Page 92 of This Vicious Hunger
“You didn’t give me any choice.”
I rub my jaw, annoyance brewing in me. I said I would risk losing Olea’s trust to save her, and I don’t regret it, but I didn’t expect her to be so… sad.
“You would have…” I can’t even bring myself to say it. The thought of a future without her alive… It is more painful than I would have ever thought possible. We have been forged anew in this same fire, and I can’t let her go.
“How did you even get out?” Olea asks.
“I broke the lock. With tools from the kitchen.” This is not such a bald-faced lie, but Olea reacts to this one with far more suspicion. I don’t knowwhyI lie; I suppose I don’t like the idea of Olea knowing how easy it was for me to betray her.
I reach for her, laying my hand atop hers. Olea stares at my hands for a moment. A horrified thought strikes: What if she can see the lingering remnants of the dead man’s blood? Is it dried around my fingernails? I washed my hands, but… And then I notice her gaze is not on my hand but on my nightgown. Not entirely dissimilar to the one I wore earlier, but not identical either. She was so out of it, though, surely she can’t remember such a detail…?
So I do the only thing I know how, throwing myself into her arms and smothering her face with kisses. She resists at first, shocked and amused, but in seconds we are tumbling into the blankets and cushions, mouths together, fingers searching.
“I love you,” I say breathlessly. “And I’m glad you’re okay.”
I wake to the sound of Olea making her nettle tea. The sun is just beginning to disappear, a sunset-gilded cloud of rain moving in from the east. The chaise is stiff beneath my body, a book buried somewhere in the bolster, which we no doubt lost during our second round of lovemaking.
I crack my eyes against the golden-hour sun, but it doesn’t burn like it did only a day ago. For a second, just one blissful second, all feels right and good.
Olea hands me my mug, both of us uncaring of the heat that scalds our palms. She sits at my feet, sips from her tea, and then she says simply, “I want to know why you lied.”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You’re lying to me right now, Thora. I thought we were past this. I thought we had an understanding. No more secrets. You said yourself: How many times are we going to have the same conversations?” The antidote has cleared Olea’s mind, just as I thought it would. I’m briefly angry, but it is a fleeting emotion with no real bite.
“I did what I had to do,” I say simply. “You didn’t need all the details. You were recovering—”
“Oh, cut the bullshit,” Olea chides. “You promised you wouldn’t leave the garden without me, and you did. You told me you got the blood from a hospital. And, what, I’m just supposed to believe you?”
“I saved your life,” I repeat the mantra again.
“You didn’t give me a choice.” Olea’s stare is cold. Whatever frustration we burned through during sex is back and roaring like an open flame. I was naive to think I might be able to recover from this. Thatwemight be able to. “Once again, nobody ever asks me what I want. Did you ever stop to think that I didn’t want this? You poured that fucking stuff down my throat. Just like you forced me the first time.”
“I didn’t force you!” I exclaim. “Ineverforced you.”
“No, the first time you just manipulated me into thinking it was my only choice or you would leave. Last night you forced me, and I didn’t appreciate it. I’m so fucking sick of everybody acting for me.”
“Would you have rather me let you die?”
Silence. It spreads between us like poison. Not the good, trusting poison of the garden, but the kind of poison little children are taught to fear. Olea doesn’t say anything, only stares at me, at mynightgown, at my hands. Guilt, it’s written all over me. And the worst part is, I’m sure Olea can sense the same thing I’ve been thinking nonstop since last night: I would do it again. I almostwantto do it again. I want the taste of blood on my tongue, salty and hot and good.
“Thora, I’m not saying you’re not trying to do the right thing. I’m not even saying I’m not grateful, because now I’m here… Well, it’s hard to wish I wasn’t. But I want you to know that you do not, ever, have the right to make that decision for me again. Do you understand?”
“So next time it happens Iamsupposed to let you die?”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“Of course there bloody will.” I gulp a mouthful of the nettle tea and relish the warmth in my throat. “Next month, like clockwork. You heard the doctor.”
Olea is already shaking her head before I’ve finished speaking. “No,” she says. “She’ll be back. Maybe not right away, but she’ll want to check on us, to see which of us…” She swallows. “Look, all I’m saying is you’ve bought us more time. Next time we will have Florencia’s help and everything will be fine.”
“When are you going to learn she doesn’t care about us?”
Olea sets her tea aside. “It isn’t that I don’t know that. I’m not stupid. But if we just abandon this… You understand, don’t you, what will happen? I simply can’t bear the thought of her doing this to somebody else.”
It is now, in this moment, that I realise something. It’s a thought that has been growing for some time, but last night has sealed it: if we continue to do nothing, we are just as responsible as the doctor for what happens next. We have no guarantee that she will come back to us. Petaccia has our formula for the antidote, andshe knows it doesn’t kill immediately. Olea is right about this: I’m sure she’ll find no shortage of subjects willing to do just about anything for the chance at a cure for all.
And with that realisation comes another swift on its heels. Olea willneverdo what is necessary. In our arguments she is always the lock and I am the key. She is shackled by her past, trapped in this garden in a way that I am not and will never be. I am not my father’s child any longer, a girl so wrapped in the intricate rituals of death that she does not see the way it stunts her; I am not my husband’s wife, trapped by his short temper and shorter leash with no way out besides books. I am a woman who has tasted her dreams—and her nightmares.
