Lilian gasped, sucking in air into her lungs, pain flaring as reality crashed back into her body. She realized she was still in bed, still covered with towels, still surrounded by the three vampires who hadn't left her side.
The hallucination had been so convincing that she had actually stopped breathing, her body surrendering to the fever-dream as if it were real.
"There you are," Adrian said softly in relief, huffing. "You scared us. Don't do that again."
Lilian couldn't even answer, too shaken by how real it felt. She had been so close to just giving up and let the fever take her into the darkness and never coming back.
"Forty-one point six," Dante said grimly. His jaw tightened. "We're out of time. Lucien, start filling the bathtub with ice water. We're doing full immersion. It's the only option left."
Lucien disappeared again while Adrian gathered Lilian in his arms, lifting her from the bed. The hallucinations had drained everything she had left, leaving her too tired to care what they did to her anymore.
The huge bathtub in the bathroom now was filled to the brim with water so cold that chunks of ice floated on the surface. Mist rose like thick fog because the water was so much colder than the air in the room.
"This is going to be extremely unpleasant," Dante warned, placing a hand on her shoulder. "But it's the fastest way to drop your temperature. We'll get you in and out as quickly as we can."
"Just do it," Lilian whispered. She didn't even care anymore. If freezing was what it too to stop the burning inside her, so be it.
Adrian lowered her into the ice water slowly, and Lilian's whole body went rigid from the shock.
It felt like being stabbed by a thousand knives made of ice. Every nerve in her body screamed, her muscle locked up tight. She couldn't breathe or think, and her mind went blank. The cold was so intense it almost felt like it was burning her in a cruel way.
"Hold her," Dante said sharply. "Don't let her go into shock."
Their hands held her shoulders, keeping her head above water while the rest of her body was submerged in the brutal cold. Her vision flashed white, then black, then white again. Her heart stuttered, skipped beats, then raced wildly.
"Thirty second. Just thirty seconds," Dante said while looking intensely at the timer.
It was the longest thirty seconds of Lilian's life. It felt longer than the seven hours of fever, longer than her entire life as a human. An eternity compressed into half a minute of pure agony.
"Time. Get her out," Dante finally said.
They lifted her from the tub and immediately wrapped her in towels that had been warming on heated racks. The sudden shift from ice-cold water to warm towels was so extreme that her body didn't know how to respond. She shook uncontrollably, her teeth chattering so hard she thought they might crack.
"Check her temperature," Dante ordered.
The thermometer beeped, but then there was a long silence.
"Forty point eight," Dante said, and there was clear relief in his voice. "It worked, almost a full degree down. We might have turned the corner."
"Thank god," Adrian breathed, still holding her tight in warm towels. "I really thought~"
"Don't. Not yet," Lucien interrupted. "She's not safe yet. We have to keep up the cooling and make sure the fever doesn't spike again."
They carried her back to the bed and resumed the compress rotation, but this time they actually had hope. The ice packs went back on her neck, armpits, and groin, and they put fresh towels on all her pulse points and changed her soaked underwear once more.
And slowly, one painful degree at a time, her temperature began to drop.
"Forty point six."
"Forty point four."
"Forty point one."
Each reading brought visible relief to the vampires' faces. The crisis was finally passing. She was going to survive the fever after all.
Lilian drifted in and out of exhausted half-sleep, too drained to hallucinate anymore, too wrung out to do anything except breath and exist. The worst was over, and she had made it through the peak of the heat.
——
The fever finally broke at exactly 9:23 AM, eight hours and thirty-six minutes after it had first begun.
Lilian felt it happen, it was like a switch flipping inside her body. One second, she was burning from the inside out, and the next, the burning started to recede, retreating from her hands and feet toward her core before fading away.
The drop in temperature took nearly twenty minutes, slow and gradual. But the difference was obvious. The crushing heat that had been eating her alive finally loosened its hold.
"Thirty-nine point nine," Dante announced, checking her temperature for what felt like the thousandth time. He sounded incredibly relieved. "Thirty-nine point six. Thirty-nine point four."
Adrian squeezed her hand gently. "You did it. The fever's breaking. The worst part is over."
Lilian wanted to say something, but she was so exhausted that speaking felt impossible. Her throat burned from hours of gasping and screaming during the hallucinations. Her body felt like it been wrung out and left to dry, every muscle aching, and her every joint hurt if she moved even an inch.
"Thirty-nine point one," Dante continued tracking. "Thirty-eight point eight. It's stabilizing."
Lucien appeared in her line of sight, looking more disheveled than she had ever seen him. His red hair was messy, falling into his eyes, and his clothes were damp with water and sweat of hers, and probably some of his own. Even vampires weren't immune to exhaustion after eight hours of non-stop moving.
"She needs fluids," Lucien said, already heading toward the bathroom. "She's badly dehydrated from all the sweating. I'll grab some water and electrolytes."
"And food," Adrian added. "Something light, like broth. Her body needs fuel for what comes next."
What comes next.
The actual transformation. Three days of her body dying and rebuilding itself while she was unconscious. Three days of death and rebirth that would turn her from human to vampire.
If the fever had been the worse pain she had ever experience, she couldn't even imagine what the transformation would be like.
Lilian didn't have the energy to think about it anyway. Her eyelids grew heavy, dragging closed no matter how hard she tried to keep them open. The exhaustion was overwhelming down to her bones, making even breathing feel like too much work.
"Let her sleep," Dante said softly, his hand resting gently on her forehead. The touch had become familiar over the last few hours, almost comforting now. "She's earned it. The transformation won't start for at least a few more hours. Let her rest while she can."