Page 48 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I wait to head to the dining hall until fifteen minutes before it closes. My plan is to load my pockets and my napkin with food again, to keep enough stocked up that I can avoid it, and Leo’s company, until I’m ready to face him. It doesn’t work out quite that way.

The scent of fried onions and juicy steak makes my mouth water fiercely; I fight with one of the servers to get seated so late and manage to eat my way through two steaks in less than five minutes.

I wash it all down with near enough a whole bottle of syrupy red wine, relishing the prickling sensation as my limbs begin to relax.

I should keep a clear head, I should , but…

why? I’m not going back to the garden tonight, and the dark emptiness of my rooms, suddenly silent after Olea’s departure, fills me with dread.

When I stumble back out into the night with my napkins loaded with more bread and cheese, I am lightheaded, woozy.

The air is as syrupy as the wine and swirls around me.

I am queasy, and I am exhausted, and I am still so goddamn hungry .

I’ve been with Olea too much, in the garden for too many hours.

I should never have taken my mask off, I should have taken her back sooner, I—

“Thora…?”

I slam to a stop as I collide with something—no, someone. Blearily I peer up and—

“Oh, for god’s sake,” I mutter under my breath. Then I try to at least pretend I’m pleased to see him. “Leo. Hi.”

“Are you all right? What are you doing out here so late? I thought you were working, but—are you drunk ?” Leo peers at me from behind his spectacles; they reflect the lamplight in streaks of yellow and the effect is disconcerting.

I can’t quite see his eyes, though I can tell from the shape of his mouth that he is frowning.

I step back, clutching my bundle of food to my chest.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I say, slurring slightly. Leo says nothing, shifting from one foot to the other, glancing this way and that. “Let’s talk tomorrow,” I add. “It’s l—”

“No.” Leo snatches for my elbow. I let out a surprised hiss and he yanks his hand back. “I’m sorry, sorry. I just— Can we talk? Please? You’re avoiding me again.”

I hesitate, but Leo takes another small step back into the shadow of the dining hall. A gesture of trust. Of apology. I feel myself melt. Outside the glare of the lamp I can see better, see the concern etched into Leo’s forehead, the lines around his mouth.

I haven’t seen him since Olea’s admission, and now all I can think of is Clara, buried in the garden’s loamy earth. Leo doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He—

“I’ve hardly seen you,” he says, interrupting my spiralling thoughts. “I know you said you were busy with Petaccia. But…”

“But…?”

He leans in, his voice low. “Does she have something on you? Is that why you keep sneaking off there?”

My heart skips, blood roaring in my ears. “Excuse me? Who?”

“Petaccia’s ward,” he says, urgent now. “Does she have some hold on you, something worth throwing it all away? Are you in some kind of trouble? Because whatever it is, I can help.”

“Leo, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie. My voice comes out shaky and uneven.

“Come off it, Thora. I might be naive but I wasn’t born yesterday. You say you’re working late in the lab, but twice I’ve been by La Vita this last week and it’s still and silent as a sepulchre. Have you been going back to the garden?”

“Were you spying on me?” I say incredulously. “Leo, Petaccia has me in the lab all different hours. I’m working on really important hypotheses. Groundbreaking ones. It’s science that could change everything. What’s it to you how I spend my time?”

“But have you been seeing Olea?” Leo presses.

“What does it matter if I have?” I snap.

“I don’t need you constantly looking out for me.

I’m a grown woman and I can make my own choices.

I’m fine .” I hate lying to him. He deserves to know the truth about Olea and her sickness and the failed antidotes and Clara—but I can’t risk Petaccia’s research, or Olea’s safety.

And I can’t tell him the truth about Clara without explaining everything else, and I won’t do that. I can’t . Not now. It’s too risky.

Instead I summon all my anger, at Olea and Petaccia and the failed antidotes and the poisons, let it fill me right to the brim, and then I roll my shoulders back and direct it at him. “I don’t understand. You didn’t want your wife, and you don’t want me, so why are you being so goddamn jealous?”

“I’m not jealous,” Leo argues. “I have a dreadful, dreadful feeling and you won’t listen to me.

I’ve tried to ignore it to keep the peace, but I can’t keep pretending everything is fine.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s nothing to do with Olea and that damned garden, but look at you.

You’re exhausted. You’ve lost weight. You’re never in class…

I know you’re besotted with her, and that you think you’re the first person ever to feel this way, but you aren’t.

You came to St. Ellie to learn, not to become Petaccia’s lackey and Olea’s little garden pet.

This is why I didn’t want you going near that place.

Olea’s doing to you exactly what she did to Clara. She’s corrupting you.”

“Corrupting me?” I say, genuine disgust seeping into my tone. “Is that what you think my private feelings are? Corruption? ”

Leo glances over my shoulder, furtive and afraid.

“Is that what you think happened to Clara? Don’t be dim, Leo.

You and I both know the way we feel isn’t a choice.

And whatever Clara felt, you said it yourself: she had one foot out the door long before she met Olea.

Olea did not corrupt your wife; Clara was just as guilty.

” It’s the closest I can come to telling him the truth.

Please , I urge silently. Please understand.

“You’re wrong,” Leo insists. “Clara wasn’t like that before she met Olea. She got in Clara’s head, made her think differently.”

“About what?” I demand angrily. “About sex?”

“Please, keep your voice down,” Leo hisses. He makes to grab my arm again, to pull me farther out of the light, but I dodge his grasp.

“How do you know what Clara thought?” I go on.

I hide behind my righteous anger although I’m making myself sick.

This isn’t how this conversation should go.

Whatever Leo’s thoughts about himself and his own feelings, he deserves gentleness to unpick them.

He’s only trying to help me—but he can’t.

I won’t let him. So I push on. “Did you tell her how you felt? Did you give her the opportunity to understand?”

“No, but—”

I need him to walk away—far, far away from Olea and the garden and all this poison.

But he won’t. Not unless I make him. The thought is swift and brutal, and I know what I have to say.

Forgive me , I think. “You know what? You’re so damn insistent that I need to watch out for Olea, that she will hurt me, but what about you ?

Did you ever stop to consider if you’re the one hurting people? ”

Leo looks as if I’ve smacked him. His expression is a knife directly through my flesh, but I can’t stop now. So what if he hates me? At least he will never have to know the truth. At least he’ll be safe from the garden’s clutches.

“You couldn’t give Clara what she wanted and you still can’t admit to yourself why. You kept her trapped and Olea offered her an escape. Can you really blame her for taking it? You’re a coward, Leo. A controlling, frightened little boy. You drove your wife away and now you’re driving me away too.”

Leo is silent. It is a silence so loud it muffles the hot pump of blood in my veins, the screaming in my ears, the despair in my very soul. The worst part is, he doesn’t argue.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Petaccia demands.

We are in the top laboratory in La Vita the next day, and I’m sick and tired and sweating profusely in the sunlit room.

“Have you any idea the damage you could have caused? Oh, I knew you might be trouble, Thora, but I didn’t think you’d do anything so stupid . ”

“With all due respect, ma’am, Olea is slowly wasting away. If I hadn’t intervened she’d have found another way out—”

“Not just her,” Petaccia seethes. “The fucking garden . Those plants are a lifetime of care and cultivation. How could you think you’d just throw that away—for what?”

“For your adopted daughter.”

“I. Am. No. Mother.” Petaccia’s face is the blotchy red of a wilting rose. “How many times must I say it? Would you call me such if I’d never told you about Niccolò? Would you do it if I was a man?”

“Does it matter whether you’re her mother? It’s semantics,” I spit. “Olea is in your care. She’s out there right now rotting from the limbs up. Her body is shutting down, and then where will you be?”

Petaccia stills, her dark eyes flashing. “That is her choice,” she says coldly. “Don’t you think I warned her about all of this?”

“It wasn’t just leaving the garden that caused it,” I argue. “Her skin has been going bad since I first met her. Her hands—”

“You foolish girl,” Petaccia snarls. She flies the short distance between us and soon she is towering over me.

I do my best not to flinch, not to back away, but there is a feral rage in the doctor’s face that is barely concealed.

“You have such a hero complex you haven’t stopped to think that maybe you’re the cause in the first place. ”

“I… what?” Freezing water down my back. I shiver.

“Didn’t she tell you the reason she isn’t allowed visitors?”

“She lets them in too soon,” I say, puffing out my chest. There are no lies between us, not any more. “And they die. It’s a tragedy but that’s not exactly my fault.”

“No.” Petaccia laughs. “Not just that. Those deaths were a tragedy, and they left their mark on Olea, I’m sure. But it wasn’t the intruders I was worried about.”