Page 148 of Dare
Jeryn
She lay in a pile on the ground, with the vines scattered around her like severed arteries. The sight dug a trench in my stomach. I tossed our satchels aside and plummeted next to her.
“Flare,” I said.
“Flare?” I hissed.
“Flare!” I growled.
Beaming up at me, she uttered something indecipherable, her words slurring and her teeth chattering. Her head slumped as if she’d been drugged. She passed out, the deep olive leaching from her complexion, the skin glazed in a frosted pallor. It resembled the sort of cold I hadn’t encountered in months.
Numb. Chilled.
After getting caught in the web of vines, she must have fought against them, thus exacerbating the problem. The plants had cut off her circulation, which accounted for the rawness around her wrists and ankles. And based on the mottled skin, Flare’s neck had been assaulted as well, which must have terrified her. Still, the discoloration was fading quickly and would leave no scars.
With the machete, she had clearly liberated herself from the snares. Indeed, she saved herself.
Then she had damned herself, these vines somehow causing a decrease in body temperature and a loss of consciousness. But if that were the case, I’d have experienced those symptoms in the past, back when my own wrist had been trapped.
I went to work. She needed me to be calm, brisk, precise. My little beast needed me to be right.
Clasping Flare’s face, I tipped it toward a beam of forest light. I checked her pupils as best as I could, those gilded eyes having lost their luster. Bereft of heat, fury, spirit.
Fuck. My pulse rate tripled. I checked her heartbeat, which had waned.
Flare’s hands started to bloat, a cast of pale blue creeping across them. From there, the color swiftly progressed to her lips, as if her blood had turned to ice.
No. No!
Not her. Never her!
My finger skated across her mouth. Frantically pulling away, I held my digits aloft and rubbed the pads together, a cool fluid coating my skin.
Swearing under my breath, I peered at one of the limp vines. Leakage dripped from its stub, the edge crusted as if someone had bitten into it.
Flare and her incisors. From circulation to contamination. One that mimicked hypothermia.
My hands tore through the satchels. Pointless, I remembered a second later. We hadn’t gathered anything to treat this.
I scooped Flare against my torso and wrenched her off the ground, packing her tightly into my arms. Gradual body heat was paramount, but by the time the embrace should have had an effect, the symptoms hadn’t abated. That fucking blue tinge still assaulted her flesh.
Disregarding the bags and hauling Flare from the dirt, I crushed her against my chest and vaulted into a run. Speeding her to the wellspring, I wavered for a crucial moment. I might not be thinking straight. Thermal water could shock a hypothermic body and seize the heart.
It could in Winter or any other Season. But in this rainforest? In this wellspring?
I waded into the water with Flare. Splashing liquid over her welts dissolved them, but that was all. When I submerged us, the temperature did nothing to warm her.
“Flare,” I urged.
In that name, I professed too much, admitted too many things. Like an avalanche, the words poured out.
“Don’t do this to me,” I warned, rubbing Flare’s arms to imbue her with body heat. “Don’t test me this way.” But when that didn’t suffice, I coaxed desperately, “The forest needs you, remember? Don’t abandon it. And what of the key? Who else will carry out your mission?”
Her lips parted but emitted no sound. I spoke quicker while dousing fluid over every inch of her flesh. “Flare … please,” I stressed, my throat congesting. “Don’t fucking leave me.”
That rebellious mouth hung open, depriving me of a response. Nothing in my medical chamber would solve this. When it came to venom and poison, the rainforest knew how to mask itself, and developing treatments in that regard had been elusive. Aside from that berry incident with Flare, other redresses had slipped from my grasp, lost to me.
Slipped. Lost.