The Seventh Immortal (Hearts of Amaranth #1) by J.M. Parry

Chapter One
    White ceiling tiles. A plastic, pastel blue
curtain. Low, steady beeping. A dull pain in her arm. A clammy
feeling across her body. The world returned to the woman as soon as
quickly as she returned to it. She instantly became aware of her
surroundings.
    She was in a hospital room. This made sense
to her, even in her confusion. She had died, or come very close to
it. This was where she made her recovery. She tried to sit up in
her bed, but found her body almost completely unresponsive. Her
arms wouldn't move. Her legs would barely twitch. Something was
wrong. Was she paralyzed? She could still feel the rough sheets
against her skin. No... She was drugged.
    “Who are you?” A deep voice asked. She wasn't
alone. There was someone else in the room with her.
    A man sat cross-legged in a chair across from
her hospital bed. He was lean, and wore a pressed three piece suit
that seemed perfectly cut to his frame. His hazel eyes peered at
the woman from behind wireframe spectacles.
    “Who are you?” he repeated as soon as she
began to wake. The woman tried to speak but her mouth was too dry.
Once more, she pressed her arms against the bed to push herself
upwards. This time, she felt the strength beginning to return to
her limbs.
    The man realized that she was moving and
quickly stood up. He walked over to the machine next to her—the one
that was beeping—and pressed a button. Before the woman could move
again, she began to feel her strength fading.
    He was drugging her. He was keeping her
unconscious.
    “I'm sorry,” the man said. His voice was
smooth and steady. It comforted the woman even though she knew what
he was doing to her. “We can't have you wake up just yet. We still
don't know what we are going to do with you.”
    Her eyes began to droop. Everything went dark
again, though this time there was no annihilation to strive towards. She was not dying. She
was merely sleeping.
    The woman did not know how long she was
unconscious. Time passed strangely for her, as she still had very
little concept of it. The drugs rushing through her body hardly
left her with the faculties to keep track of the minutes and hours
as they ticked by.
    Once again, she felt herself pulled back into
the world. The sensation returned to her skin. Light poured into
the slit between her eyelids and she was able to peel back the
darkness. Everything was bright. Everything was loud. And, just
like before, the woman was not alone in her room.
    “C'mon... C'mon, hurry up! Wake up! I don't
know how long we have.”
    The woman blinked back the sleep in her eyes
and looked over, expecting to see the same man as before. She was relieved to find someone new—someone
who looked like he belonged in a hospital.
    His hands brushed her arm, then gripped the
IV attached to her vein.
    She looked up at him, still in a daze,
straining to study him through her blurred vision. Was he a friend
or foe? She had no idea. She didn’t know anything anymore. She
forced a word from her throat and out of her mouth, the only one
she could manage at first. “Please...”
    “Don’t worry. I’m here to help.” His voice
was low and firm but resonant with compassion. His figure came
slowly into focus. He wore light blue scrubs over a
broad-shouldered body with rich olive skin. The collar of the
scrubs ran low enough to reveal the muscles of his chest, rippling
as he reached down to grip her, but there was a tenderness to his
touch, or perhaps hesitancy. Again, she wondered what this man
planned to do with her, and fear shot briefly through her belly.
But as soon as she stared into his bright green eyes, she knew she
could trust him. He looked back at her with a mixture of awe and
reverence, his gaze searching hers with equal intensity.
    “It worked. You’re awake,” he said. Gently,
he pulled the IV needle from her arm. For a moment, the world
seemed to spin. Then his hand returned quickly to her body,
reassuring, stabilizing. She fixed her gaze on him