Chapter Twenty-Six
The slow, steady beeping marked the minutes they forced Nola to lay in bed. After the Outer Guard raced her back to the domes, the doctors had made Lenora and Jeremy leave. They ran tests and scans, drawing her blood and searching her entire body for signs of harm.
“I’m fine,” Nola said, so many times the words seemed to lose all meaning.
They put a mask over her face and made her breathe in medicine that smelled like soured fruit, then stuck needles into her arm to pump in antibiotics. Each of her bruises had to be recorded. Kieran’s finger marks showed purple on her arms. The doctors all spoke in low voices about the horrible a***e she had suffered.
Nola bit her lips until they bled, fighting the need to scream that Kieran had been saving her life when he bruised h
