Didn’t I…do the right thing?
My lips part.I’m sorry.But I can’t make the words as the fire erupts, consuming me completely. White, hot, searing pain that makes the daemon feel like a fucking blip. One single high-pitched note escapes me as my mouthfroths.
“Oh—oh, fuck,” he gasps, palming at my face, his voice pitched several octaves too high. “Oh fuck, oh shit.”
Uncertainty cloisters intensely, rising up inside me with the fire like a splash.Didn’t I…do the right thing?But the fire doesn’t feelright.It hurts.
He whips me around, hauls me to his chest, and his fingers dig into my throat, gagging me while his magic pierces my abdomen, forcing my stomach to convulse. I vomit the potion back on the floor. Just a single mouthful. But the fire doesn’t dissipate. If anything, it grows hotter, and my limbs seize in one final fiery blossom, one final gasp before the potion beating through my veins paralyzes them.
“Oh, fuck,” he gasps. He throws me onto the couch, my body’s stiffened like a corpse. His movements are frantic as he digs into his cloak, pulls out a vial, and wrenches up his sleeve. He carves the symbol on his arm and dumps the inky black liquid over it, moving before it’s even had time to absorb. It drips down his wrist as he places his hand over me. I feel his magic sink under my skin like cold water spreading and encasing me before the twisting sensation of the healing starts. It hurts but it’s nothing compared to the fire.
It does nothing to the fire. He pours and pours magic into me, my body jostling with the force of it. “Heal!” But the burn grows whiter, hotter. I want to writhe. I want to thrash. But I can’t move. “Heal,” he growls. “Heal!” he growls. “Heal, heal, heal, fucking heal,” he growls. His eyes dash up to my face, my watering eyes, the foam spilling out of my mouth. “It’s not enough,” he gasps. “It’s not enough,” he growls. “It’s NOT ENOUGH.”
He hauls me up, binding me in one arm as he throws the door open with the other. He carries me into the hallway and freezes, looking around like… he has no idea where to go. No idea what to do.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” he heaves, each exclamation more carved in desperation than the last. He starts down the hallway, slow at first, and then he’s running, resolved in whatever decision he’s made.
“If any of you fucking pricks watching are ever going to do me a fucking favor,” he screams at the empty hallway. Internally, I writhe and thrash as the fire blazes, but my body remains paralyzed and silent except for a gurgle as foam spills down my chin.
He whips his hand to unlock the door, kicks it open, revealing a bed with rumpled floral bedding and wooden furniture similar to his own. He flies over to a cabinet, flips it open, begins rummaging frantically, fumbling with vials, knocking them over, and tossing things on the floor. “Come on. Come on, Come on.” He clears one shelf. Two shelves. Three—all of them.
“Don’t you fucking fail me, Mom. You promised.” He tosses every object on the floor and his hand meets the back of the empty cabinet before he slams it shut with a crack. “You fucking promised.” He breathes raggedly as he scouts the room. His one-armed grip around me tightens. “Hold on, pet, just fucking hold on.” He launches himself across the room to the nightstand by the bed, hauls the entire drawer out, and tosses it on the bed. His hand closes in on a cinched bag and he feels at its contents before tearing the bag open with shaking fingers, letting out several shrieking gasps as two vials fall out.
“Oh, shit,” he gasps. “This is it. Here we go,” he says as he lays me back on the bed. He dumps the vial into my open mouth and clamps my mouth shut.
“Swallow, pet.” But I’m paralyzed. I stare at him with wide, watering eyes. “Swallow!” I can’t. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to rid myself of the fire at this point, butI can’t.“I don’t want to hurt you,” he groans.He lifts a hand, and the potion is painfully wedged down my swollen throat. It does hurt, but it’s nothing compared to the fire consuming my limbs, my blood, my being.
As soon as the potion is down, the burn starts to dissipate. Painfully slow. My fingers twitch, and I suck in a wheezing gasp. “Breathe,” he commands, smoothing my face, my hair. But it still fucking hurts, and I let out a gurgled groan. My body contorts as the ability to move comes back to me, and I start to convulse. He retreats. “Now this one,” he says, dumping a different vial into my mouth. “Can you swallow it?”
He tilts my head up, and I manage to choke it down between gasps. “Good—good girl.” I whimper with the retreating fire. “Just give it a second.” He draws some water from his hand and washes it over my lips, my mouth, and my chin before he collapses on the bed, wraps his arms around me, and drags me back to his chest, holding me still, his own breathing ragged as the convulsing of my limbs begins to dwindle.
The fire goes out, replaced by rolling, decadent waves of euphoria. Like nothing matters and everything is easy again. No pain, no guilt, no daemon. Nothing but Sitri’s hands running over my shoulders, my arms, and my fingers.
“Notthat, pet. Not that.” he chastises softly, voice still distraught. “Never that. Why would you do that?”
Something tugs at me, stiffening my spine. The urge to answer with the draught of candor still affecting me after everything. “Cuz’…I love yu’ and I wan’ yu’…do be saafe.”
My words are slurred, barely coherent, but his body tenses underneath me. He wraps his hand over my mouth to quiet me and groans. Quivering fingers trail over my cheek, my forehead, my temple. “I’m sorry,” he gasps out. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I didn’t even try to under—“ His voice breaks, and then his chest is shaking underneath me with the voiceless sounds of his sobbing.
I know there’s something I want to say, but the potion builds. My body lightens as it washes over me like a clouded haze that makes everything feelcarefree, weightless, simple.An overwhelming sense of peace and rightness envelopes me and I soar up into the orbed lights above my head until I’m floating among them, grounded only by the searing pleasure of fingers stroking over my skin again and again and again.
I don’t know how long I float among them before his voice finally calls me back down, back to this reality. “Pandora?”
“Hm?”
“How do you feel?”
When I don’t answer, he shifts me to the side so he can look at me. I blink at him. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” I rasp, voice still hoarse and sluggish.
“No pain?”
I shake my head.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Do you need anything?”
“Touch me?”
