“I’ve seen you do it. It would be so easy for you.”
“It’s never easy,” he growls. He holds a vial to my mouth. “Drink,” he demands.
I desperately jerk my head away.
“Sitri.” Vera appears, face full of pity as she clasps a timid hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps…“
She knows. She understands.
There’s no point in all this.
“Leave,” Sitri snaps, brutal face unwavering from mine. Vera drops her hand and opens and closes her mouth. “I’m starting to feel it,” she says softly. “I have been for at least six hours now. It’s not safe for you.”
Maybe bringing up the killing plant wasn’t the reason she was avoiding me after all.
“Leave,” he snarls. She shrinks away, leaving me to fend for myself. I turn my head to the wall. I refuse. I’m done. Done. I don’t want to be a monster, and I don’t want to do this anymore.
When I don’t make to move, his jaw sets determinedly, and he pulls me to face him. “Don’t,” I cry, furiously shaking my head. My face locks with the force of his magic, and my mouth is pried open. He empties the vial into my open mouth. I try to spit it back out immediately, and he clamps my jaw shut. I hold it there, refusing to swallow.
“Swallow,” he demands. I plead with him silently. My stomach is back to its churning and burning.I’m done, I’m done, I’m so fucking done.He clamps a hand over my mouth and pinches my nose shut, intending to force me to swallow if I wish to breathe.
Maybe I can die this way.I grow damn near giddy with the realization. I’ll make him kill me. I’ll make him kill me before I’ll swallow. I’ve found the limits to his magic. He can’t force me to swallow though I can feel him trying as my tongue lifts against my will, our eyes locked in a battle of wills. His face is all fierce determination. Underneath that, I can see the panic in his flitting eyes. “Gods fucking dammit. Swallow!” he all but shouts, pressing my face back into the bed.
The potion tastes like honeysuckle and hope. Syra and I used to forage for honeysuckle on our childhood treks before we were Shrouded and sealed away. Finding it was like finding gold. We’d pick the tubular flowers and inhale them until the scent dissipated with the wilting petals.
My heart, which slowed to a sludgy thud, thunders back to life. It’s not the first time I’ve wanted to die. I’ve even tried before when the daemon was wracking me into near madness. They were half-hearted attempts. Each time, some innate survival instinct, a minuscule seed of hope that things could be different, bloomed, extinguishing the desire. I can feel my face reddening as the pressure in my chest tightens.
His face presses in close, eyes burning a willfull intensity. “LookatmeIneedyoutotrustme—I’m going to save you. Let me fucking save you.” The words come out in one panicked stream and crack through my resolve.
I falter as my vision starts to tunnel.
Hope. That one bastard seed sprouting through the rot and decay. I’m not sure if it’s bravery or fear, or maybe it’s not even a choice. Maybe that innate instinct is in our very makeup. In all of us. I crumble against it and choke the liquid down, whimpering as the liquid meets the already re-corroding wounds of my stomach andthrobs.
His hands immediately slide back to cradle my face as I gasp. My stomach convulses, and I gag. “No. Hold it.” He gives my head a jerk as though he could will me not to vomit through pure force.
I squeeze my eyes shut and fling them back open with a sob. No tears flood my cheeks. I don’t have a drop left to spare. His thumbs brush soothing motions against my temples.
It’s no use. My stomach convulses, and I choke on a heave. He hauls me up with a curse as the potion dribbles down my chin. He peels me out of the bed, saying something. I can no longer make out the words. Underwater again. For a split second, I reemerge, the world sharpening. There’s a golden tinge around his pupils, bleeding into the pools of green like sunlight peeking through the leaves.
“Don’t die,”his lips say beforeI slip back into the black.
Dying is like beingsubmerged under a frigid sheet of water. I don’t fight against it, instead allowing it to wash over me with a heavy acceptance, a tinge of relief. I break the surface and warmth envelopes me, starting at my ravaged middle and pilfering out, golden rays spreading through each limb, taking with it every pulse of pain.
The other side is cold but filled with light and the call of birds, a vague sense of motion. Something sweeps against my cheek, calling to the barely conscious remnants of me. The cold surface of a vial is pressed to my lips. I will my eyes to open. They merely flutter. “Drink.”
A wave of dread washes over me. I was so certain it was over. I try to swat it away but my arm won’t give to my demands, weak and heavy like I’m sludging through a vat of honey. My lips are pried open and liquid spills into my mouth. My first reaction is to spit it out.
“You are the most stubborn person I have ever met,” he says with a ragged breath. “Trust me.”
My limbs are weighted, however there’s none of the pain radiating from my middle that’s plagued me the last several days. Maybe I’m dead after all. There’s a ravaging thirst in the sting of my cracked lips, tongue like melded sand. Liquid spills into my mouth again, and this time I’m weak to it. I swallow and wait for the commiserating burning. It doesn’t come.
I’m too eager for the next swallow. I take it too quickly and choke and sputter. My limbs shift as I’m rearranged into more of an incline, head braced against something cool and solid and wet. I take one vial, and then two, and then there’s the sweet, tangy crisp of cold water. I manage to lift a heavy hand to hold it there, guzzling it to quench the fires of this never-ending thirst.
“Easy.” He takes the water away, and with great effort, I squint my eyes open. It’s too bright for my heavily dilated pupils, and it takes several seconds for my surroundings to come into focus, everything returning in fragments: a flash of tree limbs, beads of water dripping down a bare chest.
The forest is vibrantly green, the trees much too large to be real. Sunlight glints across crystal water, clear all the way to its pebbled bottom. The smell of burning wood and the orange flickering flames of a small fire.
The trees are monstrous. I blink rapidly—skeptically. “Dead?” I barely recognize the throaty rasp that is my voice.
