all together in a mortar and pestle I found, pinched some of the powder that it made, and lifted it to my nose.

Melissa swallowed hard, but let me help her sit up, leaning back against the wall. “You’re real?” she whispered.

I nodded. “I’m real. I’m here.”

A single tear slipped down her cheek. She looked around the hut, at the scorched spiderwebs, at the cut-open cocoon that had previously bound her. Then at me, at the burns on my arms, the mark on my throat.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

She furrowed her brow. “Days, I think. I… I think she came for me that day I stayed behind. When I came here with you.” Melissa looked at me. “I never meant to stay behind.

She closed her eyes. “I never meant to stay behind. The second you turned to go, it was like a hand on the back of my neck, shoving me toward the trees. Telling me there were roots out there I needed, that I had to go right then.”