𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐒✔️

FOURTEEN| EXSPIRAVIT

Everything hurt.
I had tried everything to numb the pain to no avail, even going to far as to touch myself... but nothing would sedate the vicious lust that burned within me.

Hell fire scorched my sweat drenched skin, leaving it barren and bare of anything except the dull, throbbing ache it left behind. My head pulsated, a constant yet distant ringing had persisted for hours now. They said it was normal.

Groans and cried of pain echoed throughout the cold stone room. Females lay hunched in every dank corner.
'It was for our own safety' was what they had said as they shut the thick metal door to the underground bunker. It was dark and damp and smelled faintly of mildew. Two panel lights flickered overhead, after hours of their on and off light my head felt like it would explode.

I grit my teeth, clenching my fists so tightly my nails dig into my palms hard enough to draw blood to stop the screams that threatened to escape my lips.

Astoria had given me a cloak that she had thrown over me saying that I "Needed to stay hidden." I had found the nearest vacant bunkbed and collapsed into the bottom bunk, shivering and facing the wall.

Sluggish footsteps dragged along the hall and stopped in the door way. "Artemis.."

I couldn't turn over, I couldn't move, everything within me hummed with one thought only. Him.

I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't much want to know, I would wait until the three days was up, and then I would move on. No questioning, no answers. If I didn't know it couldn't hurt me.

Footsteps dragged closer, I felt her cold hand on my shoulder, the creeping cold shocking a revived sense of urgency, into my scorched skin.
"My god you're burning up, here let me help you."

She rolled me over, the world span and dark stars dotted the edges of my vision. My stomach lurched, and hands reached out to clutch something...anything to still the swaying world. I fell off the bottom bunk and onto the cold stone floor with a bone rattling crash, I felt as the air was knocked from my lungs, leaving me empty and gasping. "Shit I'm so sorry!" Flick cursed, trying to help me sit back up.

I coughed and spluttered, the thick and dragging heat dragging like tar from my lungs, thick and black and dark. Entirely wrong.

I took her outstretched hand, letting her pull me into a sitting position, every fibre of my being groaned in protest to the slightest movement. When my eyes locked with her gold flickered orbs, the room fell silent again. She was staring and she didn't even realise she was doing it, almost as though she were in some sort of trance like daze, the worst part about it was the horrified sadness that lingered just behind her guarded countenance.

"Flick.. what's wrong?" I cocked my head, trying to see more of that milky human kindness that held just beyond the walls she had build, but slowly they were crumbling. Stone turned to dust that rose from the ash as a cloud of smoke, devouring all in its wake.

Her words were so quiet I almost didn't hear them.

"I'm so sorry Mare."

I stared at her in confusion, "Flick.. it's me? Artemis.. Who is Mare?" I waved my hand before her face, she seemed to snap out of it, her face morphing to one that was absolutely mortified.

"Oh, sorry... forget whatever I said." She stared at her hands awkwardly, but I wasn't going to let it go that easily. Dislike Astoria refusing to tell me, I could surely get it out of Flick.

"Who's Mare?"

She bit her lip, her anxiety rolled off her in thick and sour waves that crashed over me, soaking me in her nerves from head to toe. A sickening stomach began to fester in the pit of my stomach, the heat had stopped, though not for long. It came in waves, this was just the calm before the storm.

"No one." Uncertainty laced every anxious syllable she spoke, "She's no one."

There was a kind of finality to her words, it was clear that to the world she was no one but to Flick she was everything, good or bad I couldn't tell. She almost held a sort of fear behind her words, fear of identity. Fear of the name, led to fear of the being. She was afraid of whoever this girl was.
Maybe that was why she had shut her out, pretended that she had never even existed, so as to convince herself that she wasn't afraid.

Ismara had a secret, a dark and creeping one at that. A secret I would soon discover.

A fiery ache came from deep within my bones, I was burning up. Flames licked my skin, leaving me sweat drenched and shaking. It was coming back, worse than ever.

I grit my teeth to try to keep the screams at bay, but then a particularly vile pang ripped through my heart, leaving me thrashing and screaming, calling out for him.

Everything swayed and span, night stars flickered the dank ceiling. I fell on my side, curling into a ball, I saw Flick's horrified face, I saw her feet slowly backing away.

"I'm sorry... I can't do this.."

She ran away. She left me when I needed her the most. I couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than pain, let alone anger.

I wasn't angry, but I wouldn't forget.

A guttural scream shot from my throat, a deep and primal sound of pain, horrific and moving me to curl tighter, wrapping my arms around my legs and rocking myself.

Days blurred to night, hours blurred to days. I can't remember exactly when the pain left, but one day I woke up, I couldn't feel a thing, nothing expect the empty echoing loneliness from an incomplete heat.

***
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