The Baroness Misbehaves
Chapter 247: Little Thread Of Hope

Chapter 247: Little Thread Of Hope

When they both arrived at the house, Cassian didn’t think of anything else but Maddie. He didn’t have time to blame himself either, the image of how he had found her almost motionless on the cold floor, as if all life had been drained from her kept displaying before his eyes, and his mood dampened, his face pale as a ghost if he still had a hard time believing it.

He met Orson and Inna who stood at the front of the house, waiting. Inna kept pacing back and forth, her expression troubled, but when she looked up with Orson to see Elian and Cassian returning, their worried expression was instantly replaced with relief. Inna, who saw her brother returning safe and sound with Elian, couldn’t stop herself from hugging her brother tight, her racing heart finally calmed knowing he had returned.

There was a slight sniffling he heard from her, and he knew she must have cried.

"Thank God you’re safe." She said before pulling back to meet her brother’s gaze. "Are you.... Okay?"

"Maddie." He uttered her name, and Orson equally approached him, placing a hand to his shoulder. "She’ll be fine." He assured his best friend who clearly didn’t look fine with himself. "Osvaldo and Monica have been with her, and he says she’ll recover soon if she gets enough rest."

Cassian, who didn’t even know he had been holding his breath the entire time, suddenly released it with his shoulders relaxing. He looked at the house and went inside, not waiting for the others to speak, and Elian motioned for the two of them to let him go.

"He’ll need the space."

"What about you? Are you alright?" Inna asked as she came to stand only a feet away from him, her worried eyes raking him from head to toe, and Elian nodded, assuring her he was fine.

"What exactly happened there?" Orson, who couldn’t deal with the suspense decided to ask, "Cassian doesn’t look like his usual self, and Osvaldo didn’t give us any details on what happened to Madeline."

"That bastard bit through her." Elian explained, and they didn’t need further details to know what he meant, "Now I wish we hadn’t killed him yet, should have kept his stupid corpse and turned it to a bleeding punching bag."

"But he’s dead for real this time, right?" Orson wanted to confirm, and to both Inna and Orson’s relief, he nodded.

"His remnants have been burned to ashes, he won’t be coming back again. As for Cassian," he looked at the entrance and retracted his gaze back to the two of them. "He just needs sometime to himself, he’ll be fine."

"And Elijah?" Inna added once more, knowing Elijah had shown up before she ran off with Madeline, and Elian shook his head.

"He gets lucky. He escaped again."

"What matters is we’re all safe." Orson laid out, "I don’t care who’s escaped and who didn’t, I’m just glad I don’t have to witness losing anyone of you. Now, let’s all go back inside, have some rest and then we’ll all have a proper conversation in the morning, okay?"

"You’re probably right, I need a drink to keep myself sane till morning." Elian sighed and went into the house, Inna and Orson followed.

In the room where Madeline received treatment, Cassian eventually found it after going through half of the rooms in the house. On the bed, Madeline was lying there with the quilt draped over her body, there was a needle that was inserted into the vein of her hand, followed by a flexible tube that was connected to a white plastic bag containing blood, hanging up against the wall.

The soft rhythm of her heartbeat pounded in Cassian’s ears, and he felt unexplainably weak after seeing her in such a state.

He felt the pain she was going through.

As he stepped in further, his steps were lethargic and heavy, weighed by the burden of guilt that had been crushing his heart.

When he moved closer to her bedside, his heart clenched at the sight of Madeline’s pale, beautiful face, her chest barely rising and falling with each shallow breath, but he knew she was going to be alright, she had to be. Nothing else bothered him more than to see her wake up.

He had never felt so helpless to the point his hands felt tied. He felt incapacitated, and it made him feel sick to the stomach to think he might have failed her. If he had showed up any later, goodness knows if he would have found her alive.

Just thinking about the negative odds made Cassian’s knees sink down onto the edge of the bed, his hand reaching out to brush a strand of hair away from her forehead. Her skin felt cool to the touch, her pulse slow and weak, but he knew she needed time to recover.

"I’m sorry." He whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion, "I told you I was going to protect you but I couldn’t even be there when he...." Cassian was more mad at himself as he let out a breath, his Amber-brown eyes glazed with overwhelming emotions.

"I should have been there sooner, I should have protected you better."

Cassian knew that his words were useless, they couldn’t undo the damage that had been done. But still, he needed to say them, to apologize for his inadequacy, even if only to himself.

Hours passed by and Cassian could feel a growing despair inside of him. He was no healer, and had no idea how to take away her pain. All he could do was just sit, feeling small and powerless, and for the first time, he was starting to understand the fear of losing someone that meant the world to him.

He remembered his conversation with Orson during Jeremy’s burial, and he was starting to wonder if he was being tested. He didn’t want this type of test, he would lose his freaking mind if he lost Madeline!!

"You’ll be fine." He assured her, refusing to entertain that negative idea, but in truth, he was trying to assure himself.

He stayed there by her side, holding her hand like his life depended on it, silently watching her. The little thread of hope still lingered in his gaze as he waited for her to wake up, for her to look at him with the same smile that on her lips, the smile that could make all his worries disappear, he needed her to tell her everything was going to be alright.