A Deadly Bite

9.1 || In The Silence

Waking is a gradual process. Slowly, surely, the warmth licking in the spaces between my ribs begins to cool, ice crawling into the edges of my dreamless void. With each new crack comes a heartbeat, rippling through my faded consciousness, its pace a little faster each time. With little else to think about, I count them.

One, two. One, two, three.

The feeling of my legs, crossed over one another. A twitch in my fingertips.

One, two, three, four.

The softness of the ground beneath me. I'm sinking into it.

My eyes fly open. My heart races, pounding into a rapid string of numbers I no longer have the time to put names to. Gasping sharply, I fight to calm it, blinking to clear the dregs of sleep from my vision.

An unfamiliar face occupies most of it.

Tension wrapping every limb, I shrink back as far as is possible, feet slipping over the soft material as I squirm away. They're bare. I'm not wearing my boots.

In a nonsensical moment of panic, I clutch at my chest. My fingers crease fabric. No boots, but I still have my tunic.

The face holds eyes the colour of frost. They widen, bright with curiosity as they peer down at me. They belong to a girl, I realise, strands of her inky black hair dangling above me as she leans over. She frowns.

I fumble for my voice, wincing when it rasps against my dry throat. "Hello?"

My fingers dig into a fold in the material beneath me. This is a bed. They've laid me in bed. Absently, I reach for the sheet draped over my chest, tugging it closer. The absence of Rosi's magic has left me oddly cold, even colder than before, although I know it must simply be the startling nature of the contrast. I shiver regardless.

The girl's face vanishes. Tightening my grip, I shift, easing myself up a little more to search for her. The splash of running water trickles into my awareness. I twist around and find her standing by a small table. An extinguished lantern sits beside a small pile of folded papers, all with a maze of words scrawled on their surface, and a glass container. One of her hands steadies the glass, while the other dangles her forefinger inside.

My breath catches. From seemingly nowhere, clear liquid flows from her fingertip, a thin but constant stream that can surge only from beneath her skin.

"You're..." I hesitate, the term requiring time to piece together before its memory finds my tongue. "You're a Nería."

The corner of her mouth twitches upwards. The water rises to an inch from the glass's rim, and she halts the flow, shaking away a few stray droplets as she picks up the glass. Her eyes shine like untouched snow bathed in blue-tinged light as she holds it out to me.

The sheet that covers me is a cheerful, summer-leaf shade of green. I crumple its edge against my collarbone, keeping it pinned there as I sit up fully. Her gaze is expectant. Hoping my hand doesn't shake, I take the glass from her. It feels like ice, hard and yet delicate as it presses into my palm as if it might shatter with too tight a squeeze.

I watch the liquid within it ripple. "Do I..."

Her brows slant down.

"Drink it. Right. It's water." My faint chuckle fits awkwardly in my jaw. Raising the glass to my lips, I take a careful sip. The water is shockingly cold, freezing my throat as it slithers down, but it's not unpleasant. "Thank you," I add in a rush, ashamed that I didn't begin with that.

Silence seeps in like the patter of rain, gentle but incessant, growing heavier the more it falls. I hear myself swallow the next mouthful of water. Gripping the glass, I cast a cautious glance at the girl, then at the rest of the room. It's fairly simple, with not much distance between the bed and the door cracked open at the opposite wall, though the collection of bright silks occupying the hooks to its left steal my attention. They're all dyed a beautiful, blended mixture of pale green and soft, delicate blue, interspersed with white patterns. Her clothing matches perfectly. The material for her dress might as well be cut from a crisp winter sky and a snow-capped mountaintop.