Page 41 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Twenty-Five

T hora.”

There is so much longing in this one word, it seizes my guts and makes my blood pump hot and thick. I am breathless from my walk to the garden, grateful for the moonlight. I’m still not recovered from my fever, my lungs aching and my limbs weak.

“Olea,” I say.

She ushers me into the garden, but there is hesitation in her movements, a jerkiness I’ve not seen before.

I try to reach for her, to draw her to my chest; I want the crush of our lips, the heat of her skin on mine.

And I know Olea wants the same; I can see it in the tension in her limbs, the tautness of her jaw.

I inhale, the sweet bitter greenness filling my lungs. It smells like home, but then—not quite. There’s an acrid tang that follows, settling on my tongue. I’ve been away too long. I—

Something in my body screams in warning, that old haziness clouding my mind and my vision. I stagger, leaning against the wall for support.

“Are you okay? Thora—Thora, look at me. Look at me. ”

I see Olea’s face through the flutter of my eyelids.

She doesn’t touch me, but with her as my guide I stumble through the plants and along the dirt paths until we reach the tower.

I have never been this close before. It is taller than I thought.

I sink down at its base and rest my back against the sun-warmed stone, still baked from the day’s heat.

My chest heaves and I have to take long, deep breaths to calm my slamming heart.

“You should leave,” Olea says, panic lacing her words. “The garden—something’s happening. I can’t let you—”

“Just. Give me a few minutes,” I squeeze out.

Olea sinks into a crouch, knuckles white with tension. Her beautiful face is distorted with worry, but as my breathing finally begins to slow and my dizziness abates, her brow smooths and her dark lips soften. I wipe my lips, the sweat from my brow.

“Better?” she asks softly.

“Yes.”

“Good. You… you haven’t been to see me for so long. I thought…”

“Olea.” I let out a sigh. “Petaccia told me about the antidote you’re working on. I’ve seen her labs. I know everything.”

“Oh.” Olea hugs her knees to her chest. “So that’s why you’ve been gone.

You understand more about me, then.” It isn’t a question, but I nod anyway.

I wipe a hand over my face again and it comes away damp with fresh sweat.

I feel as if I have run the length of my father’s sepulchre after a mourning, my mouth dry and ashy.

“When you didn’t come back after… I thought maybe you wouldn’t come ever again.

I was worried it was because…” Her eyes are locked on my lips and I feel that now-familiar pulse of desire within me.

I want nothing more than to touch her, to kiss her.

I don’t move. “Then I started to think maybe you’d realised—it isn’t safe.

I warned you. I wanted so badly for you to ignore that warning, and I should have been more forceful. ”

“I needed time away from the garden.” I don’t want her to feel guilty but she must understand that none of this is simple.

“You needed to be away from me.” Olea rocks back on her heels. “I understand.”

“No,” I say sharply. Though isn’t it true? “Not that. I wasn’t well and I didn’t really think about how staying away would look after what happened between us. I’m sorry—”

“You were unwell? What happened?” Olea’s eyes are huge and dark in the moonlight.

“I’m okay now.” I run a hand through my hair and try to explain the thoughts that have been brewing in me.

“Being in the garden, being here with you, it made me feel… strange. At first it was very unsettling. Then the garden became a safer place. I used to feel very dizzy and lightheaded and that all stopped—except for when I wasn’t here.

When I left the garden this time, and was away for longer, I got sick and it’s as if my body had to purge…

I had a fever. So I had to stay away even longer.

I feel a lot better now. But coming back is a lot for my body to process, I think. ”

Olea’s expression is one of abject horror, but I can’t tell if it’s at the idea that she hurt me or if it’s something else. Does she realise that it isn’t just the garden and its plants responsible for what happened to me?

“Did you know that I would become immune to the worst effects of the garden after a while?” I ask.

And to you, your body, and your touch? “Is that why you kept me coming back to the wall for so long before you let me in? And why you didn’t want me to stay away again after—why you said to come back the next day? ”

“No!” Olea blurts immediately. I wonder if she realises that she’s lying.

Perhaps she believes I will think better of her if all this is an accident.

It might not have been consciously calculated, but there’s no way I believe Petaccia’s ward would take such a risk without care.

“It was never my intention for this to happen the way it has. I just… I noticed that you seemed different the longer we spoke, the more you came to the wall. And… I’m so selfish.

I wanted so badly for it to be the case that things would get better if you came more, and stayed longer.

I wanted you to be my friend and for the garden to welcome you. ”

“Does Petaccia know?” I press. “About you, I mean. About how the poison flows through you?”

She looks as if I’ve struck her. Did she think I wouldn’t notice?

She won’t touch me now—because she can’t.

The air hums between us and yet we can’t cross the divide.

Despite everything, I want her hands on my skin, in my hair; I want her lips at my neck.

But neither of us has any idea how much of my tolerance I’ve lost by not being here.

She is silent for a second, as if she’s deciding how much to tell me.

I wait patiently but my heartbeat increases with every second.

“Well…” She gnaws on her bottom lip.

“Olea,” I insist. “Tell me the truth. No more lies. I don’t care if you’re trying to save my feelings, there’s no sense keeping things from me now—you understand that, don’t you? I can’t help if you keep me in the dark. Petaccia trusts me, so why can’t you?”

“It isn’t that simple,” Olea moans. She rubs her knuckles against her scalp. “I’m an experiment, aren’t I? I look after the plants. I always have. She trusts me like she trusts nobody else, and she has since I was just a baby.”

“A baby?” I want to shake her. “Olea, did you ever have any choice in this?”

Olea’s face is a mask. “Florencia always says she knew that I’d been sent to her so I could help her solve this puzzle, the research she’s been working on her whole life,” she recites, as if this is the story she has told herself—and been told—forever.

“From the moment I arrived at her door, these plants accepted me. They don’t sting me when they should; I’m fine when I’m around them.

I’ve never been in any danger from them.

Of course Florencia noticed quickly—I was a gift with half the solution to her questions.

How can I be alive when everything says I shouldn’t be? I’m a monster.”

“Oh, Olea.” I reach out, nearly grazing her sleeve with my finger, but she yanks her arm out of reach. “You’re not a monster.”

“No, she’s right. I shouldn’t exist but I do, so maybe I am the missing link.

The way the plants… they treat me like one of their own.

And because I can touch and care for them, I can harvest what Florencia needs without anybody else getting hurt.

What a boon.” Olea smiles but the movement is jerky.

“I’ve been getting sick more as I get older, but that’s nothing compared to the possibility of what we could achieve for mankind because of me.

And anyway, it’s too late now. We can’t just stop.

And it’s not as if there’s anybody out there to miss me if I do succumb to the poison. ”

A hollow forms deep in my chest. I picture Olea, small, fragile Olea, in this beautiful cage.

And then I think of the story she told me, of the little bird and the mage and the fox.

It is Olea’s story—at least in part. If Petaccia is the mage who keeps her in this gilded cage, does that make Clara the fox who lied?

“You can’t succumb to it,” I whisper. “I would miss you.”

Olea melts, finally sinking so she sits firmly on the ground. She crosses her legs, inhaling deeply. Her lips are so dark. My skin crackles with her proximity, but I hide my lips with the collar of my shirt, afraid. I can’t deal with that hunger again. I will go insane.

“I wanted to kiss you tonight,” she says.

“I missed you so very dreadfully. You know, I was alone so often for so, so many years, and it never hurt the way it does knowing I can’t touch you—and you’re right here with me.

Oh, Thora. What are we going to do? I can’t live like this any more.

Every night it’s the same emptiness. Leaves and flowers and moonlight.

I’d had enough long before I met you, but you—you’ve made it wonderful.

Without you…” Her dark eyes glitter with unshed tears. “I can’t do it.”

“We work harder,” I say forcefully. “All Petaccia’s experiments—they can’t be for nothing.

It has to work. And my intolerance won’t last forever.

If I come back into the garden my body will acclimatise again.

” I’m not sure if this is what I want, if the wretched hunger I experience anytime I’m away from these walls is worth the price for access to what’s inside them, but if the alternative is never touching Olea again, I know it’s a price I will pay.

Even just to be near her is worth the pain.

“Florencia has been working on this research my whole life,” Olea argues sadly. “If she was going to make a breakthrough, surely she would have already.”

“She said she’s come close, though. And now she has me to help. A garden go-between.” I give her a reassuring smile.