Page 88 of This Vicious Hunger
“She doesn’t.”
“How do you know?”
Olea rubs her face, that single movement exhausting her so she lies with her hand over her face. “I suppose I don’t. But how do we know leaving isn’t going to make things worse? Your Leonardo might have told people tales and if we appear it’ll only be—”
“Worse?” I bark. “How could things possibly get any worse? Olea, we can keep having this argument a thousand different ways, but the answer is always going to be the same. Aren’t you sick of it? How long before we go mad?”
“I don’t know!” Olea wails. “Please, Thora. Just let me sleep.”
I’m silent for a moment before the rest of it bubbles out of me. I try to keep it in but the fear, it’s too big. “Olie, if I get us some blood from somewhere… Will you take it?”
This, finally, wakes her up completely. She thrusts herself upright and stares at me in horror. “Where from?” she demands.
“I… I don’t know. One of the scholars, maybe.”
“Right. And what are you going to do, just walk up to one—in the middle of the night, might I add—and ask them if you can borrow some blood?”
“I… well. I hadn’t thought—”
“No,” Olea snaps. “You hadn’t thought about it. Thora, I asked you not to go out there without me. What if it happens again, like with Leonardo? What if you lose control and really hurt somebody?”
“I won’t! I can’t let this happen without fighting it.”
“I will not let you do something you’ll regret either. There is another solution, we just haven’t thought of it yet. Let me sleep and maybe I’ll come up with it.”
“Olea—”
“No,” she cuts me off. “No more. It isn’t even a discussion. We can make tea from the nettles and eat the fruits off the trees. This is not the end.”
She lies down without another word, rolling away so she doesn’t have to look at me. I fix my gaze on her back for the longest time, long enough that she eventually falls back to sleep. But I can’t stop thinking about it. The blood. We need it.
We’re running out of time. If I don’t do something, Olea will die.
Chapter Forty-One
While Olea is sleeping, I sneak into the garden. I figure I have perhaps an hour or two before she’s built up the energy to come looking for me, and by then I’ll be safely back in the tower—hopefully with a broken padlock to show for it. I’m not sure what I’ll do after that; I haven’t got that far in my imaginings: step one ispossibility.
I gather the biggest knives we have in the kitchen, though they are all dull now. I have a pair of scissors too—not that I’m expecting much from them. With every silent footstep I curse myself for not breaking the padlock when I had the chance. It was sheer stupidity, negligence. I wanted so badly to believe Olea was right and Petaccia wouldn’t abandon us for the sake of discovery. I should have trusted my gut.
I head straight down to the gate with my weapons of choice, not stopping to check on the plants as I know Olea would like me to. I’m not the gardener she is, and without her tender touch the plants have once again gone wild. A horrible thought tickles my brain: What happens to the garden if Olea dies?
When I’ve had the thought before, it was from a scientificvantage. Now my concern is purely selfish. This place is our home—my home, now—and without the border of poisons to keep people away, would I lose even the sanctity of this space? Will I end up in chains worse than this gilded prison?
I push the notion away. It won’t happen. I simply won’t allow Olea to die. I’ve worked too hard for the scraps of this life regardless of whether it was what I wanted to begin with.
When I reach the gate I pause, stacking the knives and scissors against the wall so I can examine the padlock. I remember it being thick and heavy with a wide link chain. Perhaps if I can pry apart one of the links, that would do better than breaking the lock itself.
I stop. It takes a second for my exhausted brain to register that there is no lock. There is no evidence that there has ever been a lock, although I know it’s true. The gate rests closed on its latch, not even Olea’s original lock and key still present. A latch. A simple goddamn latch is all that stands between me and outside.
I suck in a deep breath. There is a fresh hint of rain on the breeze. I let it fill me, palms pressed against the rusted metal. In, and out.
It makes no sense, but my first thought is Leonardo. Is it possible he’s been back and found a way to unlock the gate? This is followed by a rush of pain. I double over, gasping like a fish out of water. I nearly killed him and this man is so kind he has come back to help me anyway.
But no. It’s much more likely that the doctor unlocked it herself. I swallow, wondering if in keeping our watch here amongst the weeds we somehow startled her—if she’d brought supplies but refused to leave them when she heard us. This is something I could not bear, if in our efforts to protect ourselves we have doomed ourselves instead.
Fuck, I think.Fuck.
Faced with the missing padlock I stare at the gate for what seems an eternity. What now? I’d only planned to destroy it and take the evidence to Olea. I hear her pleas, a steady buzz in my ears like the hum of a fat little carpenter bee.Promise me you won’t go without me.
