(Catherine POV)
His breathing was so shallow it barely qualified as life—the faintest flutter against my palm when I pressed it to his lips, checking for signs that his body was still fighting whatever poison Murdoch's claws had introduced. The silver had spread through his system like ink through water, turning supernatural healing into its opposite, making regeneration impossible when it was most desperately needed.
I knelt beside him in forest earth that had absorbed too much blood for one morning, my hands shaking as I touched his face with the careful precision of someone afraid that any movement might be the one that finally stopped whatever fragile processes were keeping him tethered to consciousness. His skin was too cold, too pale, carrying the particular gray pallor that spoke
