Page 56 of This Vicious Hunger
“Olea, you’re—” I try again.
“I saiddon’t.” She grabs for my arm, quick as a snake strike. I drop the mug of tea, warm liquid splashing down my legs, dripping, the porcelain smashed against the wood. She’s using her wounded hand. Blood mingles with the tea, drip-dripping. Her fingers curl around my forearm, stronger than I expected, her nails digging through the material of my shirt.
“Okay,” I bleat. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say we are done,” she hisses. She thrashes, surging forward and then back against the bed so hard that the frame rocks against the wall. She won’t let go of my arm. I try to pull away but her grip only tightens. “I can do this. I can do it.”
“You don’t have to do anything!” I cry. “Come on, please. Let’s just agree that this isn’t working. We’ll go back to the antidotes, we’ll—”
“I have to, I do.” Olea’s voice is a cry of pain, nails on a chalkboard, her throat cording as a wave of agony ripples through her. She clutches at her stomach with her other hand, clawing, scratching at the skin until it is streaked with ragged lines. “Florencia was right. I shouldn’t have left.”
“No,” I say. “We had to try it. She was wrong to leave you there for so long—Olea, please let go. You’re hurting me.”
“She took me in, she cared for me.” Olea’s face is slick with oily sweat. “Anybody else would have thrown me in the river. The loneliness, oh, it’s a fair price, isn’t it? Look, look what I can do.”
She squeezes my arm harder, pushing at the sleeve until my bare skin is exposed. I cry out at the pain; it is like needles, like the sting of a nettle a hundred times, all in the same place. I try to pull away again, but Olea grips tighter. I stare at her. The panic ebbs and flows but beneath it is my realisation that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. This isn’t her.
I pull my free arm back and slap her firmly across the face. She shouts, more in shock than pain, I think, instantly dropping my arm. The skin pulses where she held it moments ago, and I have to prop myself against the bed frame so I don’t collapse, or throw up directly over her.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobs. “This is all my fault.”
“It isn’t. Don’t be silly.”
“I knew this would happen.” She breaks into full-body cries, her face still contorted in pain. Once I’m steady on my feet, I back away to the chair I dragged in from the study and wilt into it. My arm is tingling, the pain now a numbness that appears to be spreading.
“You knew leaving the garden wouldn’t help you to get better,” I say quietly. Then I realise something. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”
“Once,” Olea admits through her tears, wincing as she shifts onto her side. “I’m… that was a long time ago. I thought things would be different this time. I’ve spent all these hours with you and you weren’t that sick. I thought that maybe things had changed.”
“You should have told me what happened last time.”
“This is punishment.” Olea sniffs, then tenses as another cramp tears through her. She curls into a ball and holds herself tight, dark hair sticking to her forehead, the sheets damp with her sweat.
“You don’t deserve this.”
“Oh, but I do.” Olea’s eyes are normal again now, their usual brown-green, infinitely sad. “I’m not like you, Thora. I should never have been born. I killed my mother, you know. Probably my father too. It’s how I ended up with Florencia. She always told me I should stay in the garden, that I shouldn’t have friends, because of what I did when I was young. And she’s—she’s right.” She breaks into another bout of sobbing.
Slowly I begin to understand. When Olea said that she was born this way, she didn’t mean she was born with an affinity for the plants. She meant she was born with poison in her veins. And it has killed before.
Part of me wants to reach for her, to stroke her back in comfort. Another part of me flinches away at the pain she has caused. Instead I do neither, sitting stock-still on my chair and waiting.
“It’s not just your parents, is it?” I prompt when she has calmed herself.
“No.”
“You’ve hurt others.”
She blinks salty tears, rubbing at her eyes with one inky green hand. “My friends beyond the gate,” she whispers. “I never wanted to hurt them. You understand that, don’t you? I never wanted any of this. I just wanted… I was so fuckinglonely.”
“Clara.” The realisation hits me, and I’m stunned at the depth of the horror I feel. “She’s dead. Youkilledher. That’s why youwon’t talk about her. All this time I thought you were guilty because—because you loved her. Because she tricked you. But the guilt goes deeper than that, doesn’t it.”
Olea doesn’t look away. She doesn’t even try to hide it. Her bottom lip quivers and fresh tears roll free; this time she doesn’t wipe them away. Leo was right to warn me about her, I realise. Does he suspect the truth about Clara? About Olea?
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispers. “But yes. I let her in too soon. The garden… I told you. It doesn’t take kindly to strangers. You need to earn itstru-ust.” She curls tighter in pain. “I deserve to be punished. I deserve to be lonely. God, this pain… It must be what they felt whenthe-ey…” Her eyes roll back and then she squeezes them shut.
I stay where I am. I hardly move at all.
“I deserve this,” Olea cries weakly. “And when I die that will be the retribution for what I have done, to my friends, to my parents. Florencia was right. I should never have wanted more. I should have stayed in the garden forever.”
