Page 50 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Thirty

T he library is burning.

In my dreams my breath is the hot smoke of a dragon’s, golden fire and blue incense.

The blaze started at my husband’s desk—it was never meant to grow.

But I never dream of the little flame, the moment that Aurelio’s taper touched the dusty skin of my books inside their metal storage trunk.

Mine. My collection, begged and stolen and hidden away for my pleasure alone. Not hidden well enough.

No, in my dreams it is always the blaze I see, so big and wild there is no hope for its end.

My books are already gone. The feeling, watching their pages blacken and curl, is deep within me, an anger so big it fills every pore, every artery.

The books are gone. But there is Aurelio, his face contorted in victory, even as the flames grow out of control.

“Do you see the sins you have facilitated?” he booms. He is so large he could swallow me whole. “Do you see what you have made me do?”

Oh, I see. I see my only possessions in this prison of his making turning to ash beneath his touch.

I see his intrinsic hatred for everything I hold dear.

I’m not hurting anybody, gaining small pleasures from my collection, content to walk in my husband’s shadow against my very nature—but that is not enough for men like him.

He needs more. More money, more power. More of me than I can give. And I have tried so, so hard to be the dutiful obedient wife. I have worn his dresses and attended his galas. I have pretended to love him for capturing me and decorating the cage he has put me in.

It is never enough.

“Please,” I beg, although it’s no good. The books are already gone, ash and fire, the stench of scorched leather, my own musky sweat.

“This is not the worst I will do.” Aurelio leaves the books burning in their trunk, his evening Scotch in a crystal glass next to it, and strides towards me.

It is his second mistake, though he doesn’t know it yet.

The first, of course, was burning the books to begin with.

“Look at you, cowering like a dog. You stink of it.”

I shrink lower as he lifts his arm, raising it high above his head. My dream mind knows I must run, but it is stuck in the reality. I did not run. And I do not run now.

“Please,” I beg again, this time quieter. “I won’t do it again—”

“No,” Aurelio growls. “You will not. I won’t have it, Thora. No wife of mine will cuckold me, embarrass me. God, we took you in. Made a lady of you. And this is how you repay me for all I have done? It’s a wonder I didn’t find you in here rutting with the maid like a common whore.”

“I wouldn’t!” I protest. It was just reading. Just touching. Dreaming and imagining what it would be like to feel the touch of a woman. “I would never act on it.”

“You already have.” He brings his fist down, striking me directly across the mouth.

It isn’t the first time he has hit me, but it’s the first time he’s done it where it will leave a mark.

Even in my dreams I feel the roil of anger, that rising tide of red.

How dare he? After all I have given up for him?

Aurelio hasn’t noticed, but with my head spinning and the stars in my eyes I see that the flames are growing. Already the blaze is becoming an inferno. If he doesn’t extinguish it soon it will—

Too late. The curtains near the desk are the first thing to catch.

And this is where the dreams divert. In real life I screamed, attempting to duck under Aurelio’s arm to tamp down the fire; in real life he spun, too fast, stumbling into the scorching, heavy trunk atop the desk, sending his Scotch flying.

The curtains went up like rags soaked in turpentine.

In the dreams it happens like this: I point at the curtains, already ablaze.

Aurelio turns to me and his eyes are dark, black slits from side to side, his lips curving in a vicious smile.

In my dreams I am the one who pushes Aurelio—I shove him with all my might.

And as he sprawls his skull makes contact with the corner of the desk.

The trunk careens against the curtains, pulling their excess deeper into the flames. The room is thick with smoke.

Aurelio is on the floor. Is he breathing?

The heavy crystal glass lies not far from his head.

It is only a thought, a split second of rage, but in my dreams it is not only a thought.

I grab the glass and breathe—in and out, soot in my lungs, the taste of burning on my tongue.

Then I slam it directly against his already-wounded temple.

Is that the dream? Or did it really happen? Either way, here is the story: I discovered my husband burning his collection of dirty books. Horror. He tripped. He banged his head. The fire grew. And I fled.

The end result is the same, in my life as in my dreams: the library is burning and my husband burns with it.

I wake with my hands slick with blood. I’ve scratched the scab on the back of my thigh in my dreams, the wound leaking all across my bedsheets, my hands, my nightgown.

I give myself a few minutes to return to the land of the living—though it hardly feels like living.

Is this what I wanted? Is this the future I always dreamt for myself?

Still, there’s nothing left to do but throw myself back into the research.

Wallowing won’t do me any good. Sure, I could turn around and announce Petaccia’s plans to the world, could tell everybody who will listen about Olea’s dead “friends” and her poison touch, but who would they believe?

Dr. Petaccia is a world-renowned scientist. As she’s told me herself, her research in plant-based healing has saved thousands of lives in Isliano alone.

And who am I? An undertaker’s daughter with a dead husband and a marital family who couldn’t wait to wash their hands of me.

No. The only way out now is through.

Eventually I drag myself from my bed. I am tired to my core, my eyes are sticky with shed and unshed tears, and I’m fucking starving.

When did I last eat? I wobble at the thought of Leo, waiting for me in the dining hall.

I wonder if he hates me for what I said to him.

Or if he’s somehow forgiven that and hates me for disappearing instead.

Again. That’s all I’ve done, over and over, the entire time I’ve known him.

I’ve taken him for granted. It isn’t what friends do, is it?

Then I think I’m grateful that he won’t see me like this.

I know I look a mess. He would only worry about me, and that isn’t fair either.

I boil water for tea, but I carry the hot water to the table before realising that I have no leaves left.

There is nothing in this place to make it mine, not really.

I have books, and notes, microscope slides I have stolen like lucky talismans from the lab.

But even these things remind me of Olea.

She has her tapestries and her trinkets, her whole life lived in that tower—it is all hers.

Everything that is mine was either Aurelio’s or hers.

I sink to the desk. The shutters are open to the darkness.

I half expect to see Olea wandering through her plants, tending to them as she always does, but of course she is not there.

I wonder if Petaccia will have checked on her.

Who will care for her if not me? Has she ever had anybody care for her when she was sick?

I know it’s half the tired sadness talking, but after everything I still want to be the one to care for her.

I just don’t want to feel as though my hand has been forced—and of course, that’s exactly what has happened.

Would things have been different if I had met Olea in another life?

Or would she simply have been a different kind of danger to me?

I imagine what things might have been like if there was no garden, no poison.

Just Olea appearing in the life I had before.

What if we’d met when my father was alive?

No amount of secrecy would have protected us from his lash.

And if I’d met her at Aurelio’s…? Oh, I would have burned the world just for a taste.

What if Leo’s right and it’s the toxins that make me want her? What then? But it doesn’t matter how many times I ask myself this question; the answer is always the same: if the toxins make me want Olea, and make Olea want me back, then I would, and will, poison myself to death for her love.

The realisation does not, however, make any of this any easier.

“The only way out is through,” I say, hoping that repeating the thought aloud will help.

It doesn’t. I’m so hungry I can hardly think.

It is too late for the dining hall. Could I beg food from one of the servers?

I don’t know if there will be anybody around in the kitchens to ask.

I know what would fill me, maybe. A big, bloody steak.

I can almost taste the juices. It comes to something, doesn’t it, when even the offal I’ve used in my experiments seems like it might make a good midnight feast.

I absentmindedly lick my fingers, lost in my frenzied imaginings.

The taste of blood brings me back to myself, iron-rich, like honey lubricating my tongue.

The scent of it, too, is startling. I pause, bringing my palm beneath my nose so I can inhale it.

There is something animal about it, something primal, both vital and somehow embarrassing.

It isn’t tacky like menstrual blood, doesn’t have that same cloying smell.

I close my eyes and I see the vermilion coating my skin.

And then the thought strikes.