Slowburn | Enemies to lovers | dark romance | false prophets | Space Opera | triangle | strong femme characters | eventual Romance | Eventual smut |
A desperate Baron.
A yearning Duke.
A woman who weaves destruction with an army of fire.
In the m...
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All mothers endeavored to ease the pain of children. Either a crux, a condition, or a noble pursuit, Hawk supposed that depended on the mother.
The mother of the Alican was no different. Through her closed lips, she spoke words that did not fall to Hawk's ears but wrestled inside her head. Prayers, she thought, for the unforgiven. Oaths, possibly, for a girl that had incessant trouble keeping her own promises. Kindnesses, to ease the calloused hands of death.
Hawk writhed on the floor of the temple, the mother, three healers and Sempir leaned over her. They slathered her waist in soot and clothed her with a heavy blanket woven of Calcite. It pressurized the pain, a heft like a cradle around her body.
"For pain," Sempir said, tipping a cup of potent liquid down her throat. It tasted of cherries left out in the sun too long, of mountain thyme and tart wine.
"Am I going to die?" She whispered, "You can be honest."
In the reflection of the crimson ceiling, she caught her own eyes. They had dulled markedly, the underside of them painted a deep cerulean that contrasted against pink cheeks. It looked like death, one of its many forms.
Sempir looked to the Alicana, to the blackness that spidered over Hawk's naval and then to her. He wiped a bead a sweat from her forehead with a wet towel. "It is possible," he said, "we are immune to them, but you have no Alica in your blood. It is hard to help you now."
Hawk nodded and bit her lip. Dying didn't hurt so bad with the assistance of the medicinal herbs. She relaxed into the cold stone as the mother hummed into her ear. Hawk ventured to recall a memory of her own life giver. The only one she owned was the vision that Collette had unlocked. A woman, dying alone in a snow pack with a baby in her arms.
She couldn't feel those arms, or the tenderness they imposed, if there had been any gentleness to it at all. Perhaps, her mother had detested her for reigning in her death. It seemed a poetic sort of justice, she too had died on a planet that did not belong to her. Cast forth into the wilds to crawl through the veil.
Hawk rolled her eyes open and closed to list the side effects of rabies. Pain of the muscles, dizziness, fatigue and fever. Those were merely the physical ailments. The deterioration of a brain was marked by delirium, anxiety and hallucinations.
Sempir placed a hand to her chest, slathering further ointment upon it. If she had anxiety, it was not yet making itself known. Her temperance was cool, not to the point of acceptance but what could one do in such a predicament.
He carved bits of calcite into a stone chalice and muddled it with sweet syrups. Stars in the heavens, he was trying his best. A grace that she wasn't sure had been deserved.
Hawk drank the tincture and let her eyes close momentarily. Sempir patted at her cheek to keep them open, when she did, the hallucinations took hold.
