Page 53 of This Vicious Hunger

“I’m a killer,” she repeats. “ I’m a killer. Are you joking right now? That’s your vindication for your behaviour? You left me. After all your talk of trust. I did trust you, the garden trusted you and welcomed you inside, and you fucking abandoned me, just like everybody else.”

“Fine,” I seethe. “You don’t deserve it anyway. I was going to use this as a bargaining chip for your freedom, but since you don’t trust me I guess I’ll just focus on getting myself out, shall I?”

I don’t know if I mean it. In the moment, perhaps I do.

I turn away from Olea easily, anger burning away the regret, and I storm down the stairs.

I don’t stop until I’m standing panting outside in the waning light of the moon.

I grip the vial, holding it up to the moonlight.

Is anything worth this pain? It feels as if my heart is cracking inside my chest. If Olea won’t drink the antidote, then I’ll just give it to Petaccia as is.

She’ll have to let me leave the university.

Then… where would I go? Anywhere would be better than here.

Even if it means being alone. Part of me wants to smash the bottle.

Dawn is just beginning to purple the edges of the sky.

Dark clouds gather and the air stinks of impending rain.

I suck it down, filling my belly with it, the electricity of it zinging through me like the tartness of lime juice.

Fuck Olea , I think. I crumple to my knees, great racking sobs crushing my lungs.

And then I hear her. She is slow, shuffling her way down the stairs and through the tower door like an old crone, her nightgown bunching as she carries it around her knees.

“Wait,” she rasps. She stumbles as her damaged feet make contact with the earth. A zap of lightning forks through the trees. “I’m sorry.”

For a moment I can’t stop the sobs. They smash through me like gunfire, each breath a bullet.

“Me too,” I say eventually. “I didn’t mean to say any of it. I just want… I thought this was the life I had dreamt of and it’s not. I need to get out of here, Olea. I want to be free. With you, if that’s possible.”

The truth is, no matter the lies that have spooled between us like thread, no matter the histories that have driven us to this dark place, I don’t want to do any of this alone. Olea isn’t much of an ally, but she’s all I’ve got.

She kneels beside me. With a tentative hand she reaches for my knee, waiting to touch it.

“It won’t hurt you?” she asks. I shake my head. “The… That. ” She gestures to the vial. “Does it really work?”

“I think it does.”

“Can I see it?”

I hold the vial out to her. Gingerly she takes it, holding the glass up to the pale light of the coming dawn.

How long has it been since Olea was able to enjoy the warmth of day without having to dress like the wrapped-up dead?

I rock back on my heels. She pops the waxy seal and it tumbles into her lap.

I expect her to sniff it. To dip her little finger in and test the liquid on the tip of her tongue, as I have often seen her do out in the garden with nectars and fruits she isn’t so familiar with.

I half expect her to throw the vial away.

I wonder if she can smell the bread-and-honey scent, if the flaring of her nostrils is intrigue or disgust. The liquid surges inside the glass, but Olea doesn’t react.

“I trust you,” she says.

Then she empties the entire contents into her mouth in one smooth gesture, swallowing it down in a single gulp.

“Olea—” I start, and then stop. That’s more than ten times the dose I took.

She lets the bottle drop with a heaviness.

I watch her eyes, heavy-lidded and sleepy.

She doesn’t move at first, fists balled, curved lips parted as she inhales deep, and then deeper, drawing in the musky scent of the coming rain. “How do you feel?”

“I feel…” The words are slurred, drunken. She licks her lips and I think she must be tasting honey. “I feel everything .” She grips hold of my outstretched hands, skin to skin, her palms pressed to mine and our fingers intertwined. “Did you feel it? It’s like lightning in my veins. It’s like…”

She surges forward and plants her lips on mine. The kiss is hungry and vibrant; I taste the nectar on her, running my tongue over hers. She presses her forehead tight against mine, nose to nose, breath mingling. Her skin is warm, warmer than I have known it outside of fever. She kisses me again.

I pull back, watching as the inky tendrils across her hands begin to dissipate.

She marvels at the sight of her smooth, milky-white flesh returning.

Pale, peachy nails, wrists speckled with a thousand tiny freckles.

She beams at me with lips the colour of burning bush berries, pink and soft.

Her eyes are warm brown chocolate cut with mint. She is as lush and fresh as a dewdrop.

Desire roars within me as she launches herself at me again, kissing my lips and then my jaw, my neck, the soft, exposed skin at my throat above my collar. She pushes me back into the dry earth, straddling me, a whoop of pure pleasure ricocheting through her, her hands on my chest.

“You did it!” she crows. “You actually fucking did it. Thora, you beautiful, beautiful—”

She stutters into silence. Her gaze has caught on the white circle of the sun. In its welcome light she is ethereal, her skin glowing in contrast to her dark curls—glossy and thick and near black as damp soil. I reach for her breast eagerly, but the expression on her face gives me pause.

“Olea?”

She grips my shirtfront with both hands, her whole body going rigid as some kind of seizure takes her. I scramble upright, nudging her off my legs. She lands in the dirt still shaking, trembling so hard that her teeth rattle in her skull.

“ Olea! ” I shout.

But my voice falls on deaf ears. The seizure continues, brutal and angry and hard, racking her body until she can do nothing but lie on the ground.

I rush to help her, trying to hold her still or cushion her head against the earth.

The new colour leaches from her skin as fast as it came, leaving her grey and cold.

“Olea?” I whisper. Thunder rolls in the distance.

I feel the first fat drops of rain on my head and in seconds the sky is open and the rain is pouring, gushing, drowning us both in rivulets so thick and deep it might wash away everything.

The vial, the mixture. But not what has happened. It is too late for rain to fix that.

The antidote has failed.

Olea is dead.