Page 75 of Dare
Drawing a livid breath, I prowled nearer to her. “As for the mad, I’ve sedated them to prevent hysterics and self-mutilations. I’ve conversed with them, but they haven’t listened. I’ve conducted analyses for correctives and came up empty-handed. Why did I bother? Why did I try to gainsay nature? To fix its mistake. Yet my stresses have been fruitless. All that’s left is using them to develop remedies for everyone else. The end justifies the means. What else are they good for? What else are you good for?”
My voice hitched on that last part. An accusation to which I felt no pride.
Sunset highlighted her tattooed throat, reminding me of a vital fact. What I’d spewed was old information to her; she had already lived that reality. She’d been a captive of Summer, a pawn of Rhys, the spoils of a king’s grudge. Therefore, the rant of a prince held no value to this woman.
In her silence, I heard and saw myself for the first time. Her eyes glinted like metal patina, flinging this moment back at me, explicit in its revelation. It exposed everything wrong and false about my diatribe.
About me.
Ice chipped from its foundation. It crumbled and left a vacancy behind. Something like remorse.
That was before she even spoke. “It hunted you once.”
The answer to that would be a chilled breath away from other answers. Jaw tensing, I glanced away.
She got in front of me, her gaze cutting to the quick. The unspoken questions mounted.
What petrified me more? That I didn’t know how to treat fools? Or that I could become one?
Who was I really trying to heal?
It didn’t matter whether she’d demanded this or not. She smashed her fists into my thoughts, threw flames at me, all without uttering a sound. To achieve that, this little beast needed only to keep staring with those gilded eyes. Another minute of her presence and it would be over for me.
“Leave,” I commanded.
She did not.
“I said, leave.”
She did not leave.
“Go. Away.”
Yet she would not let me forget this. She would force me to face it. Not because she cared or because I deserved her attention. Nowhere near that.
Fuck her. Fuck this woman for appearing in that Autumn cell, after years of struggling to purge her from my mind, after having finally reduced that brief incident to a dream.
Fuck her for tampering with my self-control, my logic, my sense.
Fuck her for breaking the vial like a traitor and tarnishing the one unblemished memory I’d had of her.
The beast shook her head. “It’s a scratch. The Phantom Wild can help you fix that.”
“We’re stranded, beast!” I roared. “This forest cannot fix everything! I can’t eke out an existence here with you. I don’t have the right supplies. No advanced medicines, no actual parchment, no surgical instruments. I don’t have syringes. I don’t have sterilized needles or thread. I don’t even have proper fucking bandages!”
A plant thwacked me in the chest. Squashed in her grip, she pressed a broadleaf into my pectoral. Absently, I took it.
Her irises were reams of sunlight. Thermal. Grating. A golden visage capable of turning me to ash.
“I told you,” she murmured. “I have a name. It’s Flare.”
Snatching flint, rope, and her blade, she marched from the cupola.
I frowned at the plant. The drooping leaf was long and had the texture of linen. However, it stretched like gauze—like a bandage. Whereas the midrib could be an alternative for thread if I constructed a needle, perhaps from a fish bone.
Smart. Resourceful. Always.
My head whipped toward her. “Get back here!” I shouted, knowing she wouldn’t listen.