OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

028 || Burdens of Secrecy

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT —        Burdens of Secrecy ..

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          Living in District 2 was not so different from the life Daphne had chosen to have in her little, crowded room back in the Capitol. This strange familiarity she could find in an otherwise dull place lulled Daphne to believe everything had gone according to plan — not hers, but the plan of something, Someone greater; everything was how it was supposed to be. And she knew, without a doubt, that thinking such things was dangerous business. Finding comfort, no matter how unusual or small, in a current state induces an illusion that it is time to lower defenses — there was no worse time for her to lower her defenses.

She couldn't get used to this, much as it was pleasant to feel her body flooded with pleasure and soothing tingles instead of aches that spur from a constant state of exhaustion that not even a river of coffee could save her from quite as well as a proper bear-like hibernation.

Sleeping next to Coriolanus felt a bit like hibernating to her. Though she very much preferred his arm to be her pillow more often than not, especially now that he could praise his new lifestyle had toned a bit those muscles the famished life of the Capitol had left untouched on him, even sleeping on a pillow besides him filled her with safety and tranquility, a sort of warmth no blanket could have given her. He was undoing with his soft breaths years worth of fatigue from her bones and she believed that was it — he was the reason why, though things went off the rails of her meticulous plan, she still believed this had all turned out perfect thus far.

The most difficult part was not the sneaking around at night, to get him back to her apartment, or doing things so quietly there was no chance for anyone to hear something that would start rumors of the conduit of either of them. The real hardship came with the morning, when their bed turned too comfortable for her to even phantom the strength required to leave it.

Light shone through the double windows of her room, a bedroom merged with the living room and the petite kitchen in the corner, as walls, she imagined, were expensive things to put on blueprints for the District life. It was nonetheless a clean bed, albeit with sheets creased in absolute mess beneath the two of them. On her bare skin, she could feel each and every crease the white sheets have crumbled into, but truly, she couldn't be bothered by the sensation of it all.

No — the real awakening factor was the light.

A single ray of morning sunshine tickled Daphne's eyelashes and the very tip of her nose with the beginning of a sneeze that finally woke her up from the deep slumber she had been eased into by Coriolanus and every single proof of love he wrote on her skin last night with his lips.

At first, she only turned her face around, to avoid the sunlight disrupting her blissful sleep, but as soon as she was facing the wall and the tickling edge of a sneeze forced her to lift her hand and brush that sensation off her nose, a drop of consciousness was returned onto Daphne: the sun had to be really high up for its light to hit her while she's in bed.

In a matter of seconds, Daphne pushed into her palms to sit up, throwing a pointed glare across the bed, at the clock on her nightstand. Her motion alone startled Coriolanus' arm away from numbness and into lifting to keep itself around her waist.

"Shit!" Daphne cursed. "We slept in," she cried out, worrisome, looking at the position they were into and trying to decide if she should push Coriolanus off or straddle him to get across. No option seemed actually promising with its time efficiency aspect.